Wedding Wednesday: Reception Decorations

Jambo!!

Today is the TEN YEAR anniversary of the premiere of “Mean Girls.”

Wait.

Mean Girls

WHAT!?

Yes, it’s true. Regina George came into my life ten years ago!

Regina GeorgeI seriously love this movie! My friends and I watched it at least once a week in high school — I can quote Every. Single. Line. And it makes me laugh every time I watch it! It is an absolute classic in my book! So of course, I’m celebrating it’s 10th anniversary by . . . wearing pink (because it’s Wednesday, and that’s a rule) and watching it for the trillionth time!

Because of this oh-so-fetch celebration, I’m gonna make my weekly Wednesday post nice and quick!

Wedding Wednesday

My final decoration post is about our wedding reception. We kept things nice and simple — a big white tent in the front yard of the farmhouse with a few decorations to add pops of color! Once again, all photographs are copyright the AMAZING Rothwell Photography.

First of all, MAD PROPS to my awesome hubby for creating these paper flower poms:

DIY flower pom for weddingThe boy spent hours creating 30 of these babies! Each petal was a piece of paper and you need 5 petals to make a flower, 12 flowers to make one pom. Do the math — that’s 1800 flower petals to fold!! I was so impressed with how they all turned out though. We got tons of compliments on them! All we did was hang them from fishing line across the length of the tent at varying heights (we used a hold punch and those paper reinforcer donut hole stickers to hang them).

DIY flower poms :: wedding ceremony decorationSimple and beautiful! And I love the way they pulled everything together without trying too hard.

First DanceThis was one of my favorite shots of our first dance — mostly because I love the way J and I are laughing and loving life in that moment but also because the poms look sa-weet! I absolutely love how they turned out! So proud of my crafty hubby (even if he did only do it to have an excuse to take study breaks! Haha!) See the full directions here for how to make them.

Really the only other reception decoration was the centerpieces. Each table’s set-up looked like this:

DIY wedding centerpieces :: yellow and green wine bottles and tree stumps-Square piece of green burlap

-Large stump cut to a height of about 2 inches (thanks dad!)

-five wine bottles (more on this below!)

-a few bits of moss around the stump

-one small stump with a notch cut in it for cardstock (again, thanks dad!)

-table numbers (each table had a fun fact about us corresponding to the table number i.e. Table 7 — the number of states we’ve traveled to together. It was a fun way for our guests to learn a little more about us as a couple!)

-green, yellow, and white flowers (got these in bulk from my florist. They were all the same types of flowers incorporated into my bouquet and other flower arrangements, which helped tie everything together. By buying in bulk and assembling ourselves, we saved a ton of money too! Yay!)

Justin and my table looked a little bit different. We didn’t have a bridal party table because we wanted our attendants to sit with their significant others so we had our own simple little table:

Simple bride and groom tableA nice green tinted jug with flowers and some Mr. & Mrs. stumps (made last minute with a sharpie marker and some extra little stumps!) kept things sweet and simple. We knew we wouldn’t be at the table that much anyways so why overdo it?

We hung a few strands of white Christmas lights around the tent and called it good! Easy peasy!

Wine Bottles

The wine bottles was a simple project. We collected tons of wine bottles from family, friends, restaurants (not kidding), and anywhere else I could find them. Some were already tinted green and yellowish, so we left them as is! Labels are easily removed by soaking the bottles in warm water (make sure the water inside the bottles is really warm!) and removing it with a kitchen scraper.

The bottles that were clear or a color other than green or yellow got spray painted. I used lime green, yellow, and cream (hotel vanilla, technically) spray paint. I didn’t take pictures of the process but it was super simple:

1- Lay out newspapers in a large space outside. Make sure to lay out a lot of newspapers — the spray paint goes further than you’d think!

2- Place the clean, dry bottle on the newspaper (my dad eventually crafted a bottle holder out of a block of wood and doll rods but most of the bottles were sprayed on paper).

3- Spray thin coats of paint on the bottles. I waited 30 minutes in between coats and each wine bottle got at least 3 coats.

4- Let the bottles dry for at least an hour or two, depending on the temperature of wherever you’re spraying them.

5- Smile! You’re done!

