Doing The D-I-Y: Ring Bearer Pillows

Okay hive, if you've kept up with my posts and managed to separate me out in your head from all the other fabulous bee bloggers, you know I've mentioned these darn ring bearer pillows a number of times. As we approached the wedding, and I was feeling heavy levels of resentment, this is one of the only wedding projects I managed to actually do myself.

I'd given sewing the pillows a couple of tries. I don't know why I insisted on doing it all by hand, but I did. This post will only be a step-by-step instruction manual for someone who already knows how to sew pillows by hand.

Personal Photo: Gather supplies. This was several spools of ribbon to be chosen for decorating later.

Personal Photo: Can't forget pillow stuffing.

Personal Photo: Needle, thread that perfectly matches your fabric, fabric glue, and rings for attaching anything you'd like.

Personal Photo: Step 1) Trace pattern onto fabric for exact pillow shape. I made two because I had two ring bearers. If you're decorating with ribbon, select choices and cut to a length that is just longer than the width of one side.

Personal Photo: Step 2) Pin decorative ribbon in such a way that the stitches of the pillow will secure it in place. Believe me, this is much easier than trying to sew the ribbon into place later, make sure the pins are secure and are holding the ribbon symmetrically and evenly.

Personal Photo: Step 3) Invert fabric and pin around the perimeter, making sure the decorative ribbons are secure in the right spot. Begin sewing the pillow, leaving about 3 inches not sewn together on one side. Take care to make sure the corners are reinforced.

Personal Photo: Step 4) Cute excess fabric off the sides of the pillow. Check over each seam to make sure they are secure as you don't want puckering when you flip your fabric right side out. This part will be sooo much easier if you just use a machine to do your sewing.

Personal Photo: Step 5) Accept help from your cat so she doesn't steal your thread. I made sure she didn't eat any thread, since I learned here on Weddingbee that can cause disastrous results.

Personal Photo: Step 6) Stuff your pillow. If you are making more than one pillow, stuff them all so you are sure they're the same amount of fluffy. Try not to pull on the open edges where your stitches began. Having to re-sew those later will be a pain.

Personal Photo: Step 7) Attach rings. This is just a sample I tried, but you can see the rings more clearly here. I stitched around the rings through the ribbon and the pillow. Tight, close loops around it will hold it in place. You can put the rings right next to each other or further apart.

Personal Photo: Step 7B) I wanted to add some curl to one of my decorative ribbons, so I found a bottle with the perfect size for the curls and went for it. Cut the length of ribbon you want, wrap around the bottle, and secure with a rubber band. I left mine for a couple weeks to ensure it would stay curled. It's still curled now 8 weeks after the wedding.

Personal Photo: Step 8) Add curled ribbon to the rings you've sewn onto the pillow. Arrange as you'd like. You can even add in another stitch to make sure they stay in place.

Personal Photo: Step 9) Admire your completed pillows. Also, plot for matching flower girl baskets.

Wedding Image showing Ring Bearers in action

The Kettles Approach The Finish Line

My wedding is less than a month away now. Yikes!! It's so exciting and so nerve-wracking all at once. I'm so excited to marry Mr. Kettle and I can't wait for our wedding day. But on the other hand, there are a million and one things left to do that I likely don't have the man hours to complete.

There are big things that happen around the 30 day out mark that any bride should be aware of. These things were not on any of my checklists!

1) Make final payments to vendors. Unless your vendors are magical elves who will take a credit card payment over the phone or internet, you'll need to schedule time to make these payments. Between Momma Kettle, Daddy Kettle, and myself, we've been running around the Chicago/Joliet area like chickens with our heads cut off delivering certified checks to all our different vendors.

2) Confirm all details on all contracts. Again, unless your vendors are magical elves who have Ivy League or Oxford proofreading skills, check your contracts. There were errors we caught in contracts from our florist, our venue, and our photographer. They were small fixes, but they were details that were important to the vision of the wedding.

3) Make sure your wedding party knows their schedule for the next 30 days. This is especially true if you have wedding party members who live out of town or have a hard time taking off from work. They need to know when and where you expect them in town. If you need to send out a newsletter or make 20 phone calls, make sure they know, otherwise you'll be missing a bridesmaid from your wedding rehearsal, and you don't want that.

4) You will have a lot of final details to decide, keep a list!! This one is important. You don't want to leave things like assigning someone to pick up grandma from the airport until the last minute.Sort out these final details and decisions as soon as you think of them, and keep a list so you know who is responsible for what. You will thank your self later when you aren't nearly as stressed as you could be.

