Gringa and Groom: Some Grand Old Flags

Our venue, a home built in 1797, is understandably particular about sendoffs at their weddings. Fireworks are prohibited because they're a historic site, so we agreed not to use sparklers. We're not allowed to use anything that would involve a lot of clean up, like confetti. After ruling out some of these other sendoff options, we began to consider what would work. We needed something bright, colorful, and obviously whimsical. Something like...

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Flags! I especially like the ones that have joyful words printed on them.

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Ms. Potato Chip and Mrs. Pretzel have blogged about making these, and I decided to go the DIY route myself.

Materials

Colorful construction paper (about $3)
1/4" dowels ($2 for a pack of 20)
Tape and/or a glue gun
Printer
Paper cutter

Instructions

I used the fonts that have now appeared on all of our wedding paper projects, Monterey BT and Ecuyer DAX. I wrote in large font (think 6ish per page) "Yay!" and "Oh happy day!" I felt like we needed something that was a little more us, so I also included "Woot!" and "¡Viva amor!" Make sure that you have your text align right so that you'll have room to attach the left side to the dowel. Then, I printed these onto construction paper.

Next, I sliced up the paper.

Here's where it gets interesting. Mr. Lion and I disagreed on how to attach the paper flags to the dowels. I opted to use my trusty glue gun, while Mr. Lion wanted to use tape.

Option #1: Tape
The tape required a bit more skill to make sure the paper flag was adequately attached so that it wouldn't slide down the "flagpole."

...however, it did leave room for error. If ~~Mr. Lion~~ we messed up somehow, we were able to peel the tape off and start over.

Option #2: Glue Gun
This way definitely didn't require as much finesse. I found it helpful to use the pointy tip (technical term, of course) attachment.

I squirted a little bit of glue on the dowel, then rolled the edge of the flag around it. Then, I used a little more glue around the edge of the rolled paper, then rolled a little more to secure it.

Next, make sure you have a dance part and wave a flag around when a good song comes on your Pandora.

Total cost was about $17. Total time spent? Welllll, let's just say this is the kind of project you should do over several days with several good movies on in the background. It can get a little time consuming!