because details matter...

interviewer: so, marlin,what do you consider your strengths?
me: i have very good attention to details and....


.....unfortunately, i wasn't lying.... i said "unfortunately" because it's a double-edged sword, lol..... i think it comes with the territory because i'm a programmer.... anyway, this is a list of some of our wedding details and where and how we got them... click the photos for better view..... in no particular order...



i have been thinking of a unique guestbook and i have been toying on different ideas but we decided to stick to this mailbox and postcards... i bought the postcards from 2 suppliers from etsy.com (parkersupplies for the vintage-looking london & paris postcards and  frenchgirlsgarden and binkerbows for the other old postcards).... for our custom cardboard mailbox, i ordered it from lchrisman5.......

i also bought a cage for the "enveloped" gifts..... bought it on sale from michaels and just shipped it thru balikbayan box from the U.S...i like how our cage blends with the other Josiah table decorations....





i want our arrhae to be different and to also match our theme....so i asked some of my friends if they can donate some foreign coins.... these are from two of my friends and some coins are from my personal collection (i've been collecting foreign coins since elementary)...... the picture next to it is a door hangtag....there's supposed to be one for the groom too but i think the photographers missed it...




i bought the bridal hanger from etsy too (look for Lori Mills) ...and i was supposed to use this for our civil wedding but decided to use a dress form instead....now i brought this with me to the philippines because i was worried  we won't be able to borrow a dress form..... but it turned out that's not the case.... the couturier who made my ento's gown rented me one plus a steamer....

our boarding pass escort cards was from Meghann Gillette... i told her what our color is and what we want on it..... she just gave us a one-page edittable PDF file and i manually typed in the guests name and their table names (which are famous city names) and we printed and cut it ourselves..... the passport wedding invitation was from etsy too, Ginger ..... she was so patient with me....i don't know how many times i have asked her to make some changes, or add something.... i got the fernbrook logo from fernbrook itself....





next is our wedding favors.... i ordered 120 pcs of mini suitcase favor tins from beau-coup.com and we ordered a custom paris sticker with our names and date of the wedding....unfortunately, you can not customize the "Merci for taking this trip" but we don't mind..... and then i bought 15 lbs of globe chocolates .... and i have small eiffel tower trinket that i added as an after thought, lol.... i'm supposed to make a napkin ring but ODed  (over dosed) on DIY stuff on my civil wedding that this time i just ordered a lot of stuff, haha.... got the eiffel tower trinkets from etsy too, from happysupplies.... they ship from china so expect it wouldn't arrive until after a month if you're in the U.S.... the photo of a caricature below is our save the date.... ordered the caricature from jo acierto and then i bought some images from a digital scrapbooking website and made a postcard using adobe elements.... then we asked our friend rv to print it for us (thanks arvs!).....



if you're a filipino you know about arrhae and cord and veil and candle and bible used as part of the wedding ceremony.... well, i customized all those too, but then again i just ordered it from someone...that someone is janess ojeda of Trinkets and Favors.... i got a discount so this package is for 4,200 plus 200 shipping fee (she's from manila and i ask her to ship them at my manila address)




our misalette is from jun hernandez (theresecarmelaweddings@yahoo.com).. 30 copies for 1,500 pesos...suceeding copies is 400 for every 10 pieces.... we just ordered 30 pieces and hired a church commentator rin for 1,000..... he patterned the design of our misalette from our wedding invitation...

the Todo frame. Now this one is DIY.... again i just used  images that i bought from a digital scrapbook website and used adobe elements to stitch the images together and type the wordings.... we call this the Reception To Do List.... the frame is .70 cents from ikea and is back to back...i lugged this around in our luggage on our flight to the Philippines...we had like 15 of these...




we also made the goodie box for the kids table.... this just have small packets of candies some small toys, finger puppets, crayola, etc..... we also ordered a custom coloring book from etsy....Kelli and Greta....she just gave us a soft copy version and we just printed it at home and added a ribbon to keep them intact.....





we also made some goodie bag for the female entourage..... i just bought a peach fan and an "emergency" chocolate that i bought from cracker barrel..... i bought the emergency chocolate because i thought it's cute, haha.... and don't worry it taste good, hee hee




since we're having a travel (and paris) theme i want to use city names instead of a table number.... below are just some of the table names.... what we did is i made all those photo with city names (some of the photos used are actually mine, like the venice photo below) and sent it via email to Josiah (our caterer)....i just asked them to print it, put it on a frame and display it on each of the tables..... we also requested for the stamp napkin ring... we got that idea from Josiah's travel theme...we just changed the ribbon to peach.... and we specifically asked for that laced charger plates.... there are a lot of laces on the table setting including the chair covers to match our (travel and) paris theme....