These are things I picked up in the last couple days I just wanted to share with you. I climbed from underneath a pile of ribbon, satin, and tulle to keep you in the know. I'm looking forward to sharing posts soon about the frame I made for the sweetheart table, the (finally finished) ring bearer pillows (again!), and the flower girl baskets.

But before I go, I also want to share one of out final details. Mr. Kettle and I had a mini photo shoot with our wedding photographer. She was amazing and I'm so excited to work with her in a little under one month. The photos that she took will be used for our Poster Guest Book and also our personlized photo order cards that the photographers gift to the guests at the wedding. Want to see the photos we picked? Of course you do!

Image via Jolie Images

This shot will be for the poster. They are going to de-saturate the color so that the guests can sign all over the whole page. I've purchased purple, black, and gold permanent markers for them to sign.

Image via Jolie Images

This photo will be used at the photo card. This will go at every guest's seat at the reception so they know where to go to order photos from the photographer after the wedding.

Any tips for getting through the last 30 days before a wedding?

It's Time To DIY!

After breathing a huge sigh of relief that all the big decisions were made for the wedding, I realized I still had a ton to do. But I felt good about this y'all. I had a lot o' DIY projects to get started on. I had checked a good number of things off my huge list, but nothing from that first column, the DIY column.

Personal image: Checking more off each day, but I've got to do better on that first column!

My DIY projects are numerous. And there are less than 75 days to my wedding. But I think I can do it! The nest several posts will detail my attempts at:

Table Numbers
Flower Girl Baskets
Ring Bearer Pillows
Place Cards
Ceremony Programs
Reception Menus
Seating Chart
Frames for the Theme Decorations
Out of Town Bags

I started with my idea for table numbers. I've searched high and low for what I was thinking of. I didn't find anything similar to what I had in mind. The luck I had with my guestbook idea was not to be repeated. Oh well!

For your entertainment, a cartoon to explain my efforts.

Personal image: I thought and thought of exactly what I wanted.

Personal image: I searched all over the internet, but nothing was just right.

Personal image: I went table number shopping and got a lot more than I intended.

Personal image: So about those table numbers. Yeah, a bigger project than I intended. Do It Yourself Plus Your Father And His Power Tools!!!

And just what did my trip to Hobby Lobby yield?

Personal image: That's everything I need to make everything listed above except the OOT bags. Don't even ask how much it cost, but I think it is less than what I'd pay someone else...

Yup, that's a lot of stuff. Looking at it makes me excited though. I can't wait to share with you how I've tackled that large pile of stuff and turned it into usable stuff for my wedding!

Are you doing DIY projects? What's your best/favorite/hardest one?

Organizing My Way Out Of A Funk

I thought I might not fall into the wedding funk that so many bees before me have fallen into. I thought that because I tend to stay looking for the silver lining, I had a fighting chance. Well, like so many wiser bees have said before me, like doesn't stop happening because you're having a wedding.

My great-aunt is in the hospital. My family refuses to acknowledge that I actually need to sleep when I get off work! And I have all these decisions to make that I can't seem to make. Since burying my head in the sand isn't a real option, I had to come up with something else.

Two things make me feel good. 1) Coming up with a plan. 2) Shopping.

So I took a note

List all written. I was feeling pleased with how short it looked. Sorta.



Behind the flash, it says sweetheart table.

 I tried to use all the colors in the pack because I apparently have a compulsion to do so. I got the list written and out and immediately felt better. It worked like magic.

The wall template. I didn't have tape, so I had to use post-its to hold it to the wall...

All hung up! But still missing something...

It needed the markers!

Kittle Kettle wanted to help. She's handing me the hammer. Oh wait, no opposable thumbs.

The combination of shopping and organizing helped me over the hump. I still feel like sticking my head in the ground, but just a little less so. And since we're getting our first mock-up of our invitations tomorrow and our tasting is Saturday, I have things to look forward to that should only make me happy.

How do you get over your wedding-avoiding hump? Did you manage to avoid it completely?

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

My best man, BM Doc, has an older brother who was engaged while we were in college. His wedding party was spread out geographically. The best way for him to keep everyone in the loop was to let them know is a very classic way: a newsletter.

I loved this idea then, and I love it still now. While we have five people in our wedding party out of town, that's actually only a small fraction of our hugely large wedding party. But needing to keep everyone on the same page has been... a task.

In order to better serve the needs of our my sanity, I came up with a great newsletter. This isn't just for the bridesmaids though. It will go to the bridesmaids, the jr. bridesmaids and bridal attendants, the groomsmen, the parents of the flowers girls and ring bearers, and also to the ushers and hostesses. That's a lot o' mail to send out. But it will be worth it to keep anything from falling through the cracks.

