Ashley's Wedding Bio

When my fiance and I went to look at rings I kind of knew what I had in my mind, but I told him for the engagement ring to just pick out something cheap and I could spend the time between the engagement and the wedding looking for what I wanted. He asked me what I was thinking and I said I wanted a white gold ring with a solitary diamond set in a tension setting band, but that I want the profile of the ring not to be sky high since I have tiny fingers.

My fiance was listening well! He had my ring custom made to my exact specifications and used it as my engagement ring. It is PERFECT so I decided I do not even want a different ring. He did a great job designing it and I get so many compliments from people everyday over it.

Honestly I have bought most of my shoes and accessories on Ebay! I get really great deals and so far everything I have bought is perfect. I've probably spent around $30 total for my tiara, veil, necklace, earrings, and shoes.

The shoes right now are a light purple, but they are dyeable so I think I can just dye them a darker shade of purple. If not, I'm only out $5. They were never worn and I love the look of them! The veil has clear crystal rhinestones and little butterflies sewn into it. It is a 2-tiered veil that is about elbow length. The necklace, earrings, and tiara are all made with dark purple swarovski crystals. I am also using swarovski crystals on the cake (little beaded flowers) so it will match really well.

I mostly handmade these invitations with help from my mom and sister. The project took around 25 hours, but I am completely happy with the results so it was time well spent. Here is what I did in case anyone is interested in doing something similar:

First off I bought the pocketfold envelopes from CardsandPockets.com. I got the Signature Series ones in Onyx Metallic Black. It is hard to see in the pictures, but the pocketfold is black with some silver shimmer to it. They are really pretty! I did the research in making my own pocketfolds, but to buy the right type of paper and all the hours to make them I would have saved around $45. It was worth it to me to buy them and CardsandPockets.com is a fabulous place!

After I got the pocketfolds, I went to Kinko's and bought a ream of light cream colored card stock. The whole ream cost me around $10. So far, I have been able to cut out all the invitations, inserts, and belly band medallions for 100 invitations and have some left over for Thank-You cards. I used a heavy duty Fiskar cutter that my mom happened to have and I cut out 100 4.5"x6.5" invitations and 400 3.5"x6.5" inserts. I designed the invitations and inserts using Publisher and a stock photo I bought and recolored. The RSVP card is 3.5"x5.5" which is the minimum sized postcard the USPS will take, so all guests have to do is fill out the information, put a stamp on it, and drop it in the mail...or RSVP on-line through my website!

The belly bands were a little trickier. I bought a Fiskar Ultra ShapeXpress, a Fiskar alphabet template, a Fiskar butterfly template, and a 1.5" diameter circle punch at the scrap-booking store. I used the cream card stock for the top of the medallion and then purple scrap-booking paper for the purple under the medallion. We punched out the circle, then used the ShapeXpress to cut the "T" into the top and glued the two circles together. Then we cut out the butterflies with the ShapeXpress, folded them in have, and glued one half down onto the medallion above the "T" leaving the other wing open to create a 3D effect. I 1" used purple mesh ribbon with wire on the sides to make the bands and secured the ends behind the medallion with glue. I used special glue for scrap-booking and paper since I tried using tacky glue on my prototype belly band and it ended up puckering the paper.

All that was left was gluing the invitation to the pocketfold main part, stacking the inserts and putting them into the side pocket, securing it closed with the belly band, and putting them in the mailing envelopes. I will mail them all out in April of 2010, but it feels good to have them done!

My cake is going to be a 3-tiered cake made by my cousin who is a master cake maker. It is going to look similar to the picture above, except I made a different wedding cake topper and instead of frosting flowers they will be little beaded swarovski crystal flowers (which I am almost done beading). The crystal flowers will be linked by green frosting and taken out before the guests eat any of the cake.

The cake will be carrot cake w/ cream cheese filling for the top tier, chocolate cake with raspberry filling for the middle layer, and white cake with Bavarian chocolate cream filling for the last layer.  We are just going to go ahead and serve all three layers of cake since we have no interest in freezing the top and eating it on our one year anniversary. I don't like year old frozen cake.

Here is my DIY artificial flower bouquet! It took me about 8 hours to put together, but I am super happy with how it turned out! I still need to find some fake butterflies to put in it though.

I do have all the rest of the flowers done and will update when I get pictures!