We used rubber bands to create a striped look on some of the bottles (see white bottle above). To do this, all you have to do is wrap a bunch of rubber bands in varying sizes around the bottle between steps 2 & 3. It looks better in the end if the bands are lying flat against the glass and not twisted. I cut the bands off with scissors then — do not remove the bands until the paint is completely 100% dry!

And there you have it! Super easy and it looked great! Plus now the wine bottles make great decorations around the house!

Have a great hump day! Love, me and Mrs. George 🙂

Mean Girls***

Today’s outfit. Unfortunately, there was no pink involved so I couldn’t sit with the Plastics at lunch . . .
Maxi dress & cardigan :: teacher outfit blog Dress: via Ross (no longer available) ~ Cardigan: Target (exact here) ~ Shoes: Nine West (no longer available; similar here)

 

Wedding Wednesday: Ceremony Decorations

Hey Mike! What day is it!?

Hump Day

The students at my school absolutely love quoting this commercial. I have to admit that it does bring some much-needed energy to help push through the day! Whoot whoot! 😉

Wedding Wednesday

Continuing on my decoration trend, let’s talk ceremony decorations!

Since the ceremony was happening outdoors, I wanted to keep the decor to a minimum and let nature do most of the work. We had white chairs arranged on the lawn in a semi-circle with a middle aisle. At the entrance to the main aisle, there were sets of three tall tree stumps of varying heights.

wine bottles and stumps // simple wedding decorEach of the stumps had a glass bottle (these were all beer bottles spray painted in wedding colors) holding a single flower. We varied the flowers to give it a little more pizazz.

easy DIY wedding decor

I really liked the way this turned out! It gave just the right touch without going overboard or taking tons of time.

The only other ceremony decorations were at the front of the aisle. A dear family friend of mine (basically a grandfather for me) constructed a beautiful arch for us. I absolutely loved it!

simple white wedding arch

Side note: I also really enjoyed this moment of the ceremony. 😉

We had some slate tiles to stand on since there was a chance of rain (and it did rain) so we wouldn’t be standing in wet grass or mud. Under the arch I placed an antique table that belongs to my family. I covered it with a simple lace doily from my mom’s house and set three pitchers on top.

simple wedding table for footwashing

The pitcher in the middle was a gift from our pastor. It was handmade (though not by him) and came with a matching basin. Instead of a unity candle, we decided to have footwashing. This is an important tradition in our denomination and we really wanted this to be part of our ceremony. I’ll give more details in a future post!

simple wedding footwashing

The other pitchers belong to Justin’s mother. They each had water in them; instead of our mother’s lighting candles, we had them pour water from the pitchers into the main pitcher we used for footwashing.

white coffee filter pom hanging at wedding

The only other decorations we had were a few white coffee filter poms hanging in the trees. These were made by my sister-in-law and provided a nice little touch.

Other than that, we let nature do the talking. And I was okay with that. 🙂

backyard wedding ceremony

Happy hump day!

All wedding photos are copyright Rothwell Photography.

***

I love maxi dresses; they are so simple but still look like you put in some effort! Today’s look:

Striped blazer, black maxi dress

Blazer: Maurices (exact old) ~ Maxi Dress: Modcloth (no longer available; cute option here) ~ Earrings: Premier Designs (exact old) ~ Bangle set: Shop Ruche (exact here) ~ Ballet Flats: Fergalicious by Fergie (similar here)

 

Catching up!

Ever since I got back from vacation, blogging has taken a serious backseat. Now that it’s finally starting to actually feel like spring, I’m spending a lot more time in the evenings outdoors with my fur babies (yay!!) and other shenanigans with the hubby.  Here are a few pictures to give you a snippet of life over the last few weeks:

The Good:

Art ShowChecked out my beautiful sister’s senior art show! So proud of her amazing talent (which I have less than none of).

CavernsVisited a cavern with my parents and Justin. The pictures turned out pretty awful but it was beautiful in real life!

FestivalSpent the day at a local downtown festival with the love of my life. Music, food, and lots of glorious sunshine!

The bad (for my health):

Chocolate shoesToo much wine and food at the aforementioned festival = sickness. 😦 But it was worth it to snag one of these beauties: a chocolate shoe lollipop!!

OreosMy youngest sister visited and brought me these. Tastes like an Oreo with Dunkaroo frosting — best combination ever?? I think YES. Unfortunately, I polished this package off way too quickly and need to log some serious hours at the gym to make up for it!

