Dress Up & Say Cheese!

Instead of having a guest book at our reception, we will have a photo booth where guests can leave a photo instead of a note.  Well, actually, ours isn't a photo booth...it's a fauxtobooth!  Our guests will pose in front of a DIY-ed backdrop, rather than inside an actual booth.

There is a great deal of beautiful fauxtobooth inspiration on wedding blogs.  Some involve cute props made out of felt or paper:

Source

Some involve beautiful vintage frames:

Source

Some are unique to the wedding's theme:

 Source

Ours will be what I like to call "thrift store chic."  Mama Lioness is a master thrift shopper and has been collecting funky fauxtobooth props for over a year now.  After we threw in a few of our own contributions, here's our collection thus far:

 A light up magic wand

 Lots of fabulous hats

 Florida Gators stuff!

 A fancy fan

 An old, distressed shawl

 Two Marie Antoinette wigs

 All kinds of awesome eye gear

 UCF Knights gear

 And finally, a faux-gold Cadillac chain.  Be jealous.

Remember that old mailbox that I found?  If not, here it is with our last two props.

The rest of our props just so happen to fit perfectly inside the mailbox.

And here's the painted front of the mailbox!  Prop set-up complete!

Bee tee dubs, this is what my wedding guest room looks like right now:

Gasp!

Are you doing a fauxtobooth?  What are you doing for your props?

Love is Sweet

You guessed it; this post is about our candy buffet!  When we first decided to do a candy buffet as favors for our guests, we looked into the catered options.  There are plenty of convenient options out there...but they were WAY out of our budget.  We decided to put it together on our own.  The problem was that we didn't know where to start!

I searched the internet far and wide to gather information to help build our candy buffet.  Honestly, this community is the best resource I found.  Still, it was hard to find all of the information we needed in one place.  I needed to consider volume, weight, number of guests, colors, and local resources.  So, here's a little breakdown of what I learned:

• There is a fabulous website called Candy Warehouse that sells wholesale candy.  The site is organized by color, so it's really easy to coordinate candy to match your wedding.  Since the candy is sold wholesale, it's significantly cheaper per pound.  The downside is that most candy comes in 5 or 10-pound bags.  Now, if you're doing M&Ms or Jelly Bellys, that's pretty good!  If you're doing gummy bears, that's a VERY large bag.  The other downside is that you're ordering online, which means you have to pay for shipping.  If one kind of candy is sold in 10-pound bags, and you're doing a buffet so you're probably going to have several types of candy, that's a pretty heavy package.  The shipping will most likely end up costing you more than the candy itself.
• If you're looking for a place to buy in person (i.e. skip the shipping costs), Fuzziwig's Candy Factory, also known as Sweets from Heaven, is among the best.  It's a nationwide candy store, found in local malls.  It came highly recommended from a few friends and a few Hive members, so I decided to check it out.  The employees were very familiar with the concept of a candy buffet, and told us that they had helped pick out candy for many other couples.  They were very helpful and definitely helped us get the most for our dollar.  Candy cost approximately $10/pound.
• Everything I read said that you want to buy about 3 pounds per guest for your buffet to look full.  I disagree.  The best advice I can give is to consider volume, not weight.  We ended up going with about 0.25 pounds per guest, and I feel like it'll be enough.  I mean, that's how much a hamburger weighs!
• Finally, I learned that it's important to do a dry run!  Allow me to walk you through the process...

I already had all of our containers, as I had been collecting them over the last year or so.  I spread them out over our coffee table.

Lion Corgi did not understand why a bunch of glass was so interesting.

Then, I brought in my 20-pound bag of candy.

I should probably mention that we have no chocolate in our candy buffet.  I know, right?  It's crazy!  But gummies were the cheapest, and we splurged on some jelly beans.  M&Ms were out of the question.

I wanted to fill the vases up with the candy, but I didn't want the vases to get all sticky.  Cleaning that many vases seemed like something I did not want to do more than once.  So, I left the gummy candy in the bags and eyeballed it.  I set up our little sign, and I filled the narrow bottles with pinwheels that I had purchased from Etsy.

The total for the vases and the candy came to about $250.  Divided by 120ish guests?  I feel like $2 per guest is pretty good for favors!  And honestly, I don't even miss the chocolate!  It's colorful and it's full of sugar.  What's not to like?!

Are you doing a candy buffet?  What tricks did you learn when planning yours?

Goofy Pictures & Silly Names

Bear with me, Hive...this is gonna be a long and photo-heavy post!  I recently sat down to make our table numbers.  And I'm using the term "numbers" loosely.  You see, our tables aren't really numbered at all!  We picked out one picture for each table.  Some were representative of some of our favorite things.  Some were representative of some of our favorite inside jokes.  Then, we came up with silly names to correspond with each photo, most of which involved using the word "table" as some kind of pun.  Best of all, I found these ornament-shaped cards at Paper Source!

But Miss Lioness!  What in the world would you need ornament-shaped cards for?  Your wedding isn't anywhere near Christmas!  Well, turn it upside down...

Booyah!  Hot air balloon.

I printed out the table names in green ink, using the font Monterey BT and some leftover label paper from our wraparound labels.  Then, I sliced them up with a paper cutter.

Next, I stuck each label onto a "balloon."

Then, I trimmed the excess label paper so that it fit neatly on the balloon.

Then, I did the same thing with photos.

Then, I repeated these steps for each of the 17 cards.

