Tales of a DIY DC Duo: Chapter 2 “Our Story”

This is Chapter 2 of an ongoing series following the journey of a couple throwing an intimate, DIY wedding in Washington, DC. Check out Chapter 1 here.

Claude and I met at a BAR of all places! It may not be peculiar for a couple of normal people, but the chances of us both being at a bar at the same time and date were super slim cause neither of us like to go to bars or frequent them.  I was dragged by a friend of mine and Claude had driven a few hours that day and felt like he needed to get off his butt.  So viola… we saw each other across THE bar and he immediately wanted to introduce himself. We talked all night, and texted the following day and watched a movie together the following night.

I don’t think we have left each others sides since.  We just clicked and it felt so right together.  I moved in with Claude 2 months later and he proposed only 5 months after we met (to the day).  He brought me to a picnic at the little island in the National Mall with the weeping willows (I think it is part of the Constitution Gardens).  He handed me the classifieds section of the Washington Post and a big arrow was drawn to point out a classified add that said “Emma-will you marry me?”  He read the sweetest letter to me on bended knee and I said yes.  He slipped the ring onto my finger and we both celebrated!

We spent the day at the Newseum, so I decided to follow suite with our “save-the-date” cards and used a layout from a newspaper headline I found online.  I printed it out at home and glued it around a piece of cardstock to make it look as though it was a folded newspaper.  I put information about our date, and the proposal in “journalistic” format.

For our invites, we wanted to make it a bit more “pretty” looking and we had finalized on our pink and brown cherry blossom theme.  We bought bronze metallic flower folded self-closing envelopes and pink metallic inserts online (with a coupon of course) from http://www.paper-source.com/ We printed the text onto a piece of cream card stock at home and stamped a cherry tree next to the text (stamp from Micheals with coupon).  We colored in the branches and added pink fabric paint to give it sparkle and dimension.  The final touch was a piece of printed vellum and a ribbon closed with a dollar store pink flower.

I think they turned out great.  What do you think?

Now, you are probably thinking I am crazy to hand make all of my invitations?  But the fact of the matter is that we whittled down our guest list to only close friends and family.  We only made 18 invites for 36 invited people.  This is a second wedding for both of us and we were on our own with expenses. *TIP* THE NUMBER ONE WAY TO REDUCE EXPENSES FOR A WEDDING IS TO CREATE A SMALLER GUEST LIST.  Everything is less expensive and you are able to add personal DIY touches to everything by doing this.  I highly suggest it and it will make your wedding more intimate and memorable for all involved including yourself.