A few weeks ago, a reader inquired about finding places to donate wedding dresses after the Big Day. I did a little research and found The Brides’ Project in Toronto, Canada.

The Brides’ Project receives gown donations from both corporate sponsors and brides. The proceeds from the sales of its preowned wedding dresses and accessories is donated to charities that help children with cancer. I was pretty ‘wowed’ by what I read about The Brides’ Project, so I contacted the place to find out if they accept dresses from the U.S. as well as Canada. Here’s what they said:

We accept and receive donations from all over. Any donations can be mailed to us at 431 Broadview Ave, Toronto, ON, M4K 2N2.

What a fabulous way to give back!

Watch a video about The Brides’ Project here.

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Carrie  33 & Matthew, 27

Raleigh, NC

Wedding Date:  May 2, 2009

Number of Guests:  37

Wedding Cost:  $14,000

Wedding Ceremony Location:  Chateau Bellevie, Fuquay-Varina, NC

Wedding Reception Location:  Chateau Bellevie, Fuquay-Varina, NC

Why did you have an intimate wedding? 

The first decision we had to make about our wedding was where and how many people to invite.  We considered having our wedding in Chicago since that is my hometown and where the majority of my large family resides.  The guest list kept growing and planning a wedding from NC was proving to be difficult.  Although Matthew and I wanted to include everyone in my family, we secretly desired a small, intimate wedding.  While the search continued to find a suitable location in Chicago, Matthew and I were researching locations in North Carolina.  It didn’t take long for Matthew and I to find the location we knew in our hearts to be “the one”.

As much as we know it is a huge commitment in our lives, there is no reason why we should go into debt over it. That surely would not make a happy husband and wife!  Once we started looking into the cost of having a large wedding, it only added to our decision to downscale everything to make it more intimate and affordable.  Almost everything we did was DIY.  We pretty much purchased everything from Michael’s to make the invitations, place cards, thank you cards, programs, centerpieces, and the out of town care packages for guests.

What do male wedding guests like the most about attending a wedding?

Food.

And women?

The ceremony.

Want to read more about what  wedding guests like and dislike about weddings? Read Wedding Guests Rank the Ceremony High, the Receiving Line low in Philly.com

It will give you one more reason to have a small wedding sans receiving line!

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Yesterday, I blogged about Lauren and Andrews wonderful DIY wedding with a forest theme. Today, I’m sharing their DIY wedding favors: recipe books.

For wedding favors the couple put together a family recipe binder (that’s Lauren’s sister in the photo).

Lauren had 4×6 cards printed with recipes that the guests had submitted with their reply cards. She placed the cards inside a mini binder and voila – a recipe book!

“Our reply cards were folded cards that contained an optional section in which guests could share a favorite family recipe.  I also received several recipes from women at my shower.  We typed them all up and printed them onto 4 x 6 cards at a local copy shop. Then they got punched and put into small, blank binders I ordered in bulk from Maya Road.  I printed the labels on my inkjet.  We gave them to guests in attendance and mailed them to guests who couldn’t make it along with our thank you notes.  We chose to use 4 x 6″ cards so that guests could add other recipe cards to the binder later on if they wanted to.  Each binder cost $3 to make,” says Lauren.

Simple and sweet!

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What happens when two designers get married? They have a fabulously unique DIY wedding!

Lauren and Andrew had a DIY wedding with a forest theme. Their wedding was held at Stern Grove, which is a small redwood grove in San Francisco.

“We loved the symbolism inherent in redwood trees (continuity, adaptability, longevity) so we decided to use them as the theme for our wedding,” says Lauren.

The couple DIY’ed everything except for the food and the flowers. With a little help from their friends and family, they created a personal and meaningful event that everyone enjoyed (and that didn’t cost a fortune!)

Even Lauren’s goddess dress was handmade.

Lauren writes:

“I worked with dressmaker Theresa LaQuey to make a 40s-style goddess dress I designed for my wedding. She did a great job with the fit and construction and came up with the awesome knot in the back. It cost less than half of the typical off-the-rack dress and I got a one-of-kind gown that was literally made for me! The darker panels are actually green, which you can see in other photos.”

And check out the DIY invitations.

“This is the pride and joy of our DIY wedding efforts,” says Lauren. “I’m a product designer and my husband does graphic design, so these invitations were our big splurge item in terms of time and money.”

Lauren and Andrew created these chipboard invitation wheels to give guests a creative way to get all their information in an heirloom keepsake format. They are made from two circles of untreated, recycled chipboard diecut and letterpressed to look like an old planting wheel with redwood rings on it.

The couple came up with the design, including the die lines and color separations.  They ordered the die and the untreated chipboard and then had a letterpress printer use his press to do the actual cutting and printing.

“We did the final assembly of the wheel ourselves using wooden plugs and steel washers we got at the local hardware store.  We printed our reply cards ourselves using an inkjet for the back and a Riso Gocco for the front.  We ordered big, square, recycled paper envelopes and did all the assembly/addressing/mailing ourselves,” she says.

Total cost was about $10 each including $2 per invitation in postage.  Approximate time to make was 20 hours in total.

Now on to the wonderfully quirky table names. (I love what she says about the grandmas. That happens sometimes:)

Lauren writes:

“My husband is an artist, and one of his projects is a series of tiny disaster sculpture made with HO scale model railroad figures.  Our parents are always trying to get us to move back east by citing the myriad disasters we have here in California so we thought it would be funny to name each table after a California disaster.  We had table names like “mudslide,” “tidal wave” and “wild fire.”  Guests had to find the centerpiece sculpture that depicted their disaster in order to locate their table.  Most people had a good laugh over it but our grandmothers were confused.”

Guest name cards were made from wood.

“I made these by renting a mitre saw from a tool rental facility to cut a eucalyptus branch one of the gardeners at Stern Grove gave to me from the mulch pile.  I had my husband carry it up the stairs (it weighed nearly 100 pounds), fired it up, and had 90 cross-section disks in about 20 minutes.  The dust gets everywhere despite the dust bag, so I put down a tarp to do this (we don’t have outdoor space) and wore a respirator mask.  The disks that were cut a little too roughly I sanded down with my Dremel tool.  I then printed the text for both  sides onto clear inkjet labels and cut them out with a circle cutter. I stuck the labels in place and smoothed them down.  Our florist brought a tray with moss in it for me to display them,” explains Lauren.

There’s one more lovely little DIY project that Andrew and Lauren had for their wedding: The favors! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog post.

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