{the front}

{the back}

What's that?  You want to see each individual picture?  I mean they're mostly just embarrassing nerdy things or memories from random Disney vacat--OKAY!  (Lioness wedding guests, leave now if you wanna be surprised!)

There's Gold at That There Table

Disney World, 2006

There used to be a little McDonald's french fry cart in Frontierland and for some reason, this sign became one of my family's favorite inside jokes.

It's On Like Table

Disney World, 2009

Clearly, a Donkey Kong reference.

The Table Who Says Ni

Savannah, 2009

A Monty Python reference.

The Bunny Butt Table

Our first apartment, 2009

Corgis' rear ends look like they belong on some kind of rabbit.  Lion Corgi is no different, and this is our favorite family photo.

Please Stand Clear of the Table

Disney World, 2007

The Disney monorail says "please stand clear of the doors; por favor mantengase alejado de las puertas."  We were actually waiting for the tram when this picture was taken, but we figured it was close enough.

The Tarzan Table

Costa Rica, 2010

Ziplining is awesome.  I highly recommend it.

Knights of the Round Table

UCF E-Pics Session, 2010

UCF's mascot is the Knight.  I think the rest of that name is self-explanatory.  Photo by Evan Hampton.

Where the Girls Are the Fairest, The Table Is the Squarest

UF E-Pics Session, 2010

A line from "We Are the Boys," an old UF song.  Photo by Evan Hampton.

Eat More Table

Chick-Fil-A, 2010

Mr. Lion and I have dressed up for Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A four years in a row now.  What?  They give you free food!

That's What Table Said

New Orleans, 2010

We saw this sign in NOLA and immediately decided that we don't deserve it, because we constantly use the "that's what she said" joke.

Would You Sit at This Table for a Scooby Snack?

Gainesville, 2005

Our very first date.  He wore a blond wig and an ascot for me.  Those other kids in that picture somehow made it into our bridal party...

Beer Pong Table

Gainesville, 2005

Mr. Lion and I first met while playing beer pong.  It may sound strange, but that silly game is still very near to our hearts.

The Table

Atlanta, 2009

Our friend threw a watching-party for the season finale of "Lost" one year, and we decided to dress up as characters from the show.  Mr. Lion and Lion Gman Ryan both decided to dress up as Charlie, and accidentally wore the same outfit...complete with Guitar Hero guitar.  This card doesn't actually say "The Table."  It's just the Dharma Initiative logo with a table on it, instead of a swan or something.

{by Sister Lioness, of course}

Aren't You a Little Short to Be a Table?

Disney World, 2006

Mr. Lion was pretty psyched to meet a Storm Trooper.  The name is a line from Star Wars.  Don't judge me.

I Love Table

South Shore of Massachusetts, 2009

This is the town my family grew up in, where we have summered for four generations.  It was a really big deal when I took Mr. Lion there, knowing that we would someday bring a fifth generation there.  The lighthouse in the distance flashes once, then four times, then three times, thus the nickname of the "I Love You" lighthouse.  So we decided to call this picture "I Love Table."  It also doubles as an "Anchorman" reference.

The Happiest Table on Earth

Disney World, 2009

This one's going on our sweetheart table.

Who's At This Table?

Yankee Stadium, 2006

I'm a Sox fan; Mr. Lion's a Yankees fan.  I couldn't come up with a name for this picture without using the word "evil," and he couldn't come up with a name without using the word "rings."  We agreed on a "Who's On First?" reference.

{all personal photos, unless otherwise noted}

It's not the most beautiful DIY project I've made so far, but I definitely think it'll make for a good conversation-starter!  What are you doing for your table numbers or names?

A Whimsical Window

A few months ago, Mr. Lion and I went out to dinner for our last date-iversary.  After dinner, we decided to go for a little walk through the Virginia Highlands, one of my favorite areas in Atlanta.  One house that we walked by had a significant amount of trash on the curb...not garbage-trash, like we're-remodeling trash.  Among this trash was an old, rustic window.  I immediately thought of Mrs. Husky's post and the inspiration was instant.

We had planned on designing and printing programs, so we decided not to use the window for that.  However, we didn't plan on having ushers, so we could use the window for seating!  Here's the design I came up with:

Now, here's the part where I get in a little over my head.  The window is 37" x 34".  I wanted this text to fill the window.  I assumed the best way to paint the text on the window was to print and trace.  Now, maybe some of you design kids out there could have shown me an easy way to get this scaled just right, but my computer-illiterate self decided to muddle through it on my own.  What!  Mr. Lion was out of town for his bachelor party!  I had nothing better to do!

I used Keynote to design a slide, since that's what I've used to make research posters for presentations.  I opened the Inspector tab to edit the size of the slide.  In Keynote, one inch equals 72 pixels, so I did the math and created a 2664 x 2448 slide.  Then, I created a very large text block.  I mean, VERY large.  The line with "seat" was font size 400!  Then, I found a free program called PosteRazor that "tiled" images, like this:

The program then saved several 8 1/2 x 11" pdf files like this:

I cleaned the window thoroughly and got to printing.  I taped the pages, text side up, on the back of the window and traced over with a paintbrush.  This part was much more in my comfort zone than "tiling!"

 All taped up and ready to paint!

Total cost of this project?  About $2 in paint!  Totally worth stepping out of my comfort zone!  What DIY projects have taken you out of your comfort zone?