now for my favorite itemssss (yes madaming ssss, haha)... my custom painted shoes from figgieshoes.com...... i have two.... initially i was thinking of using the same shoe i used for our civil wedding (which is a flat ballet shoes) but i changed my mind and decided to go for something with heels.... but i was still able to use both of them....i'm not a heels kinda girl and my feet hurts quickly with heels....so i was wearing my flat shoes the entire time during the reception and was just wearing the red shoes during the ceremony and pictorials.....

i DIYed  (do-it-yourself) my brooch bouquet (here's how i made my brooch bouquet )  and i have already used it once on our civil wedding by the beach.... i collected all the brooches for a year thru ebay, flea markets and estate sale..... some are really old, like as old as 1920s and some are new....

i also would to take your attention to the white, furry-like fabric (see photo above and below and the first few photos above), i brought that with me because they make for a very good background..... i bought that from ikea and shipped it thru balikbayan box.... yes, photo background is important to me too....i told you, details is everything! lol....

our cake! i love our cake.... since we are overseas couple we have to do everything via email.....but i was able to do taste testing during my short visit to the philippines last august.... but the design and details of the cake was just via email....and i'm very happy they execute each and every request/design i asked them to do..... below is our peach and yellow themed sugar flowers cascading cake.....oh, did i tell you everything is edible? yep, as in everything...including the leaves... we also ordered mini cakes (for the ninongs and ninangs) and cupcakes for the entourage from them.... supplier is judy uson, the cake artist

color is a little off but the main cake is really ivory it just looks pink on the photo

from my cousin's camera..nasistensyahan na, haha...

our onsite studio....
we thought photobooth is too common for our taste...don't get me wrong they're still fun but we just want to be different...and since me and my cousins and my college friends are photo studio addicts we decided, why not! i just brought some props with me like the boas, hats, masks, etc....

we just have one requirement, we want eiffel tower in the picture and we want it to look indoor...so we want drapes and sofa and flowers.... the onsite studio team didn't disappoint..... (we booked their 4d)....

guests posing, and guests lining up to get their photos

How to Make Your Own Brooquet

I have been contemplating for months and months and months now whether or not I'll share my videos on how to make the brooch bouquet. Nope, it's not because I'm feeling selfish it's just that for the longest time I was planning to do another video because of my wrong pronunciations, lol.

But what the heck, here are the videos!

Part 1:









Part 2:






Now for part 3, i got lazy but basically you just wrap the stem with ribbon and then I followed this blog (just scroll down to the bottom):

http://www.fancypantsweddings.com/how-to-design-a-brooch-bouquet

I also found a bouquet stem's cover (the faux pearl you're seeing on the brooch bouquet's handle, don't know what's that called, actually, lol)  from michaels and I used that as additional accent. Here's my finished brooch bouquet. I used it for my civil wedding  last May 12, 2012 and will also be using it for our church wedding on January next year.



I used 50+ brooches on my brooch bouquet.

I got my brooches from ebay.com and flea markets and took me a year to collect them. Why a year? I was looking for certain colors and certain types. Also, I had to make sure I don't buy a brooche that's above my budget because believe me, those brooches can go as high as $30/pc on ebay, that's 1,200 pesos already!  So my advise is don't get carried away and be patient. Also, factor in the shipping cost. My favorite item to bid on are brooches being sold in bulk because it saves me on shipping.

I guess that's it! Enjoy.

Our DIY "Message In a Bottle" Wedding Invitation

We decided to DIY our wedding invitation for the civil wedding because we're going to have an intimate wedding with just less than 50 guests and thought  it would be manageable. It ended up being a major task and took us a month to finish even if we just need to make 23 pieces of invitations. I won't recommend this if you have 100 guests, well, not unless you have a knack for torturing yourself, lol. But I must say, after our guests received theirs and they started calling us/texting us to tell us how impressed they were and raving that it's the most unique wedding invitations they have ever received, it was all worth it in the end....

Anyway, so here's how we pulled this off.

We divided this into phases. First phase is putting the sand and tiny shells in (which is what I volunteered the h2b to do, lol). Second phase is adding the accent ribbon on the bottle. Third phase is the actual invitation (printed, rolled and placed into the bottle, and added medium-sized and large shells). Last phase is the box, including the final touches like the accent ribbon and the tag.

Here's what you'll need:

roll of rafia, the bottles and unassembled boxes (right)

For the first phase.
1. Bottles (I ordered my bottles from coloredsand.com, look for "message bottles")
2. Tiny shells  from A.C. Moore and medium and large shells from walmart.
3. Sand (got mine cheap from Joann's fabric shop). I also added some Cape May sand into the mixture (Cape May is where our wedding will be held).
4. Plastic spoon and paper funnel (for pouring sand into the bottle).