I'm not sure how often I'll have to do these newsletters, but this one was right before the 6 months-to-wedding mark, so there's no way to tell. In this newsletter, I covered: an introduction of who was all in the wedding party (in case anyone didn't know yet); a reminder of our engagement party in 2 weeks; information about our changed venue; clothing FAQs, as we're coming up on the date to order these items; other cute-sy things.

I tried to make it interesting visually and interesting to read. Lots of white space, nice graphics, pictures, and a fluid layout are all essential to making a great newsletter. It wouldn't be my first choice, but I made the whole thing in our wedding colors. The taupe came out a bit too orange, but I think it will do.

I imagine I'll have to do another one of these at least in December right before the bridal luncheon. And probably another one in January for the wedding shower and bachelor/bachelorette party. And of course, one with final instructions leading up to the wedding weekend.

And of course, by now you're dying to see the newsletter. No? Well, I want you to see it anyway. Tell me what you think of the layout. I used a screenshot so you could see the intended taupe color instead of what came out of the printer.

The writing really didn't look as small on the printout as it looks in the picture.I was really hoping they would like it. I didn't intend to come up with anything so awesome that people are putting it in their scrapbooks, but I did want to keep them abreast of everything without having to make 40 calls. Score one for finding a way to have less stress with my gargantuan wedding party.





Okay hive. I first wrote that post right after I made the flyer, about 10 days before our engagement party. I must confess, I never actually sent it out. Organization FAIL. But it was a great first try and I'm looking forward to doing it again in the next couple months, and actually sending this one out. And I just ordered online 100 stamps from the post office that will be delivered to my house.

That should circumvent my biggest problem of acquiring stamps. I can hand off stamped envelopes to anyone other than me and they'll get mailed. At least that's the plan. Wish me luck that we I get out another version of these before the bridal shower/luncheon/hobby day.

Keeping Track Of My Handle And My Spout

I'm not exactly a Type A personality, but being organized is super important to me. Marrying a man like Mr. Kettle makes that all the more important. We each have things we forget, and of course they're different types of forgetting. That type of behavior doesn't gel with effective wedding planning.

Seeing as how we didn't want to pay money for a wedding planner, just a Day of Coordinator, it was imperative that I stayed very organized while putting together the details of my wedding.

I managed to get some big decisions handled up front. At least they seemed big at the time. Then five minutes later, I think about everything thing else left to do and that one item checked off seems like nothing. I feel this way every time.

Enter a two-fold solution: A wedding binder and a wedding website. I have both and so far I'm super glad I do. Some things I have recorded in both. Others I use just one or the other.

As I mentioned before, I got a binder from Russell and Hazel.

This Russel + Hazel wedding planner became my best friend. From Office Depot, I got a calendar, page protectors, highlighters, colored gel pens, and a briefcase. The briefcase has a dual purpose. This wedding binder will have to be carried with me everywhere I go from now until February 11th, so I wanted something to carry it in that wasn't my purse. Cause that sucker is huge!

Personal photo: This is the super cute bag I got for my binder.

Personal photo: This is the binder all full up with everything.

Personal photo: I ordered the binder in gold before I knew gold would be our accent color. I'm telling you, it pays to go with your gut.

Personal photo: Table of contents, the first big step to good organization

Personal photo: I keep business cards and color swatches in here. On the right, you'll see a piece of the tie of Mr. Kettle's that's part of our color scheme.

Keeping up with my work schedule, Easy's practice/gig schedule, plus appointments and meetings for this wedding is the biggest task with the calender, but with the highlighters, I have color coded our calendar.

Personal photo: Yeah, that's just July. Gigs, work, and meetings Oh My!

And there is also the website. I use weddingwire.com. I like that website. We looked at three different ones and Mr. Kettle picked this one. People can access all our events, RSVP to everything, sign our guest book, and even submit songs for the DJ to play!

The best part is the behind the scenes stuff though. I keep track of my wedding budget there. If it weren't for weddingwire, we wouldn't have been able to play around with the numbers to see about expanding our budget (anyone catch that hint?). I also have a very amazing to-do list there that the website generates and I use. It's much more detailed than the one from the binder.

If you're still looking to setup an organization system, I recommend href="http://shorl.com/stygrodrofuhadri">WeddingWire. You can really personalize the website for your guests, and the behind-the-scenes stuff is super useful!

Just writing this all out seems like soooooooo much to me. But it will be worth it to stay organized and on top of things. Or am I just crazy? Probably a little of column A and a little of column B.