The ugly:

Granola failAn entire box of my favorite granola ruined thanks to a not-as-closed-as-I-thought container. Complete and utter lunch-packing fail.

WindshieldThank goodness for insurance! My entire windshield cracked after a stray rock hit it on our trip to Charleston. Yikes!

The Threads:

A round-up of work outfits from the last few weeks. I finally got to break out some warmer-weather stuff! Yay!

03-27 Look 03-28 Look 03-31 Look 04-01 Look 04-04 Look 04-07 Look 04-08 Look 04-09 Look 04-11 Look

***

And lastly, today’s outfit! I’m totally loving this new dress from Target! And thanks to the Cartwheel app, it was 15% off. Score!

04-13 Look 1 04-13 Look 2

Dress: Target (exact here) ~ Cardigan: Target (exact here) ~ Necklace: Maurices (similar here and here) ~ Bracelet: J. Crew Factory (exact here) ~ Shoes: Nine West (exact old, similar here)

Outfit catch-up + Juice!

Hi y’all!

Another day off of school due to snow (I don’t know about you, but I am READY for spring to get here!) which I spent cleaning, doing laundry, and . . . napping. Not even a little bit ashamed about it either.

Morning Burst Juice

Today for breakfast Justin and I tried a new juice and we LOVED it! I am calling it my “morning burst” juice because it seriously gave me the perfect boost of energy to start my day! This is definitely going to make it into our regular rotation.

Ingredients:

-2-3 handfuls spinach

-1 banana (two if they are small)

-1 large apple

-1/4 pineapple

-1 pear

Morning Burst Juice Ingredients

So delicious! I added water to mine to make it less thick but Justin loves the thicker/frothier taste so he didn’t. We were both big fans!!

Morning Burst Juice

Outfit Catch-up

Since I’ve been horrible at blogging lately, here are my latest work outfits! Details to all available pieces can be found on the wear page. Enjoy!

teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com teacher outfit blog :: simplifythechaos.com

Wedding Wednesday: The Dress!!

As I write this blog post, I’m having a hard time staying awake. And no, unfortunately it’s not very late in the evening.

I woke up at 5:00 to go to the gym (highly unusual!) and actually got out of bed and went (more unusual!) I was feeling SO good and really proud of myself . . . until I left the gym at 6:30 and promptly got a phone call from school that we had a two-hour delay.

Excuse me, what!?

At least I could come home and take my time getting ready and do a few things around the house before going in. But still. 5 a.m. Sheesh.

Wedding Wednesday

In other news, it’s Wedding Wednesday!

Once Justin and I got engaged, one of the very first things I started planning was . . . my wedding dress!!

A few things I have learned about wedding dress shopping through my own experience and also from several friends sharing their experience with me:

1. Set a budget! Wedding dresses come in a VERY wide range of prices and it’s easy to get sucked up in the tulle, rhinestones, and chiffon and get carried away into a dress that is way more than you want to pay. Be very upfront about your budget to the wedding dress sales associates and be very clear that you only want to see dresses that are actually in your price range. Also don’t be afraid to shop the clearance racks or buy a dress right off the rack to get a discount.

simplifythechaos.com simplifythechaos.com

2. Take 2-3 people dress shopping with you. Too many people = too many opinions. This is your day and your dress and it should be exactly what you want! I went dress shopping two different days; the first day I went with my mom and future mother-in-law and the second day I went with my two sisters. For me, having two people there was perfect! Just enough people to get feedback and affirmation but not too many that I felt overwhelmed with opinions. This also worked because everyone I took had a clear idea of what I wanted and what was going to work on my body and was super supportive; I do not recommend taking anyone who you think will try to make you wear the dress they want even if it’s not what you want or be critical of your taste.

simplifythechaos.com simplifythechaos.com

3. Take pictures along of dresses you like . . . I took 3-4 magazine pictures of dresses I loved. Again, you don’t want to take along too many pictures — just enough to give the sales associate an idea of what you’re looking for.

simplifythechaos.com simplifythechaos.com

4. . . . but keep an open mind! While I ended up getting a dress just like I was picturing in my mind, many of my friends say they got something the complete opposite of what they originally thought they wanted. One girl wanted a floor length mermaid gown and ended up with a tea length dress full of tulle. Another friend thought she wanted something very glitzy and beaded but she ended up with a beautiful floor length gown with lots of tucks and not one single bead. So be willing to try on a few dresses that are nothing like what you thought you wanted; you might surprise yourself! Also be willing to try different veils, belts, and other accessories to make the gown “yours.”

