1. Escort cards (big board, cardboard, washi tape, home printer; free for us because we used stuff we already had)

We used a big wood board (that used to be part of a tabletop), different rolls of washi tape, white cardboard, and our home printer. I made them with a combination of Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and the “Mail Merge” feature. Basically, I designed the escort card in Pages (I had to adjust the size of the sheet I was working with so that it was exactly the size I wanted). It’s simply a name, a 20-point star and the number of the table.

Then I created a spreadsheet in Numbers with two columns: the name of the guest on the first column and their assigned table on the second one. I ordered the spreadsheet in ascending order according to the table numbers (this was important since I wanted to change the background color of the star badge and it was easier this way). Once that was done, I went back to pages, selected the Mail Merge feature and it automatically creates a page/sheet with each escort card. In my case since we had 63 guests I had a 63 page document.

Because I wanted the board to be colorful, I decided to change the background color of the star “badge” according to the table number. So table 1 was one color, table 2 was another one… I couldn’t figure out if there’s a way to do this automatically so I just did it by hand but because the document was created according to table number it didn’t take me longer than a couple of minutes.

Then it was time to print them. I set the printer settings to fit 16 escort cards per page and cut them afterwards. Lastly, it was just a matter of ordering them alphabetically (sadly since we didn’t include last names in the cards we had to order them alphabetically by first name… which is something I hate) and spacing them out in the wood board properly. I used 5 or 6 different types of washi tape to stick the cards to the board. Oh and I had heard that you’re supposed to cut washi tape by hand but I did it with scissors because it was much faster.

I also designed a floor plan with the tables just in case they didn’t see the names in the table runners (busca tu mesa = find your table)

2. Confetti “bags” (tissue paper 0.10€ per sheet, 3 inch translucent glassine envelopes, washi tape)

My mom bought tissue paper in different colors and used two sizes of circle punchers to make the confetti. Then we filled small (3 inch x 3 inch) translucent glassine envelopes (that my mom got at a PaperSource in Santa Barbara) with it and closed them with a tiny bit of washi tape. We placed all the mini envelopes in a basket we already had and made a sign that read “confetti” that we stuck to the back of the basket. You can see my youngest cousin with it here…

And the outcome here

3. “Take me home” centerpieces (planter boxes, IKEA pots, plants, popsicle sticks, black sharpie, white enamel paint; around 10€ per centerpiece)

I already talked about how we made the planter boxes so I won’t bore you with that again. Now I’ll mention what went inside them though. We bought three of these pots to fit inside each planter several weeks before the wedding. Just a few days before the wedding, we went to Ikea and a local garden supply store and bought all the plants for them. We mixed flowers with leafy green plants and fresh herbs such as basil, thyme, chive, mint…  basically whatever was available that day. Since we couldn’t possibly keep all 42 pots + plants we decided to add markers made of popsicle sticks that said “take me home” on one side and the name of the plant if it was an edible one on the other side. We made those with popsicle sticks, white enamel paint leftover from another project, and I hand wrote them with a thin black sharpie. Since I wasn’t sure what plants we’d be buying, I had painted the sticks beforehand but wrote on top of them the day we bought the plants. It was actually a pretty quick project.

A friend helped me move the plants/flowers from their original plastic pots to the ceramic ones from Ikea and arrange them into the planter boxes so that they looked nice. We then took them to the wedding site a day or two before the wedding (and decided to place the ones we liked best closer to us, hah).

4. Tiki torches (tikki torches 0.70€ each, pots already owned)

Because we had only added lighting to the inside of the tents, and when night falls it gets pitch black here, we knew we needed to add something to mark the path from the tents to the house (and into the restroom). We found tiki-style torches for 0.70€ and bought several on them without a specific use in mind, until it hit us they’d be perfect for that purpose.

The problem was that we couldn’t stick them into the ground directly because the terrain wasn’t soft enough for that. So we used small pots we had in our patio, filled them with soil, stuck the posts inside, and covered the soil with small rocks (those white ones sold in the gardening section) to prettify it. Sadly I don’t have a picture of them lit up but they looked great and marked the path you were supposed to follow really well.

5. “Thank you” e-mails (free Dropbox account)

There isn’t a tradition to send thank you cards here, but since a lot of our guests had asked for pictures from the wedding, we decided to upload them to my Dropbox account and send an e-mail with a link to them (thanks to the University I now have a free Dropbox account with more than 30GB in it, so there was more than enough space for the pics). I whipped up a short thank you e-mail using a stationery template from Apple’s Mail program, nothing fancy.

In it, I thanked everyone for coming, shared a link to the photos (both the professional photos and the ones taken with my camera once they left), and asked our guests to name the photographers if they shared one of their pictures online. It has worked really well since each person can choose the photos they like and save them or print them out if they want.

And that ends the wedding crafts how-to series! Be sure to check out a slew of other posts on the subject here. And do tell, what were your favorite crafts while planning your own wedding?

