alternative guestbook | caitlin elizabeth photography | wedding ideas

i know the blog has been FULL of wedding-y things this week. no, i'm not a newlywed.  no, i'm not getting married soon. no, i'm not even engaged.  BUT i have about a hundred friends who are all engaged and getting married this summer and next - which is SUPER exciting and has me constantly looking for things they might like.  an interesting trend  i'm noticing on the blogospheres these days is this idea of an 'alternative guestbook.'

i've been to PLENTY of weddings where folks have one of those white books with lines for everyone to sign in on and write a brief message to the bride and groom.  believe me, there is NOTHING wrong with that, it works! but i also am fascinated by the OPTIONS couples have.  there are some seriously creative folks out there:  i've seen polaroids that people take at the wedding and write on then hang on a 'picture wall,' wine corks that you can write messages on, engagement photos bound in an album with page margins for leaving well-wishes, jars to leave a note in that the couple takes on their honeymoon, wishing trees, puzzle pieces that guests sign, rocks to write on that later go in the couple's garden, squares of fabric that are later made in to a quilt... really there is NO limit to what counts as a guest book!

if you know nothing else about me, know that i am IN LOVE with the hand written word.  and SO last saturday i decided to set up my own take on an 'alternative guestbook'

the premise is simple: love notes and quotes, message in a bottle style

guests have slips of paper they can write tidings of joy and happiness, or their favorite quotes from love songs and stories, past or present :) and really, this quote from john donne sums up quite well why i think that writing love notes is such a perfect idea for a guest book instead of just signing your name on a line:

"sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls, for thus friends absent speak" ~john donne

once they write out their love note, they can slip it into a bottle, which can be saved to open on a later date or buried in true 'time capsule' form.

to give this presentation a little more height/variety i incorporated books - these include 'southern tales' which is a book comprised of short stories written by southerners and 'love poems'

 

 there are about a bajillion bottles like these in various shapes/sizes/colors at the local thrift store.  i've also seen them at flea markets and you can often find them in yard sales for next to nothing!  but each one is interesting, with it's own style and story. 

shakespeare will always hold a very special place in my heart - these little red books? they're acts from some of my favorite plays :) there are so many good quotes! 

"let us go hand in hand, not one before the other" ~shakespeare, comedy of errors (act V scene 1)

"when i saw you i fell in love, and you smiled because you knew" ~shakespeare, hamlet (act II scene 2)

"may your tears come from laughin, you find friends worth havin, with every year passin, they mean more than gold..." ~lady antebellum, never alone

do those wine bottles wrapped in twine look familiar?! you can find out how to make them HERE since they were my most recent PINday craft!  if you get a chance, check out the PINday board and 'like' or 'repin' whichever craft you want to see featured on the blog next week!

there are so many interesting options for brides regarding ANY facet of the wedding day.  guest books shouldn't be left out!  it comes down to what YOU and YOUR HUBBY-TO-BE want!  obviously if you don't particularly value the written word, this wouldn't be for you.  if you are a more tech-y pair, you could get your guests to video blog for you, or if you're into music, get each guest to select a song and have a 'wedding day guest-book-playlist' - are you pickin up what i'm puttin down ya'll?!  make it personal!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT coming up on the blog next week.  as well as my ALL TIME FAVORITE DESSERT RECIPE. swing back by sometime, there'll be something new to take a gander at ;)

caitlin elizabeth photography | just for fits and giggles | wedding DIY | DIY boutineer

my aunt betsy is has a way with flowers - i love when it's her month to do the altar flowers for church  because they're always so attractive.  some folks just have a knack for that kind of thing.

generally, i'm not one of those people.

it's been so warm lately that the flowers are blooming at the house!  so i decided to try my hand at making a boutineer :)  i used things that i found in the yard and in my craft box for this little DIY boutineer project.  brides be warned: i don't know next to nothing about flowers or how you're actually supposed to put these things together, i'm not claiming to know the first thing about floral arrangements, i just thought this would be a fun project!  

i used my trusty hot glue gun, twine, a clothespin and miscellaneous plant life i found in my back yard.

there was a bit of a frost the night before, so the majority of the camellia flowers were actually very brown and yucky looking, but i found this little bud that i thought might work well:

  

i think this is cedar - not all of the tree had these little blue berry-like things on it, but i liked the colors so i decided to use one of the sprigs with the berries!

i cut 3 separate sprigs and hot glued them together:

i then hot glued the flower to the front and then wrapped twine around the bottom to hide said hot glue (which at this point was gushing out all over everywhere from gluing 3 sprigs and the flower together)

then i hot glued everything to a clothes pin!  not the most sophisticated thing in the world, but i think it works.  this could definitely be incorporated into a more laid back wedding - nothing too fancy: a backyard, barefeet, tie optional for the groomsmen kind of wedding.

