February, 2015 - DIY Bride

Add A Touch of Sparkle To Your Wedding With Totally Dazzled

One of our newest partners is Totally Dazzled, a brilliant company that offers gorgeous rhinestone products at wholesale prices. For those of you seeking to add a little (or a lot) of glam to your invitations or decor, you’re in for a treat!

We love how enthusiastic Totally Dazzled are to work with you, our do-it-yourself couples. They understand you’re on a budget and offer a wide variety of rhinestone embellishments that are affordable for most in our lovely DIY community.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect rhinestone brooches, ribbon buckles for your invites, stunning napkin rings, diamante buttons, or flatback crystals, Totally Dazzled has over a thousand choices to help you create the your oh-so-glam one-of-a-kind wedding. And, if you need some inspiration, do check out their blog, where they share how to creatively incorporate their sparkly wares with some great tutorials.

Let’s talk pricing because, let’s face it, rhinestones can be kind of on the spendy side. We were very pleasantly surprised by Totally Dazzled’s pricing which is often better than other wholesale-to-the-public shops online. Rhinestone ribbon slide buckles, for example, start at $0.75 each and go up to $1.75 at the top end. If you’ve shopped around for rhinestone buckles recently, you’ll know that’s a great deal.

All Totally Dazzled products ship out within 1 business day of purchase direct from the USA. And, rest assured dear readers, they provide their customers with an excellent return policy if they are unsatisfied for ANY reason.

We hope you enjoy browsing the Totally Dazzled catalog and we can’t wait to see the gorgeous creations you make with Totally Dazzled products!

Please do visit the Totally Dazzled Facebook Page and sign up for their newsletter for their latest news and offers.

Montage Photo Book Giveaway!

Yesterday we introduced you to the awesomeness that is Montage. Today we’re so excited to bring you the opportunity to win a FREE medium-size Montage Photo Book, valued at $70.00! The giveaway is open to US residents, 18 and older, and the prize winner will work directly with Montage for delivery.

How to enter? Just enter your name, email address, and a comment in the form below before 2/10/2015. Easy-peasy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Create Stunning Photo Books With Montage

For those of you who are newly engaged be warned: you will have approximately eleventy billion photo-taking events between now and your honeymoon. Your engagement, engagement party, bridal shower, bachelor(ette) parties, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and honeymoon are guaranteed to yield an extraordinary amount of photos from friends and family — in addition to the ones you snap on your own. Instead of letting all of these amazing memories languish on a hard drive or in the cloud somewhere, why not create beautifully bound photo albums that you can display in your home or even give as gifts? (Pro tip: Parents dig photo albums of their children.)

Great idea, right? The folks at digital-to-photo album experts, Mixbook, thought so too and have brought an easy way for you to create a modern, streamlined photo book with minimal hassle and price points that are within reach of almost everyone. The service is called Montage and it works like this:

1. You decide what images you’d like to include in a Montage book and upload them via the web application.

2. Choose one of Montage’s 13 pre-designed layouts or themes.

3. Montage will automatically sort and arrange the photos into perfectly sized and organized pages. The technology knows when your photos were taken and organizes them by date and importance. Seriously, they couldn’t have made the process more user-friendly and intuitive.

4. Preview your book. At this point, you don’t have to do anything – unless you want to swap out images, shuffle placement, edit text, or change a theme. Captions are limited to 120 words and only one text box per spread. The font choice, size, and alignment are predetermined by the theme.

5. Save and check out. The whole process of creating a wedding photo book takes about 15 minutes once you’ve selected your images and books ship in about 4 days. Seriously, they couldn’t have made the process more user-friendly and intuitive.

Let’s talk details:

Pricing starts at $39 for a small (6-inch) book. Medium (8.5-inch) is $59 and the large (12-inch) is $119. Albums are able to accommodate up to 180 photos and 70 pages. The small books would make great gifts to your bridesmaids, for example, or as thank you presents to your wedding party. The larger books are perfect for gifts for parents or significant others or for your own mementos of the day.

Montage albums are made of quality eco-friendly leather binding and have fantastic lay-flat pages.