All photos except the last one by Kenoa Photography

1. Food signs (16€ for the mini chalkboards, plus materials already on hand like washi tape, wood dowels, twine)

 We used mini chalkboards for almost all of the dishes we served, bought at Casa (2€ for three chalkboards). I simply wrote the name of the dishes a couple of weeks beforehand using the white chalkboard marker we had also used for the window menu. The idea was to re-use the chalkboard for future dinner parties… unfortunately our guests really liked them, apparently, because they started wearing them halfway through the evening, hah.

For the cheeses, I made flag signs out of small wood dowels, colorful washi tape and a thin sharpie. Simply cut the washi tape in your desired length, place the dowel in the middle, tape both sides together carefully, and cut a “V” shape. Write down the names of the cheeses and stick them on top!

I made a bunch of them in an assortment of colors since I didn’t know how many we’d need…

Some friends had sent us a wedding gift that included a set of ceramic cheese markers so of course we used those whenever we could, they’re absolutely beautiful (and unless I’m wrong, I believe I saw them at Pottery Barn while in the U.S.)

We also had coffee and tea available for everyone. We own a Nespresso capsule machine (they’re very popular here) and my parents have another one so we set them up next to the desserts and brought three types of coffee: decaf, strong, and a milder one. As you can see, i made tags so that people could choose the one they wanted. I used a big circle puncher, a smaller one for the twine, and fed them through the printer. (More on that later). Then I cut a long piece of twine and tied it tightly so they wouldn’t slip down.

2. Cake topper (washi tape, dowels and string already owned)

We didn’t want a traditional topper or anything that we could keep, and I really liked the look of bunting toppers, so I decided to DIY one. I used a couple of wood dowels, a short piece of string, and washi tape. I brought out the cake pan I would be using for the top tier of the cake so that I could decide on the size of the topper. I liked it when the dowels where a bit angled outwards and the string was a bit loopy, so I did just that. Cut the string and tied it tightly to the dowels. Be careful while handling it, obviously, because the string isn’t glued to the dowels so it can slip. Then cut small pieces of washi tape in varying sizes, tape both sides of the tape with the string in the middle, and cut a small “V” into each of them for a more festive look. An easy and very cheap wedding cake topper! It didn’t take me longer than five minutes, I promise.

3. Beverage signs (colored cardboard 0.10€ per sheet, string already owned)

Much like the coffee signs, I used a big circle punch, a tiny one for the twine, and fed them through the printer before stringing them together. You might be wondering how I managed to feed them through the printer though.

At first I thought about printing the whole sheet of cardboard, then using the punch. That didn’t work very well though, because it’s hard to really center and pinpoint where you’ll punch the hole/circle. So I decided to do it the other way around: first punch the circle, then print the sign on it.

For it to print properly I had my own process: design a template on the computer that consists of circles the same size as the ones you’ve punched on cardboard. Print it. Then tape the colored cardboard circles using double-sided (or looped) tape and feed them through the printer. (More info and detailed pics here, since I used the same method for the name cards)

4. Milk crate beverage dispensers (milk crates gifted by a friend, spigots 4.55€ each)

After cleaning them down – they really were original milk crates – we drilled a hole as low as we could and simply added the spigot with a special kind of tape (it’s the one that’s used for plumbing, to avoid leaks) and a bit of silicone on the outside. Of course it sounds easy but finding the right spigot was the hard part, because we needed one that would fit perfectly into a hole that we could make using a normal drill bit. Eventually we found it at a bathroom supply store. Those “spigots” are actually meant to be used as main valves (or stopcock? I’m not sure how it’s called…) for bidets. After adding the “spigots” we tested for leaks before using them at the wedding. One of them had the tiniest of leaks (not enough to be noticeable) so we used that for the water, and left the other one for the Kalimotxo (coke + wine).

5. Photobooth (21€ for the bamboo, 3€ for the panel curtains, props made by a friend)

The photo booth was a big hit among guests (it led to the greatest outtakes of the day!), and it was super easy to set up. Three long bamboo sticks, screwed together forming a threshold, and a backing made of three curtain panels from Ikea. We just taped the panels at the top of the “threshold”. They’re made of rice paper, and Ikea used to sell these for 12€ each but we spotted them just as they were about to remove them from the catalog for 1€ per panel. Sold!

A friend designed and made all of the props for the booth, so I don’t have a ton of info on them. I do know that he made them out of thin foam in different colors & layers. He backed them all with a piece of cardboard for added thickness and strength. Then he added long dowels to them so they were easier to hold, and placed them together with store-bought stuff in a basket next to the photo booth. We also had a tripod with a remote set up so that after our photographers left, we brought out my camera and people were able to keep taking pictures. Like I said, the booth was a huuuge hit.

Have you ever been to a wedding with a photo booth? Did you like it, or do you prefer a normal dance party?