simplifythechaos.com simplifythechaos.com

5. Have fun! This is not supposed to be a stressful day. When I went with my sisters, we made it a whole day: lunch, shopping (not related to weddings) and lots of girl talk. We laughed and joked during all the dress fittings and the sales associate did a great job of keeping it light and fun. Don’t put tons of pressure on yourself to find the “one” dress immediately. It took me two shopping trips to find the “one” so don’t worry if it’s not one of the first few that you try on.

simplifythechaos.com simplifythechaos.com

All the dresses above were ones I tried on and liked for different reasons, but there was always something about the dress that didn’t feel quite right. The dress I ended up picking out was chosen for me by the sales associate. She saw the pictures I brought in and selected a few from their racks that she thought would fit what I was looking for. I wanted something with lots of detail and I wanted a very dramatic train. I also wanted something fun that I could have a good time and dance in without worrying about messing up the dress all day (I’m a pretty big klutz!)

I chose this stunner from designer Justin Alexander. I don’t want to sound cliche, but the moment I tried it on I knew it was the ONE. It was exactly what I was picturing in my mind and I didn’t want to take it off! (All photographs below are taken by the phenomenal Rothwell Photography — check them out here)

Copyright Rothwell Photography
Best part about this dress? It was SO easy to move in and the train had so much going on that I didn’t worry about every time I bumped into everyone – – even if I snagged it on something, no one would be able to tell! And I could definitely get my groove on and boogie all night long which was so fun!
 
This is actually inspiring me to go try on my dress again. Maybe I’ll prolong sleep for a liiiiitle while longer . . .
Have a fantastic “hump” day and for those of you brides out there: happy wedding dress shopping!
***
Today’s outfit. Deets on “wear” page. Enjoy!
02-05 LookDress: Kohls
Cardigan: Express
Boots: CL by Laundry
Belt: Bluetique
Bracelets: ShopRuche.com
Earrings (not pictured): Target

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

Hello hello!

Feels like I haven’t posted in forever! We have had some mean winter weather the last two days (translation: NO SCHOOL!) so I have been taking it easy at home. No outfits to post since I just stayed inside in comfy sweats all day Monday and Tuesday and I decided to postpone blogging so I could be productive around the house and enjoy extra time with my little family. Macie and I spent hours running errands together on Monday and we even had a nice long puppy play date with my friend Lindsay’s dogs. It was so fun and we were both tuckered out afterwards!

As fun as it was to have a long weekend, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things at school now, especially since being at home all day meant I was in constant close proximity to . . . CHRISTMAS COOKIES! On Saturday my friend Tristan hosted a cookie decorating party for a bunch of our friends. She baked dozens of cut-out sugar cookies and had each of us bring icing, sprinkles, etc. to decorate them with. It was so much fun but now I have TONS of cookies sitting on my counter!

My finished products!

You may be wondering about the strange-looking one on the left. Tristan created a cookie-decorating competition for the Christmas trees. We all got one tree-shaped cookie and had to decorate it according to a theme. The theme she and her husband chose was “travel.”

At first we all thought it was a difficult theme, but people got SO creative! Here were some of the final results:

We had everything from maps to tropical islands to train cars to snow skiing angels to locations afar such as Africa and Paris. I was so impressed with everyone’s ideas! Even Tristan and her hubby couldn’t pick a winner! They had to choose two.

Justin and I kept our cookies separate, but without knowing it we had similar ideas.

We both did “methods of travel” and chose similar things! Justin drew a plane flying through the sky and I did a rocket ship blasting off. I used a green peel-apart Twizzler for my outline.

Neither of our trees won but we had such a great time decorating with our friends!

It was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit and have a fun Saturday with some awesome people.

Now just a few days left in this short school week! Whoo hoo! Gotta love this time of year!

***

Two days off in sweat pants was nice, but I was itching to wear my new Target corduroy pants! So warm and comfy — perfect for layering in this winter weather! As always, details for specific pieces can be found on my “wear” page.

12-11 Outfit

Cardigan: Target

Cami: Old Navy

Corduroy Skinny Pants: Target

Boots: Maurices

Necklace: Ten Thousand Villages (LOVE this organization!)