The Action Plan

Paper- All stationary will be designed in Adobe Photoshop using various digital scrapbooking tools and my own designs. They will then be printed on tagboard and embellished in some way.

Flowers- All flowers will be purchased the day before the wedding at the Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown LA (I currently live about an hour and half from LA, so driving to their downtown markets is not terribly inconvenient). My mother, sister, future mother-in-law and I will then prepare them as bouquets, boutonnieres, table arrangements, etc.

Fabric- I currently plan on purchasing fabric from an online store or the garment district in downtown LA. I will go where I can get the better deal. I will then sew sashes for aisle chairs (for ceremony decor) and the table runners on my sewing machine at home.

Decor- The cake toppers will be painted wooden figures; I will probably purchase all supplies from Michaels'. All candles, votives, vases, etc. will probably also purchased from Michaels and perhaps painted or embellished with ribbon, etc.

Other- Since their will be kids at the wedding, I wanted to have something fun for them to do. So, I am going to create a scavenger hunt card (more paper to design..yay!) and give them each a disposable camera. The scavenger hunt card will have things like "people hugging" or "someone laughing loudly" on it. The first child to take a picture of each of the things on the list will get a prize. My current thought is a $15 iTunes gift card or something. (By the way, this idea came from the Summer 09 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings).

So Far...
Yesterday, my fiance and I spent the day at various stores doing a little price research. As you might have guessed, I am trying to be as organized and methodical as possible. Contrary to popular belief, doing/ making things yourself is not always cheaper. It is very easy to underestimate how much of a particular supply you will need, or not include necessary tools you may need to buy in your project budget. I had planned on building a letterpress, designing the polymer plates and ordering them from Boxcarpress.com and then making the stationary that way. However, after visiting home depot, it would easily cost me $40 for just the wood for the actual press, plus another $15 for thread-rod and hex nuts, another $15 for the book press tool, $60 for all the polymer plates I would need, not to mention ink, an ink bryer, and all of the paper. For a wedding of a little over 100 guests, letterpressing my own stationary would easily cost 3 times more than buying it. Since that does not fit in my budget, I have decided to go with standard print instead. Less exciting, but I will actually be able to incorporate more color since DIY letterpress does not easily lend itself to multicolored projects. Other than that, I was pretty much on target with my initial price estimates for items like floral tape, candle votives, mason jars, etc.

My next big decision will be on the color scheme. Originally, I wanted bright olive and slate blue hues, but since I am going to be using seasonal flowers form the LA Flower Market, I can't rely on being able to purchase any flowers in those colors and I don't want to use only white. I am currently contemplating red, tigerlily orange and a bright cerulean since flowers in those colors are common and available all seasons. I need to decide in the next month...so we will see what happens.