Photos by Kenoa Photography

1. Streamers (25€, but I really overbought this, we still have more than half leftover)

Photo by Kenoa Photography

We bought crepe paper in yellow, green, and orange. Since they sell them in rolled up sheets, we cut them (using very big scissors, otherwise it was impossible) in varying widths and kept them rolled up in a bag until we set up the tents. Once the tents were up, we used normal tape to secure them to both sides, eyeballing the distance between them. Tip: it’s easier if there’s two of you, one up on a ladder taping them, another one handing them out to the one on the ladder. Plus the person who hands them out has a better visual of how they look, so they can see if the distance between each streamer is more or less the same. Oh and if you want them to look  a little bit more “especial”, try twisting them before securing them to the opposite side. See how in the pic above they don’t look totally flat?

You can see how the crepe paper is cut in rolls above

There’s a problem with taping them to the sides only, though. Crepe paper yields very easily, and there is a lot of humidity around here. So when we got there the next day, the streamers were down to waist-height. That’s why we decided to run a string along the middle, to pull them up, and we ended with “W” shaped streamers. Taking advantage of the string, we hung a lot our pompoms from there.

2. Pompoms (0.50€ per big pompom, 0.50€ for two medium ones)

My mom and my aunt made these in advance. I think they made around 60 total, in two sizes, about twenty big ones and forty medium ones. We kept them folded in another bag until after the tents and the streamers were up. Then my cousins came to help, because opening and fluffing them all takes a long time (more than a few minutes per pompom!). Anyway, some people fluffed them open while a couple others hung them down the middle and in the corners of the tents. They were a big hit because halfway through the party people started taking them down for them to keep.

Photo by Kenoa Photography

Since I didn’t make them, I don’t have a step-by-step tutorial, sorry. But they’re one of the most popular crafts right now so there are plenty of them out there; for example, check out the one by Martha Stewart here, and this detailed video that shows you how to make them yourself. My mom said the most important part is to make the folds very very well – she used a bone folder from Martha Stewart for this. She also used a scoring board (also from Martha Stewart) to measure where to fold the sheets of tissue paper. You’ll need five sheets of tissue paper for each big pompom, and five more to make two medium ones. We bought tissue paper in an assortment of colors for 0.10€ each.

3. Fabric garlands (Free, from scraps)

Photo by Kenoa Photography. Bienvenidos = Welcome.

With the help of some friends, I made garlands that said “Desserts”, “Coffee & Tea”, “Drinks”, “Welcome” and used safety pins to secure them to tables, except for the welcome one, that hung behind the seating chart & guest book table. Since I didn’t want to spend any money on this I used fabric scraps I had laying around from DIY projects, (free) fabric swatches from various sources, and also a bit of the burlap I used for the table runners. Also, sewing them sounded like too much work for just a few hours worth of use, so I simply cut the fabrics with scissors, and stored them properly so they didn’t fray too much. A friend and I freehanded all the letters with sharpies of different colors (except of the “Welcome” one, that we penciled out and then painted with white acrylic paint and a small brush) and stapled them to strings/cords that I had laying around.

4. Lighting (120€ for 60m)

We’ve been meaning to add lighting to our patio for ages, and knew we wanted something like string lights, but for such a big area they can be really expensive. Well, when we realized we needed lighting for the wedding tents as well, we looked for options that could be re-used in our patio, and found this LED lighting set on eBay. They sell it by meters, so we calculated how much we’d need for the tents and how much we’d need for our patio. The tents needed 60m, our patio 40m. So we asked for a total of 60m, but in two pieces: 40m + 20m. After the wedding, we kept the 40m one and gave the other one to the friend who loaned us the house, since he mentioned he could use it in the attic. We still haven’t installed the lights in our patio, but we love the glow they gave on the wedding day. We secured them to the metal perimeter of the tents (on the inside) using duct tape and plastic cable ties. You can see how they look a bit here…

Photo by Kenoa Photography

5. Signs (Wood scraps & leftover chalkboard paint + 12€ for bamboo & chalk markers)

Photo by Kenoa Photography

We made five of these (or four, depending on how you look at it, since two of the arrows were attached to the same stick), two that said “Restroom”, two read “Wedding” and the last one was “Parking”. The first thing we did was cut some wood we had (2cm thick and 20cm wide) in an arrow shape, i.e. straight cut on one side and 60º angle cuts on the other, giving it the arrow shape. Then it was sanding, priming and chalkboard-painting time. After they dried, I used a white chalkboard marker and a big ruler to make some “edges” and enhance the arrow shape.

At first, I thought about using some stencils (a la table runners) for the letters, but quickly realized with the first one that it was a painstakingly long process and you could see the marker strokes in those chunky letters. So I freehanded the rest of them. They didn’t look half bad!

