Our Thrifty &Crafty Wedding ~ Centerpieces & Favors

After seemingly endless origami sessions after work/in front of the tv/with my bridesmaids to be/with the husband to be it was finally time to make the actual wedding decoration/favor. Two of my bridesmaids came over for a day long crafting session:

In preparation I had taken a bunch of wooden shashlik skewers and handpainted each one of them with green acrylic paint after a disappointing dyeing debacle.
We glued those skewers to the flowers as stems using hot glue which dries really fast. This was pretty important as we had to hold the flower for a bit until the glue was all set.

After finishing off all 60 flowers like this we used the hot glue gun again to attach a button to the "pistil" (I had to look this one up) to cover the paper clips.

I had bought the purple buttons, but the white buttons are all from my craft stack.
I didn't take photos of the last step, but I'll try to explain it to you as good as possible. My idea was to have the flowers as decoration during the party and then to have each guest take one home as a favor to remember the day. For the favor not to be just a decoration I thought of adding some wild flower seeds. We did this by cutting out paper leafs and sprinkling a few seeds on top. Then we secured the seeds with a strip of masking tape, pressing it down on to the part of the leaf covered with seeds. We attached the leaf with some more masking tape, wrapping it around the stem.

Times 60 this project took a couple of weeks, but it was definitely worth it. I asked the husband to make a flyer explaing to the guests that the flowers are not only decoration, but also a gift to take home by the end of the day. Obviously some people forgot to take them, so I still have a bunch of these at home to be used as decoration/gifts some other time.
Check out the pictures our wedding photographer Mateja Müller took of the finished product on the day of the wedding:

Just a glimpse at the stuff to come still. We had a lot of fun with the table decoration and it really came out perfectly. Can't wait to show you the rest!

This post will be part of the Upcycling Tuesday and Creadienstag.

Picturesque Month ~ 12'14

~ December started with another Dawanda workshop. This time we knitted tiny christmas trees for decoration. The last time I knitted something must have been at least ten years ago, but after a few minutes it felt like I never stopped. Muscle memory is pretty awesome!
~ Christmas cookies = Batman cookies!
~ We love love love telltale games and they released the first episode of a Game of Thrones game. It was pretty awesome! But then, the Walking Dead game was pretty awesome as well.

~ December was also Hobbit month, sadly this year for the last time. Universal released the soundtrack again so I was decked with posters.
~ We went to see the movie on the day it came out in the same movie theatre where I watched the premiere last year! Remember that? That was awesome! Check out my Hobbit Premiere posts from last year if you haven't yet: Part I & Part II
~ I got an addition to my premiere coin stack: A Legolas Coin
Seriously, he was almost the best part about the last movie. I was a little disappointed, not enough Hobbit and too many wtf moments (Saruman & Galadriel fighting ghosts? Stupid underwater ork?? Tauriel&Kili???). I actually liked most of the fighting scenes, but it didn't feel like a real movie somehow. Anyhow...

I was working on this year's christmas tree. It was made from toilet paper rolls. Check it out.
~ This year's work christmas party was themed American X-Mas. Too bad we didn't have Burgers as christmas dinner ;)
~ There was a rare occasion of our bedroom being tidy, so I took a picture! Really enjoying our new plaid bedsheets and our upcycled dresser.
~ Also new in our bedroom is our upcycled Harry Potter medicine cabinet.

We usually don't have the traditional german "Adventskalender", but one of my colleagues had a spare, so we got a Star Wars LEGO advent calendar! How cool is that? Those are pretty expensive actually and they're filled with the coolest LEGO's. My highlights were the R2Tree2, Luke Skywalker and Darth Santa!

~ I said Good-Bye to my Spreeside office and moved to the streetside. Started a new job within the department in January and looking forward to new experiences and challenges.
~ Got the sweetest gift from my blogger pal Claudi from Pixeltrash 3000. I sent her a small package with goodies from the Hobbit premiere last year and she returned the favour with an awesome poster, Thorin figurine and ring. Thank you so much again!

~ Christmas came and went and even though we promised not to give each other presents there were a couple of packages next to our tiny christmas tree. I got the husband a couple of cool Batman T-Shirts and polka-doted socks and I got a biology books on bats, my favorite animal.
~ I took advantage of the free days on my own (because the husband had to work) between christmas and New Years decorating the hallway with a bunch of geeky and nerdy posters and illustrations. I had a bunch of spooky images left over from Halloween, so why not put them up to enjoy all year long.
~ Started on our new hallway bench. Blogpost coming soon!

It snowed on the second day after christmas so naturally we decided to go to the zoo! We have been to the Berlin Zoo last year so it was time to check out the Tierpark in east Berlin (Yes, Berlin has 2 zoo's thanks to a certain wall). It was so much fun to see all the animals in the snow, I can only recommend it! It started snowing a lot about an hour into our visit and there's only a few better things on christmas than watching a baby elephant throw snowballs with its trunk.

Did you do anything non-traditional for christmas? I think going to the zoo will be our new tradition!
Happy New Year!

Our Thrifty &Crafty Wedding ~ Outfits for the Registry Office

It is no surprise that both of our outfits for our "official" wedding and the registry office were thrifted. They are actually both from the same store; my favorite thrift store in Munich, the Weißer Rabe. I wrote about their stores in my Thrifting section and if you find yourself in Munich one day and love thrifting, you should check out their 2 stores.
The husbands suit was only 10€, a real steal! It's in mint condition as it hasn't been worn in forever, since it had tickets to the Palast der Republik from the late 80s in its pockets. We didn't even have to alter it in any way since it fit perfectly and back in 2010 when we found it the husband even said that he'll marry me in that suit.
I found my dress about a year after the man proposed in 2012, it was 4€! I'll say that again. Four euros, in current exchange that's 4,7$. So yeah, it was love at first sight actually. And I knew right away that it would be my registry wedding dress and it only needed a bit of altering. First things first: getting rid of the shoulder pads... I really don't know what they were thinking when they invented those. So here's an before without the pads:

Looking alright, but a little unshapely around the waist.

I only took in a few centimeters on the back of the dress to make it more shapely around the hips and the waist. When you're taking in clothes it's really important that you try it on with the needles in place. Otherwise it could be a rude awakening after sewing an then trying it on. You can always take in more, but undoing seams is the worst! I also took in a few centimeters around the waist to make it more of a high skirt.

Well, here we are on our "official" wedding day:





15 minutes inside the office and we were married! In the end it's just a signature, really, but when we were there it felt like a little more than that. Nothing compared to our ceremony on the next day of course, but there was still something official about it.

When we came out of the office an oldtimer car was waiting outside and at first I thought it was probably for the next married couple, but it was a surprise by my dad! An old friend of his collects oldtimers and drives them around occasionally and so he booked him for us to get to the next days's wedding location to prepare.

It was definitely a fun ride! The husbands best man and his brother joined us in the car and the rest of the family went ahead in my dad's car.





Apparently everyone but us was in on the secret and my girls were already waiting at the location as we were about to spend the rest of the day decorating and preparing for the big day the next day.
 

We had the best weather as well on this day and a lot of fun (and stress) with the decorating, but more on that later! I hope you liked our thrifted outfits and maybe got inspired to thrift your own wedding outfit. If you do be sure do send me a link via comment, I'd love to see!

This post will be part of the Upcycling Tuesday and Creadienstag.