Wedding Festivities

As I mentioned last week, my sister-in-law got married a few weeks ago. Yay for Christian and Tate!! Because I am nice (read: pushy), I offered (read: pretty much demanded) to make a few things as wedding decorations. I was very close to being a bridesmaidzilla. I mean, I had a Pinterest board created about 5 seconds after the question was popped. Mainly, I offered to make paper peonies for the bouquets and those origami flower balls as the centerpieces. After the words came out of my mouth, Ryan just looked at me and shook his head. He reminded me how time-consuming both of those projects are and said he just wanted me to be SURE that I could handle it. I assured him – easy peasy (wink, wink). I had several months notice, so done and done. First, let me show you the finished pictures of the bouquets which took me the longest and I think might be the crown jewel of all the things I’ve ever made in my entire life:

Prepare yourself for the fog horn level of tooting you are about to hear. Guys. These things were gorgeous. And let me run down the steps to make them – 1) tear up sheets of printer paper, boil them, blend them in the blender and spread them onto trays to form sheets of pulpy paper; 2) draw the petal template onto the paper and cut out (each flower consists of…50 petals); 3) hand dip each petal into a paint/water/enamel solution; 4) shape each petal; and 5) hot glue (I burned myself SEVERELY once – bourbon and hot glue might not mix well) each of the 50 petals together to make a flower. This doesn’t include the drying time after steps 1 and 3. I made 50 flowers. If you ask people who saw me working during any point of this process, they will assert that I was working like I was a sweatshop employee. There were trays of drying things splayed all around our tiny apartment. And…I loved it! Granted, it was a lot of work, but when a project turns out better than you ever imagined, you don’t really mind. It’s akin to having a baby, I’m sure.

Thankfully, Ryan’s entire family chipped in to make the origami centerpieces. I know this because I was sent video footage of the entire family sitting around a table, folding paper and depressingly looking at the camera while saying “Thanks, Lizzie…” That’s right, minions (whip sound)!

The wedding itself was so beautiful. The venue was amazing and the night was pretty much perfect. Here’s a snapshot of the festivities*:

Yes, I did include a picture of my hair because it was gorgeous. And one thing I want to mention is that my mother-in-law had the coolest idea of taking the picture Tate drew (I hate talented people) on the invitation and making it a giant framed guest book. I love it!

So…there you have it. And no, I won’t make your wedding bouquets. Don’t even ask.

*After looking at the pictures again, I realize that there are more pictures of me than anyone else. But…it’s all about me. We all know that.

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