Anyway, once the arrow part of the sign was done, we needed some kind of support/stick for them. I loved the look of bamboo and they were pretty cheap (5€/piece for this thickness, plus we only needed a couple of them since we could cut them in half) so we decided to go with them. We proceeded to cut them in half with a circular saw, but in an angle, so that we could easily stick them into the ground. The last thing we did was screw a couple of hardware pieces (one to the bamboo and another one to the actual sign) that allows you to “slip” the arrow into the bamboo. Voilá! Ready for the wedding. Of course, this hardware system means they can be stored separately, which is great.

I hope you found this useful, it was definitely a lot of planning, work and forethought but it all came together really well the day of. I’ll be back next week with more decor & detail how-to’s!

But on to the actual favors. Another one of our first ideas were USB drives. We weren’t sure what to put inside them, and every time I googled around for quotes they were too pricey for us. (I’m pretty sure there are very cheap drives out there, but we really wanted something nice – not your average drive – and at least 4 GB in capacity. Bonus points if we could engrave it). Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that since we would be cooking all the food, we could give our guests the recipes from the wedding menu.

The more we thought about it, the more we liked the idea. Whenever someone else cooks for us and we enjoy the food, we always try and find out the recipe, so why not do this? The only problem then became finding drives in our price range. It became pretty obvious that standard Google searches, ones that lead to companies that sell USB drives for branding purposes, were too expensive for us. I kept searching and started looking in wholesale sites, like Alibaba.com.

Eventually I started sending emails to several companies listed in those wholesale sites. Most of these are companies located in China, that manufacture drives for big brands like Lacie, Sony, or Toshiba. They had very large catalogs of drives in every shape you could imagine. We narrowed it down to two: either a Lego brick shaped drive, or a key shaped drive. We liked the first option because it was fun, and the second because we each own a key shaped drive and carry it in our keychain every day, and know that it’s very useful to always have it there. At first, we decided on the Lego brick, but when they told us they couldn’t “brand” it with our logo, went with the key instead. And boy are we glad we did, because they sent us a couple of Lego bricks for free and the keys look so much better!

We ordered 70 drives from Jinsky Industrial, in three different colors (silver, green, and yellow, though it turned out to be a bit more orange) and 4 GB in capacity. In hindsight, we should’ve gone with the 8 GB since they were marginally more expensive, but we had already gone a bit over budget. I designed a “logo” on the computer and sent them to confirm that they could add the logo to the drives and double check the placement, etc. Then, we had to pay the money in advance through Western Union, and they manufactured them as soon as they received the money and shipped them promptly. They even sent me pictures of the manufacturing process.

Most people are wary of ordering online to this type of companies because you have to pay the money through Western Union and the like. To be honest, I was a bit scared, as well. There were times when I thought they had duped me and ran with the money. But they really delivered, and we’re very happy we were able to buy nicer-than-average drives with a custom logo for the same price or even cheaper than at local stores. They definitely added a little something to the favor display the day of the wedding:

Photo by Kenoa Photography

Of course, while I was finishing the order process, I was also busy preparing the document that we wanted to load onto the drives. We had a ton of items on the menu – twenty one, to be exact – so cooking, photographing, writing and editing all those recipes onto a big document whilst planning the wedding and going on with my normal life was no small job. And because it wouldn’t be fair to go on about the “recipe book” without showing it to you, I’ve since translated it to English and uploaded it for you guys. Most of the recipes are ones I’ve already shared here on Fridays, but there are several new ones that I’m sure you’ll love. (Note: Issuu was acting wonky yesterday and the quality of the pictures is much worse after uploading them for some reason, so I would recommend you check out this PDF file, too).

Despite all the hard work, though, we think it was worth it. It was a unique wedding favor and something we hope guests enjoyed and will be able to reference and use in the future. Even if some of them never take a look at the recipes, the drive in itself works great.

So that was our take on wedding favors. What do you guys think of favors? Something that should be scraped altogether, or a must in your wedding budget?

Image from BeyondWhite on Etsy, via Pinterest

I had been obsessed with window panes for quite some time now, and it didn’t help that I kept seeing all the awesome crafts you could do with them, like this one from Bower Power…

Photo by Katie Bower from Bower Power Blog

So yeah, I knew wanted to do a window-pane craft for the wedding. Anyone will tell you though, window panes aren’t easy to come by. Luckily, two of them did come by me last April! They’re actually from the house where we ended up celebrating the wedding, although I picked them up months before we knew we’d celebrate it there (they had been remodeling the attic and changing the windows up there, that’s why they had those two).