Lay flat pages detail. No fighting with the book to keep it open while you browse your photos.

The great folks at Montage are offering Free Shipping for DIY Bride readers. Just use this link to save some dough on an already awesome product.

Want to find out more about Montage? You can find them on Pinterest and Facebook. And stay tuned for a special giveaway for our DIY Bride community!

Jessica & Greg’s Rustic Chic Texas Wedding

Get your “Pin This!” fingers ready, my friends. The abundance of beautiful details from Jessica and Greg’s rustic-but-chic Texas wedding are going to set your inspiration boards on fire.

Let’s hear from photographer, Debra of Debra Gulbas Photography, a bit Greg and Jessica’s big day:

On the day of Jessica and Greg’s wedding, they were watching the weather radar minute by minute before their outdoor wedding ceremony. Luckily, not a drop of rain fell during their ceremony, which was officiated by Jessica’s grandfather.

Their details got an “ooh” and “ahhh” from every guest at each step of the way. From the lemonade stand, to the root beer float station, the adorable river rock guest sign-in, and a photo booth made to look like a Polaroid — everything was fun, creative and stylish. My favorite detail were the iron cast beds, decorated with cute, colorful pillows to encourage the guests to lounge around.

Jessica and Greg had one of the most fun wedding receptions ever, and the amazing DJ Sean Alan helped make the reception amazing. Jessica and Greg’s friends were so much fun, and there wasn’t a dull moment.

Some things amongst all this gorgeousness I’d like to point out:

1. Look at how Jessica and Greg used simple and inexpensive items like baby’s breath, glass bottles, and mason jars to create lush and bountiful decor.

2. Their monochromatic white-on-white florals is ultra-elegant and served as the perfect background for pops of blues and green throughout the wedding.

3. The rustic and wild location is a gorgeous juxtaposition to the elegance of the decor. The combination is warm and welcoming, informal and elegant: a perfect atmosphere to make your guests feel special without being too stuffy.

Well done!

Jessica & Greg
Wild Onion Ranch, Texas
Event Date: September, 2013

Photographer: Debra Gulbas Photography//Caterer: 2 Dine 4 Fine Catering//DJ: ATX DJ//Musicians:Gypsy Moon//Cake Designer: Michelle’s Patisserie//Makeup Artist:The Beauty Jar//Floral Designer: The Last Petal//Event Venue:Wild Onion Ranch//

Submitted via Two Bright Lights

Lillian & David’s Conservatory of Flowers Wedding

The Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of my favorite places on the planet. I drag my family through the gardens as often as I can because it is a truly glorious and amazing place. The Victorian greenhouse, having survived numerous disasters including the 1906 earthquake, is one of the most stunning pieces of architecture in San Francisco. To have a wedding there, as Lillian and David have, is a testament to its beauty as you’ll see in the pictures below.

David and Lillian were inspired by the resilliency and beauty of the Conservatory. An early 1900s black and white photo was incorporated into their save-the-date. Lillian chose a vintage v-neck dress evocative of the time and their friend (and graphic designer, Charmagne Kringstein, designed all their signage in a very vintage/playful style in the vein of artist Edward Gorey. Gorey’s style is normally thought of macabre (aka- Adams’ family, Goth) but Charmagne was able to invoke the artist in a playful classic style that echoed the building.

According to photographer Robin of Robin Jolin Photography:

All of the prop styling for the wedding was done by Lillian’s friend and stylist, Rosey. Shelly Kaldunski, a local pastry chef and friend of Lillian’s, did all the deserts. Lillian and David bought all kind of local snacks. Cow Girl Creamy and 4505 Meats for snacks. Le Truc is a local San Francisco food truck, catered the event.

Lillian and her bridesmaids did all the flowers, including the bouquets, the day of the wedding!

All of these things influenced the decor which was kept simple and classic, and the 8 piece jazz band, having a vintage inspired photo corner with the antique type writer for guests to write us a message, etc.

Lillian & David
SF Conservatory of Flowers, California
Event Date: April 2012

Photographer: Robin Jolin Photography//Event Venue: SF Conservatory of Flowers//

Submitted via Two Bright Lights