finished product! not too bad for my first attempt:

i didn't have access an attractive young man (will was working... sorry ladies) for me to put this on so i had to take a shirt and just hang it on the china cabinet haha

 

DIYers beware: you can't put the flower too far up the clothespin, otherwise it is too heavy and won't actually stand up.

and to top it all off: this bad boy has been in the fridge for 4 days and it doesn't look weepy at all (i don't think that's a term used to describe things that grow, but you know what i mean) so you could make them in advance and they'll keep for a bit!

so much crafting on the blog this week!  i'm ok with it though :)  

PINday | an alternative to mason jars

my friends can attest to my undying love for mason jars.

they can also attest to the fact that i have BEEN in love with them for forever.  back in college i wrote a blog called the 'mason jar monologues.'  i stored my pens/pencils on my desk in a mason jar.  it was not uncommon to see me walking to class or roll into staff meeting with a mason jar of sweet tea.  one christmas i gave my besties a 'sweet tea making kit' including two mason jars, tea bags, sugar, and a freakin adorable little poem with the foolproof steps to sweeten it just right.  i decorated my dorm room with mason jars full of colorful candy and ribbon (my undying love for ribbon is worthy of a whole separate blogpost)

it deeply saddens my heart to know that all of these bandwagoners have ruined any chance of me actually going through with the mason jar themed wedding i've been dreaming up since i was a wee little thing drinking lemonade from a mason jar on the front porch swing... 

SO for the first official installment for PINday i've prepared an alternative for mason jars :)  

PINday is a new installment on the blog - basically i have a pintrest board devoted to crafty things that YOU can 'like' and i'll try them out for you... because honestly, how many things have you pinned on pintrest that you are NEVER going to do?! that's right. a bunch.

the inspiration for this project came from this DIY yarn bottles project i found.  i mixed it up a little, to fit what resources i had readily available:

MATERIALS: bottle, yarn/twine, hot glue gun 

obviously  you can use whatever you want, and the actual pin on pintrest calls for smaller bottles and yarn, BUT 

i am forever drinking wine 

and i love me some twine, 

so i just decided to use what i had 

and make up a sweet rhyme 

:) 

golly i crack myself up 

also: if you don't already have a hot glue gun, what are you doing with your life?! using it is probably my second favorite thing ever.  drinking wine would be the first.

just a little heads up: this wine (lucky duck) is from wal-mart and it is SO CHEAP and SO GOOD.  i particularly liked this bottle, which was a sauvignon blanc from chile i believe.  they have all different types - some not as good as others, but hey, for $4 a bottle what can you expect?

seriously though: twine is so useful.  and it seems to last forever.  i've had this roll since September and i use it every chance i get: decorating, packaging prints/products for clients etc. 

starting this can be a little tricky - i found that NOT having huge globs of very warm adhesive all over the place is helpful - less is more when it comes to hot glue guns - you don't want a huge hunk of glue at the top where you start wrapping the twine around.  i took a little dab and put it just inside the top of the wine bottle, attached the twine to it, let the glue cool just a little so i knew the twine wasn't going anywhere, and then started working my way around the very top of the bottle, using very small amounts of glue to make sure the twine covered the top lip of the bottle completely  

after you clear the top of the wine bottle it's easy as pie!  just keep wrapping the twine around the bottle, stopping every once in a while to put a little dab of hot glue to make sure the twine stays put!  again, less is more.  you don't want big pockets of glue sticking through between your twine

from start to finish this project took me about 45 minutes, but i'm sure that once you did it a few times it wouldn't be as time consuming. (or if you used smaller bottles)

these would be great to just have around the house as decorations OR you could use them as centerpieces or accents in tablescapes :)  you can check out the finished product later on in the week when i feature this DIY PINday project in a special little something i thought up over the weekend!!  

check out the PINday pinboard too and vote for the next project by 'liking' whatever you want to see me craft :)  thanks ya'll! 

"love is a mix tape" [personal]

i remember sitting upstairs with my sister for hours on saturday afternoons listening to the radio.  we sang along, making up words for verses we couldn't remember.  i had a cassette player / radio that we cranked up and danced shamelessly around our pink carpeted floors to; the local country music station jamming.  when an absolute favorite came on the airways i would hit 'record' and capture the tune on one of many blank cassettes i kept stacked beside my modern day music box.

and that was the very beginning of my obsession with mixed tapes.

in high school i made mixed cd's as christmas presents. each song selected for the recipient.  it either reminded me of them or i thought they would appreciate it in ways others may not.