Armed with those two window panes, I decided to use them for the menu instead of the seating chart like the initial inspiration image. Since we were going to have a buffet-style reception, we thought a big “board” with the menu made more sense than individual menu cards. Plus, I already had another idea for the seating chart. You’ve already seen how the window-menu turned out, but here’s a reminder:

Photo by Kenoa Photography

And the step-by-step instructions on how I did it. First, the materials you’ll need:

• Old window pane(s)
• Chalk markers in several colors – I mainly used black, white and green
• Looking Glass Krylon spray paint if you want to give the glass the old mercury glass-like finish
• Paint, in whatever color you want, if you want to redo the window frame
• Other stuff like: sander and spackle/caulk (for the frame), a software like Photoshop, InDesign, or Apple’s Pages to design the menu on the computer beforehand, a software that “breaks” the big poster size image into “normal” pieces of paper and prints it (I’ll explain this later on), a printer

How to make your own window pane menu:

1. If you want to give the glass the mercury glass-like finish, use this tutorial here, for example. I don’t want to give my own instructions for this because it turned out different/worse than I expected (I obviously did something wrong), but when I finished writing the menu on top of it you weren’t able to tell.
2. Once the mercury glass effect is done and dry, sand the window frame down, clean it up, and patch up all the holes you see. For example, I patched up the hinge holes and it made all the difference, it made it look a lot more polished and finished.
3. Paint the frame in whatever color you want, I chose white because that’s what I had and I think it looks great in white. After it’s painted and dried, you can sand down the edges for a distressed look if you want. 
4. Now it’s time to start designing the menu on the computer. First, measure your window pane (the inside of the window pane – the glass part, where you’ll be writing) and jot down the measurements.
5. Open up your software of choice (I used Pages) and set the canvas size to your window’s measurements. In my case, the window wasn’t exactly rectangular, but I set the canvas size to a rectangle and then added a curved line to the canvas to delimit the curved edges (I had measured where the curve started/ended but eyeballed the actual curvature).
6. I started with the “big” parts of the menu – i.e. “Menu”, “Desserts”, “Drinks”, “For later”. I used the same font (Channel) for all of those, and downloaded the image of the badge from Google and set it behind them. Then I simply started writing down the menu items in an order that made sense (e.g. the appetizers first, all the cheeses grouped together, the “main” dishes in a big box) and in a way I could fit them all inside the window pane. I used a variety of fonts to give it a typography feel. I even downloaded Coca Cola’s font (well, one named Loki Cola). It took a while, but I ended up with this:
7. When I was done, I had two options: I could send it to a printer and print it “full size”, which would’ve been easier but more expensive or try and print it at home with a normal printer. I looked online for free software that would break down the “poster” into normal-sized pages that could be printed at home. There are tons of programs available, but I settled on this one for Mac, PosteRazor. It’s very customizable and easy to use. I was able to print each window pane design in 6 pages each.
8. Once the twelve pages were printed, I taped them together as needed and placed them behind each window pane. The good part about the mercury-glass finish is that you’re still able to see through the glass, so you can place the design behind the glass and simply use the chalk markers to trace it. I used mainly black and white, but also green and a bit of silver. Here you can sort of see how there are sheets of paper taped to the back of the window on the right:
9. When you’re done tracing the design onto the window pane (be careful not to smudge anything), step back and enjoy your masterpiece. Bam! Window menu, done:

The great thing is that we still have the two window pane menus and we love them. They’re sort of like art, so we’re thinking about hanging them somewhere, probably in the patio if we can make sure they won’t break. So although it was a bit time consuming, it was totally worth it, especially because I really enjoy doing crafts like this one. Anyway, I hope this helps anyone who has asked me previously about the menus, and if you have any more questions, fire away.

And since I haven’t seen actual numbers out there, I thought it would also be useful to talk about how much it cost us. After tallying up all the money we spent, it came in at just under 3,800€. Keep in mind, this is for a 60+ person (the guest count was around 65 but 10 additional people came later for drinks, party and late snacks) self-catered wedding with a “free venue” and professional photography. Here’s a nice breakdown of the costs:

As you can see, the biggest ticket items were the photography and the food + drinks. Like most weddings, I guess. Besides those two which are self-explanatory, the remaining categories include:

• Decor. Included in here are the fourteen centerpieces, nine table runners, the LED lighting for the tents (which we bought, but we’ll be installing in our patio so maybe I shouldn’t have included that in the costs, the wine barrel for the drinks, all the “paper” decor, the envelopes for the invitations, stuff for the photo booth and other odds and ends (like the Looking Glass spray paint for the window menu and the chalkboard markers). The centerpieces alone were almost 140€ and so was the LED lighting so that explains why we spent more on this category than one might expect.
• Plates, etc. All the plates/glasses/cups/mugs/servingware/napkins we needed to self-cater. I might have gone a little overboard with this one, but it’s hard to guess how many of each you’re going to need and I always err on the side of caution.
• Waiters. We hired a couple of students from culinary school with waitressing experience to lend a hand, setting out the food and serving/refilling the buffet, etc. Before they left they cleared out all the tables (they left the dirty glasses and plates in boxes for us to clean the following day) so we didn’t have to actually clean that day, thank goodness.
• Rentals. We rented tables, chairs and linens for the day. Thanks to Eva from Singular Day we got an awesome deal on these, they wanted to charge us a lot more!
• Favors. We ordered 70 4GB key-shaped USB drives from China and loaded them with the wedding recipes. They were a hit, by the way!
• Groom. This includes the hemming/tailoring of his pants, shoes, shirt, jacket, belt and ring.
• Bride. The shoes, bouquet, and wedding ring. Noticeably absent from this category is the dress, which leads me to…

