Pretty Dresses & A Promo Code, What Every Girl Needs

It's been a busy year for us when it comes to weddings.  My brother was married last month, this coming Friday my Sister  In Law is getting married, and then mid-November, my husband's baby sister will be getting married.  With each wedding comes the stress of having to find a dress.  In our families, we usually try to dress in the wedding colors.  Finding the right dress, in the right colors, that is wedding appropriate can be a difficult task. Thankfully, no matter the color scheme, I've found modest, and beautiful dress options at Shabby Apple.

Golden Afternoon Dress

 The wedding in November is shades of pink with light green accents.  The Golden Afternoon and Love Me Do dresses would both be lovely.

Love Me Do

Sierra Nevada

In July jewel tones were what we were looking for.  The lovely Sierra Nevada, or Tea Time Dress would have been perfect.

Tea Time Dress

Rodeo Drive

This upcoming week, the bride to be has chosen grey and hot pink.  I love the clean lines of the Rodeo Drive dress, and the simple and feminine Look of love dress.  Both great options.

Look of Love Dress

I think that every girl deserves to feel comfortable and beautiful in a lovely dress.  From now until 9/14/2012, you can save 10% off your Shabby Apple order, by using code favorite10 at check out.

Wedding: A Little Bit Personal

I wanted to do something nice for my brother for his wedding.  I really like it when the wedding is personal, and says something about who the bride and groom are.  I love my little brother, he is kind, thoughtful, sweet, and very much an individual.  He has quirky interests that make him unique, and I love him for that.

About a year ago he decided that he wanted to keep bees.  He purchased all of the necessary equipment, and set up a hive in my parents apple orchard.  The bees did quite well, and produced delicious amber honey.

When thinking of what we could do to make the wedding day and reception a bit more personal, we thought it would be fun to tie bees into the theme.  Now, the bride was not crazy about having yellow and black bumble bees all around the wedding site, and I wouldn't have been either, so we found a couple of small things.

First, I found some honey bee charms on etsy, and created some tie tacks for my brother, and some of the other men in the family.  I asked for his input, and I was surprised at how particular he was about the type of bees that he wanted.  He DID NOT want the bees to look like bumble bees, they needed to be honey bees.

Some tie tack blanks, some E-6000, and the charms made these little tie tacks.  I quite like them.

We also found some colored honey straws, and created some simple tags as a small wedding favor.

Nothing too over the top, just a small little something to reference my brother and his interests.

Wedding Wear: Bow Tie and Vest Onesie

For my brother's wedding we kept Miles' outfit pretty simple. A bow tie and vest bodysuit with matching shorts. The material from the vest and shorts came from a pair of my dad's old dress pants. I love repurposing existing garments, especially when they come from, and go to, people that you love.

I added a matching pocket square to the vest, and thought he looked rather handsome.

He thought so too.  I love this age, he instantly smiles when he sees the camera.

I failed to get any great shots of the shorts, but they turned out pretty cute.  I added some faux welt pockets to the back (a first for me). Though I don't have a photo of the front, I used the original tab from the dress pants.

My dress came from eShakti.  I was really pleased with my dress, my only complaint was the difficulty in ironing out all of the wrinkles from the pleated surplice neckline.

My newest niece, ended up wearing the lace appliqued onesie, with bustled buttercup skirt.  She is such a sweet little baby.

Wedding: Thumb Print Tree

As I mentioned recently, my baby brother got married last weekend.  I can't believe we're all married off. Fortunately the five of us didn't get married off the same day. Sidenote: My husband helped get one of the grooms in the Arizona Weddings with his suit.

You may have seen the thumbprint trees around on pinterest or etsy, I love them.  They're a great way to record those in attendance.  It's also something you can hang on a wall, rather than stash away in a wedding box.

The tree is inspired by our neighbor's tree, that fills our front yard with leafs every fall. The image is  prismacolor pencil on illustration board.  I made the image 11x14, but 16x20 would have been even better. The ink pads we used were leaf shaped, and turned out to be perfect for those that didn't want to leave their fingerprint.

The bride and groom loved it.  I added a few personal touches, like the carved initials, and the honey5 bees in the grass (my brother keeps bees).

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Wedding Details

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my little brother recently got married.  He was married in South Carolina, and then we had a reception for him in Idaho a week later.  He was extremely helpful when I was married, and I wanted to make sure that I returned the favor.  I busied myself with little wedding details leading up to the reception.  I thought that I'd share a few shots of some of those wedding reception projects

When I was married my brother spent hours dipping cinnamon bears in chocolate, sliding them onto lollipop sticks, sticking them in bags, and tying them with ribbon. There was no ribbon tying for his reception, but we did spend hours dipping marshmallows on a stick in candy coating.

My sisters and I also spent an afternoon wrapping lemon head boxes in scrap book paper.  It's nice to have a reason to sit down and talk to your family for a little while.

We found these adorable paper straws on Etsy, and decided to store them in mason jars on the table.  For a little something extra, we wrapped the jars in ribbon, and adhered some inexpensive stick on rhinestones.

Don't worry, I didn't make the quilt-my mom did.  She did a great job, and used fabrics from the Tula Pink Prince Charming line.  I love the way it turned out. She finished it up in a whirl wind after we returned from the Carolinas, and I volunteered to bind it for her.  

From the left over scraps of fabric from the quilt I made a fabric bunting for the groom's cake table.  If you can't see the cake it is a tree stump with a heart and the couple's initials carved into the top.  The decorator did a great job with the stump, but needs a bit of training in color harmony. I also made a fabric bunting for the display table, but I failed to snap a picture of it.

I spent a day or so making some magnetic fabric pinwheel boutonnieres for the big and little boys. The little girls got pinwheel hair clips, and the Mothers sported some magnetic pinwheel corsages inspired by Heather Bailey's flower pinwheel (sorry no photo).

The bride wanted to decorate with pinwheels, and all of the tables had several large paper pinwheels that the bride and groom assembled themselves.  They were lovely.

 I also provided this adorable detail to the party.  Isn't he handsome? 

My SIL Jess and I.  She along with my Mom and Sister did a lot of work.  

We were so thrilled to celebrate my brother's wedding.  He found a great girl.

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