when i went to college i brought stacks of mixed cd's to play on my laptop (i thought bringing my AM/FM radio would be completely UNcool).  most of them were exclusively country, but with a new school and chapter in my life came exposure to a much wider berth of melodies.  i found out about the wonderful world of iTunes and YouTube.  and so my taste in music expanded.

the first mixed cd i made in college included ice ice baby by vanilla ice, fat bottomed girls by queen and our song by taylor swift.  i know, i was all over the place.

when santa brought me an iPod for christmas that year, it only got worse.  playlists ranged from "study musica" which was solely classical, to "2:10 a.m." containing everything from parachute's she (for liz) to conway twitty's i'd just love to lay you down to r kelly's remix of ignition.  naming the compilations of diddies was just as fun as pulling songs for them: underwear (alternative music), exception (songs dedicated to the perfect boy who didn't seem to exist), papa (old country), soundtrack (songs i would have in a movie about my life)... just to name a few.

then i made a new friend.  who also loved mixed cds.  and she started making mixed cds for me.  birthday cd's, christmas cds, getting over a boy you liked who played with your heart and strung you along only to let you down cds, just because cds... there didn't really need to be an occasion... even the simplest of things warranted pulling together tunes from various genres and putting them together to tell a story.  there were falling in love cds, falling out of love cds, party cds, bawling your eyes out cds, summer cds, winter cds, songs to live by cds, don't let what anyone says get you down cds...

danny, my red-headed little brother, even knows the power of a mixed cd.  if you ask him how he's going to get the girl he loves to fall in love with him, his answer is: i'm going to make her a mixed cd with she don't know she's beautiful by sammy kershaw on it. [middle school girls - you have been warned].

mixed cds: the premise is so simple. and yet they hold so much power.

my best friend from high school would always say: 

the boy who gives me flowers, that's the boy i'm going to marry. 

i'm not much for store bought bouquets... don't get me wrong, a handful of wildflowers will make me smile any day, but i always thought the boy who made me a mixed cd would be the one to truly steal my heart.

you see, mixed cd's might seem simple, but really, they're quite complicated.  

when they're done right they tell a story.  

you learn about yourself.  

the person who made it.  

and your relationship with them.

“But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.” 
― Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape

baby's breath is making a come back [just for fits and giggles + pinday fun]

that's right. i said it: baby's breath is making a comeback.  i can feel it in my bones

at one point in my life, i abhorred baby's breath.  

yes, abhorred.

judge me if you will, but have YOU tried to get those little flower buds out of your hair after they adhered themselves to every strand of hair within their teeny tiny petals' reach when sprayed with the liquid cement version of hairspray mama used in my flower girl days?! i didn't think so.

i suppose that to my little tomboy-flower-girl self, baby's breath represented all things dainty and feminine... things i didn't readily associate myself with.  yes, i took ballet lessons and i still occasionally throw a ribbon in my hair, but i've never been a girly girl.  i'd rather shoot than sew, and  in the early 90's i would've much rather been out back building forts in the woods than wearing flowers in my hair.

and for a while, folks started coming around and seeing baby's breath for the evil little minion that it was.  many frowned upon it simply because of its weed-like qualities, others snubbed their noses at it because it was generally used only as a filler.  it was cheap.  and quickly became dated.

but i'm here to say: baby's breath is going to make a come back.

and it's for the same reasons that it went out of style:

SIMPLICITY

baby's breath was such a good filler because of it's simplicity.  it didn't distract from the 'real flowers' in a bouquet.  but when you take a whole lot of simple and concentrate it, a transformation occurs - suddenly you have a whole lot of beautiful:

[image credit: intimate weddings]

INEXPENSIVE

this. stuff. is. CHEAP. and eventually baby's breath became synonymous with the 'bad' type of cheap (like, grandmothers whisper in the back pews of the church cheap: she has baby's breath in her bouquet?! did she get those flowers off of the street?) but now, instead of being cheap - it's thrifty ;) *it's alllllll about the word choice ya'll

this little table decoration: SO CHEAP.

[image by katie stoops]

AVAILABLE

everyone. used. baby's breath.  it got so TIRING to see it in every bouquet and in every flower girls' hair.  it got OLD.  so folks stopped using it.  but NOW people are seeing the light - yes, baby's breath is COMMON and available to everyone, but you can use it in DIFFERENT ways.  it is VERSATILE.  and you can really take it and make it your own.  

you can make wreaths:

 

or decorate tablescapes:

[image courtesy of whitelilacinc.com]

and really do absolutely anything you can image with it.

which brings me toooooooo..... PINDAY!  check out my pinday board on pintrest and 'like' whichever craft you want me to test run for you... there's even one with baby's breath :) whichever pin has the most 'likes' by tomorrow night will be the one i test out over the weekend.

don't see a pin you like?  tell me what you want me to craft! leave a comment here or post it on my facebook page