However, this total of 3,800€ is a bit misleading, because we received some wedding things as gifts (i.e. we didn’t pay for them so they’re not included in my tally of the cost. Some of these things I know – or can guess – how much they cost, but not many of them). What those numbers above don’t include are:

• My dress.  This was a gift from my friend Maite and her parents, although I do know that the fabric cost around 70-80€ (they got an awesome discount!) and the seamstress charged them around 70€, as well. So it was by no means an expensive dress. Of course, that doesn’t include the hours of labor Maite and her mom put into it.
• Hair & makeup. I did my hair and makeup at the place where I’ve cut my hair since they opened. My mom paid for this, and although I don’t know how much it cost, I do know that they refused to charge us anything for the hair & makeup trial, so thank you.
• Most of the drinks. Our friends gave us a giant freezer trunk and most of the drinks as a wedding gift, and my parents bought the nice wine and champagne. We bought beers, not-so-nice wine for the kalimotxo (wine+Coke), juice, and some soft drinks.
• Part of the food. Since my mom cooked all the savory food, there were a couple of things (mainly the fish, if I recall correctly) that my parents bought and paid for.

So, could we have spent less? Of course. When it comes to weddings, I think it’s almost always possible to spend less. But given the cost of weddings in our area (the price of menus are upwards of 100€ per person) and the type of wedding we wanted, it was the right decision for us. That said, if someone was looking for places to cut, I’d eliminate favors – I loved what we did but they were really not necessary. I’d also calculate better how much food and drinks we needed because we had a lot of leftovers, or what food/drink we could go without – e.g. we had an open bar with lots (and lots) of alcohol, but for some people just wine and beer could be completely fine; and some of the food choices were pricier than others, like the roastbeef. And of course professional photography is something you could do without, but for me, the photographs were really important. I think that’s the point, really – only you know what’s important to you, so everyone’s budget and costs will be different.

And since we’re on the topic of numbers… today’s my 24th birthday, and I’m off to celebrate. It’s the first time in years that isn’t raining, so I have to take advantage of that!

Like the rest of the food, the wedding cake was homemade as well. Specifically, I made it myself. I don’t remember the detailed timeline for baking the wedding cake, but I think it went something like this: Wednesday morning, in between baking the other desserts, I baked all the layers (it had three tiers with two layers per tier) and let them cool down. That same evening after returning from setting up the decorations at the venue, I “built” each tier, layering raspberries and a bit of raspberry jam in between each of the two layers (so each tier had cake, raspberry jam, raspberries, another cake) and gave all three tiers the crumb coat. On Thursday evening, after setting up the tables and making sure everything else was on track, I frosted, set up all three layers, and decorated the cake. So I actually finished it at around 11PM the night before the wedding! Good times…

It was worth it though, because everyone said it was delicious; plus it looked great (in a homemade/DIY way, of course; after all, it used frosting instead of fondant so it was impossible for it to look perfect). I didn’t use anything to hold the layers in place – I’ve realized I don’t really need dowels or anything for my cakes – so cutting into it was fairly easy. We started serving everyone a piece ourselves but one of my aunts quickly took over for us, thankfully. After eating cake, they pumped out the music and the party began! Everyone had an awesome time (at least, I hope/think so) talking, dancing and drinking. We set up the drinks in one of the tall wood tables, though it started out more organized than this…

Oh and just in case they didn’t want to dance, we had set up a photo booth with props made by a friend of ours – check out some the takes.

We did get to take a few shots of the two of us while everyone danced around, though…

All in all, it was a great day. Everyone had fun, the food was delicious, and we got married, so what more could we ask for?

All photos by Kenoa Photography

When the ceremony was over, we signed our marriage license, and then went outside again to be greeted with confetti! We were worried they’d say something to us for leaving confetti all over the place, but they didn’t say anything, thankfully. Then it was time for a few group shots just outside the building (people insisted) and afterwards, we split into different cars to drive to the house, a couple of minutes away.

As soon as we got there guests started helping themselves to food and drinks (we laid out everything as a buffet). Eventually, everyone found their seats and sat down to eat. We didn’t have a specific plan in mind – i.e. we didn’t know if we’d end up sitting down for lunch, or if it would be more of a cocktail party. At the beginning everyone was sort of mingling but when the older guests (and myself) sat down everyone else started settling down, too. I’m guessing this was partly because the weather was extremely hot and the tents provided much needed shade. Since it was a buffet though, lunch seemed much more laid back and casual than at a restaurant, which was exactly what we wanted.