For phase 2.
1. Ribbons (I got lucky and found a ribbon on sale at Joann's fabric shop that looks weddingish)
2. Sticker ribbons for hiding the overlapped ends of ribbon #1 (got mine from michaels, martha stewart has some interesting patterns)
3. Motif ribbon (bought a turquoise blue from michaels)
4. Glue (that can work for both fabric and glass)
5. A lot of patience. Putting glue on bottles and fabric isn't my favorite thing in the world, let me tell you that, lol.



For phase 3.

1. Paper of your choice. I used a handmade paper from michaels, which,  by the way, is a daunting task by itself because i had to go to several michaels branch because not all branches carry the paper we need and if they do they would just have, like, 10-15 of them (i need atleast 23 but i tried to get more in case of printing errors).
2. Rafia ribbon for keeping the scroll in place.
3. Nautical theme charms (got mine from etsy.com, look for happysupplies)





 For phase 4.

the plain box before gluing in the wrapper

1. Boxes ( also got them from coloredsand.com)
2. Ribbon for tying the boxes shut.Although, this is really optional. You can actually just tuck in the the cover inside (see right image).
3. Gift tags, to write in the name of your recipients.

rolls of exotic wrapper ($3 each
and each  piece makes 6 boxes)

4. Any interesting wrapper. I was lucky to find one from artistcraftsman  (they have the most amazing exotic wrapper collections!) which is just a block away from where I work. Just cut the wrapper into the shape of your box then glue the wrapper in place.




For the steps I think everything is pretty much self explanatory. Or if you still want to see the detailed steps it's the same as our DIY WYB message-in-a-bottle necklace (click me), the only additional steps would be for the accent ribbons on the bottle and making the boxes for the bottle.


And oh, here's our finished product (the picture has our monogram sticker but I decided not to put them anymore because it makes the box looks busy):

all ready to be mailed but first we need mailing envelopes

Vintage Spool DIY WYB (Paris themed)

In my previous blog, I showed my beach themed, message in a bottle DIY WYB . I used that for our civil beach wedding female entourage WYB. Here's another one I made for my other set of female entourage.

Because our church wedding theme in the Philippines is about travelling and because we are adding some Parisian elements to it I figured I should do a WYB that's kinda dramatic. And that inspired this project (click photo above for better view).


Our church wedding's motif in the Philippines, by the way, is peach and yellow that's why there's a peach tiny flower and yellow ribbon around that WYB and ofcourse I have the Eiffel Tower charms (bought it from etsy.com, look for happysupplies).

Now, I am going to share how I did this. First, the materials you need.

1. Vintage spool.
2. Paris rubber stamp (you can get one from amazon).
3. Yellow ribbon (or any other ribbon color of your choice).
4. Lace that's 1/2 inch wide. I used up just less than a yard for my 7 spools.
5. Tiny flowers of your choice.
6. Eiffel tower charms.
7. Black and red stamp pad (or any color you want).
8. Cream colored fabric (or any other fabric you want as long as it's plain).
9. Alphabet rubber stamps
10. Needle and thread.
11. Fabric glue.


Now for the steps.

1. Remove the stickers on the spool. Dab it with wet cloth if there are still some difficult to remove residue left.
2. Let the spool dry then bring out your Paris rubber stamp and stamp both sides of the spool base.

3. Measure the width of the body of the spool and cut your fabric accordingly.  How long your fabric would be would depend on how long the name of the recipient is or how big or small the alphabet rubber stamp you have. I would advise you to do at least one mock-up spool WYB before you start this project in full throttle.
4. Stamp one side of your fabric using your Paris rubber stamp.

5. Then flip the fabric and start stamping that other side with the name of your recipient and the role you want him/her in.
6. Glue the end of the fabric on the spool. Make sure the part you glue in is the end of the sentence/question part. I just think it's logical if your recipient sees his/her name first while she unscrolls the spool.
7. Then measure the circumference of the spool and cut your lace accordingly. You would need 2 of that lace per spool. One for the top and another for the bottom.
8. Sew the lace in.
9. Hook your charm on the ribbon of your choice then wrap the ribbon around the spool and tie it on the spool securely.
10. Insert the tiny flower.
11. That's it your done! It's up to you how you want to package this. What I did is I bought those cheap organza cream pouch, put the spool in. As for the shipping part (in my case my entourage are in the Philippines but I am in the U.S) I got myself a bubble wrap lined enveloped and placed the organza pouch with the spool inside.


Here's my finished product.

And here is where I got that inspiration (i love etsy.com!):