We had three long tables (actually they were eight tables but in three “groups”): one of them for the older family (parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles), another one for younger family (all our cousins are younger than ourselves, plus my brother), and another one for friends. Yup, we sat with our friends. In the middle of lunch, my brother and Maite gave a speech which was beautiful (sniffle), but unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of that…

Eventually the cousins’ table got up and started serving themselves dessert (except for cake) so that was the cue for everyone else to get up again. We simply talked/laughed/mingled for a while until it was time for the cake!

All pictures by Kenoa Photography.

Like many of you know, our wedding was held on Friday, September 7th. The day started bright and early for us, around 7-7.30AM. I woke up, took a shower (thankfully I didn’t have to wash my hair so it was fast), got dressed, and started making breakfast. Andoni woke up a bit later than I did, since was showering at our friends’ house (where the reception was held) later on. After getting all the last minute things ready – and tidying up the apartment a bit, making the bed, etc. – my cousins and uncle rang the doorbell at 8AM, ready to help. We grabbed all the food that was still here (the desserts, cheeses, jamón…) and drove to the house.

When we got there, the boys opened up the tents (that already had the guest tables set with tablecloths/table runners/centerpieces, as well as the chairs in place, plus the buffet tables arranged and decked with the tablecloths) and arranged the remaining tables, according to the layout I had drawn up. Since it was still too early to set the plates and glasses, they started preparing the cheese and jamón boards, plus making the gildas. In the meantime, I plated and presented all the desserts and placed the signs we had made. We had everything we needed for the wedding in a room that opened to the back of the house, and I had arranged everything more or less according to where it should go (i.e. the seating chart/welcome sign/guest book in a box because it all went on the same table; the coffee cups/coffee capsules/sugar/milk bottles/etc in another big box…) so I made sure everyone that was there to lend a hand knew where everything was, more or less.

At around 9AM, my parents got there with the wine and a couple of other things, dropped those off, then my dad took my mom and I to get our hair and makeup done (we had a 9.30AM appointment). We met my friend Maite there (she’s the one who made my dress) and our photographers, Kepa and Nagore. When he learned that the boys were at the house setting everything up, Kepa decided to head back there to take pictures of the progress and all the DIY details while Nagore stayed with us. Which is awesome because we got photos of how everything developed in real time!

So, while us girls relaxed and got our hair and makeup done the boys were hard at work setting everything up. Besides finishing up the decor, setting the tables, and preparing the photo booth area, they also laid out the food and drinks. We had two bar height tables for the drinks, plus another one with the wine barrel filled with ice (we rented/bought a freezer trunk full of ice – bought the ice, rented the trunk).

The bottom left pic shows the table diagram, haha

We were done by 11ish AM, and my dad came by to pick us up and drive us to our apartment. When we got here, both photographers started taking pictures of my dress, earrings, bouquet (which my MIL brought for me at the same time), rings… while my mom and Maite got dress. Once they were both dressed, I got dressed, and I was ready to go with an hour to spare, so they took some pics while we waited. Oh and my dad decided to Skype a friend and show her how I looked…

The girls who did my hair and makeup gifted me those flowers! So sweet

Maite had to sew my bra to the dress! The bottom left pic is me comparing my mom’s wedding sash with my own.

The wonders of Skype, haha.

Around 12PM (or so I’m told, because I wasn’t there) the boys started taking showers and getting ready. They all got dressed over at the house. At 1PM, or even earlier, I think, they were all ready, so they drove to our apartment as well. There were a lot of people at our place just before the ceremony! We had a bit of time, so we waited…

The wedding was at 1.30PM, and that very same week (on Tuesday, I think) we had decided to get married at City Hall instead of at the reception venue. Our town’s City Hall is barely a two minute walk from our apartment, so of course we decided to walk there. When we got there, our guests were already waiting for us, so after greeting everyone, we walked inside to get married!

I’ll be back next week with more recap/pics! All pictures shown are taken by Kenoa Photography.

Roughly a week before the wedding, a friend asked me whether I thought all our work was (going to be) worth it. At the time, I answered that I really didn’t know – I’d have to get back to her after the wedding day. You see, we came very close to booking a (catered) venue two months prior to the wedding and dropping everything else, because we couldn’t find anywhere that would fit our plans. And when we decided not to, and went forward with our original DIY plan, there were (a lot of) times when I wondered if we were crazy. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to pull it off.

In the end, though, everything turned out perfectly. The weather was beautiful (although extremely hot) and we had an amazing time. Here’s how we managed to do it:

• We started all the projects early. I wanted to have all the crafty stuff done a week or two before the wedding, so that meant doing things weeks or months before the wedding, like the burlap runners. I finished everything the Friday before the wedding, including the cutlery/napkin/place card arrangement… but then had to do them all over again. When we put them in a box, the napkins were still a bit wet from being ironed, and the namecards basically disintegrated and got smudged. Even so, because I had a week left to go, I was able to redo them the Sunday before the wedding and still had time in case other things went wrong.
• I tried to be as organized as possible. All those organization spreadsheets and how-to-set-each-table documents proved to be invaluable.

But the most important part, really, is that we had a ton of help: not only the day of, but for weeks before the wedding, too.

• The week of, on Tuesday, the younger members of the handball team, plus my brother and two local cousins, were there at 10AM (that’s pretty early for a student on one of their last days of summer vacation!) to set up all three tents. When the delivery of the tents fell through, they went back at 4PM that same day to get it done.
• On Wednesday and Thursday, we prepared all the food. My mom cooked almost all the savory part of the menu, with help from an aunt and Andoni; and I did all the desserts plus the quiches. I was frosting the wedding cake at 11PM the night before the wedding (in our apartment) and there were friends running around like crazy transporting the food to the house/venue at the same time.
• Both on Wednesday and on Thursday, but in the afternoon, we were at the venue (my mom was still cooking) with friends and family preparing the area: the lawn had to be mown, the decor set (all the pom poms had to be opened, for example, which I was told took a loooong while), the LED lights installed on the inside perimeter of the tents, the area cleared of rocks, a path made with tiki torches that led to the house… you get the drift. All week long, there were a ton of people there helping us. We also bought the flowers/plants for the centerpieces one of those days, and arranged them all in the wood boxes.
• Later in the evening, both on Wednesday and Thurday, I came home and kept preparing the desserts while people were still over at the venue working on the stuff I mentioned. While I baked, my aunt and a friend of mine were there cleaning the kitchen as I went, clearing out and organizing the apartment (since they were going to take pics here I wanted everything to look decent), and they also wrote everything I kept blabbing about. I hadn’t been able to finish all the instructions/organizational stuff the boys needed for the day-of, so they wrote everything down while my hands were busy cooking, haha.
• On Thursday afternoon, the chairs/tables/tablecloths arrived. We set the tables – I had drawn a floor plan based on the tents’ measurements, but we had to rethink some stuff based on the location of the tents – and figured out where everything would go. This meant I had to redo a couple of the organization charts. Once we were happy with the arrangement, we put on the tablecloths, table runners and centerpieces, plus all the chairs. That way, the morning of the boys “only” had to set the plates/glasses/napkins of the guests’ tables, plus the food, etc. (Sidenote: like I mentioned earlier, a wedding planner in the area, who was friends with other clients of our photographers, contacted me a few weeks before the wedding and offered her help out of the goodness of her heart. She was invaluable when it came to the chairs/tables/tablecloths rental, because although we ended up booking the same company I had talked to initially, she asked around for other quotes, arranged everything with the company, and got us a much better price than we initially got ourselves. Did I mention she did all this for free, over the phone? Yeah, she was amazing. Thank you so much, Eva.)
• The morning of the wedding, all my (male) cousins, several friends, and one of my uncles were at our apartment at 8AM to help us get everything ready. All of us drove there together with the remaining desserts and food. I was carrying the wedding cake, so the drive was a bit slow! When we got there, they started setting up everything: preparing the gildas, cutting and presenting the cheeses, plus setting up the jamón in the wood boards; putting the welcome and beverage tables in their place; setting up the bathroom/wedding/parking signs, etc. A friend of mine was also at the house, cooking the empanadas. In the meantime, I plated the desserts and explained everyone all the “instructions” (although they were written down, too). Then I left to get my hair and makeup done at around 9AM, while all the guys kept working. I had my cellphone with me while they were doing my hair, and they called me a few times, that’s why there’s a picture of me talking on the phone! Once everything was more or less finished, the boys all showered and got ready there, at the house.
• My sister-in-law went out to buy a tripod and remote for the camera the day before, because we weren’t available to use the tripod we had anymore… and I had misplaced the remote somewhere. A friend of ours did all the props for the photo booth. My MIL came to iron Andoni’s clothes super early on Thursday morning, and then stayed around for a while helping me with the desserts, before going to work.  Then she came early again on Friday, to bring me my bouquet to our apartment and the tripod/remote to the venue.

I don’t want to make this post too long, although I promise that I haven’t finished talking about how we pulled everything off & the organizational aspect of the wedding, because I think it’ll be interesting for other DIY couples out there. But basically, the conclusion is that we had lots and lots (and lots) of help. And we couldn’t have done it otherwise. Thank you so much, everyone.

Every picture shown here was taken by Kenoa Photography, our wonderful wedding photographers. I know they’re the same ones that you’ve already seen on their website, but don’t worry: they gave us two DVDs with more than a thousand images yesterday, so I’ll have plenty more to share next week along with an actual wedding day recap. The problem is, our laptops don’t have a cd slot! I’ll copy them to a USB drive as soon as I get my hands on another computer (hopefully today, because we haven’t seen them all yet, either).