Happy Wednesday! This week I was fortunate enough to have Steph, from Will Work for Shoes and Vodka, share an item from her current wedding planning; Bridesmaid Asks. These are a popular and cute way to ask your great friends to be in your wedding party!
I hope you enjoy!
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Hello Bear Necessities followers! I’m so excited Danielle asked me to be a part
of Wedding Wednesday this week! Danielle is a wonderful friend and I’m so
happy we can share our blogging hobby!
Today I’m going to show you some ideas for
asking your bridal party. First things
first, In order to ask them you have to pick them! Over the years I’ve seen and heard of all
kinds of compilations of bridal parties. Whether its one person or twenty
people, keep in mind it’s just as much an experience for them to be a part of
your special day as it is for you!
My fiancé, Chris, and I had some initial
struggles picking our party as we have siblings we wanted to be a part of it as
well as friends. We have such a close
group of college friends it was hard to pick and choose while keeping within
our initial vision of a small/medium sized group. We finally came up with the right combination
for us: our siblings (his younger brother and sister and my younger brother),
our best friends since forever (aka his best friend since birth, my two best
friends from high school), some of our college besties (one of his roommates
over the four years, one of his freshman dorm friends and one of my gal pals)
and one of our close friends from Columbus (she happens to be an identical
version of me, such fate!). In case you
lost track of numbers that adds up to five on each side, ten total. We felt this was a good variation of friends
and family that represented the different parts of our lives.
Once we had our group picked out we got to do
the fun part: asking! With the explosion
of Pinterest it seems the simple “Will you be in our wedding?” question isn’t
quite as simple anymore! Plus like I
said before, this is as much of an experience for them as it is for you so I
wanted our asks to be special.
In my lifetime I've been asked to be in family
and friends’ weddings a number of different ways. The majority of them were in person. Funny anecdote: Danielle asked me and another
friend to be in her wedding one night when we were sharing cocktails and
discussing the wedding, then she said casually “Oh so speaking of the wedding,
wanna be my bridesmaids?” Such panache D,
such panache! I did have one invite
slide in via text but I chalked that up to an impatient/excited bride. Of course if your party is very
geographically spread out in person may not be feasible. Thankfully everyone we were asking lived
relatively close and those who didn't we had visits planned.
In typical guy fashion Chris didn't want much
fuss around it so there was no gift giving or special surprise it was just when
the time came, he asked. He tried for
moments when he was just one on one with the person to make it more
personal. I on the other hand wanted
something with a little more pizzazz and more suited to my personality.
So I set out to find something not too over the
top (live butterflies and a music box? No thanks) as well as cost effective
(sorry no Tiff & Co. ladies!). I
also didn’t want to overshadow what I would eventually do for bridesmaid gifts
so I tried to keep it small. If you
couldn’t tell from my blog title I’m a big fan of cocktails so after some
researching I landed on champs (it actually ended up being prosecco but minor
detail) with personalized labels.
I had found this little poem on Pinterest so I
made print outs of that then set out to design the bottle label.
I work in Marketing and have access to
Photoshop so I stayed late a few days at work to put the original design
together. I tried tying in our wedding
colors: black and white with red accents.
I’m a shutterbug/obsessed with Instagram and pictures so I wanted to
include a photo of each girl and myself.
Plus I obviously had to ask the big question!
I printed these on full sheet label paper, cut
them and stuck them to the bottles.
I think the trickiest part was finding suitable
pictures for each. For example, a lot of
my pictures with just Chris’ sister and I were kind of old since we typically
take pictures with the whole family. For
my maids of honor it was hard to find pictures that all three of us weren’t in
or that it didn’t look obvious that I’d cut the third out!
I made a tag with the poem to
place around the top of the bottle. I
used ribbon to loop around the top then glued the tag to it.
I wrapped it in a fun bottle
bag with polka dotted tissue paper in our colors. I got the prosecco at Kroger, the label paper
from Office Max, the bottle bags from World Market and the tissue from Hobby
Lobby. For the tags attached with ribbon
I had scrapbook paper for matting already on hand as well as the red ribbon.
Then it was off to ask each
girl! This was the really fun part, they
were all a little confused as to why I was randomly giving them a gift then
they read the poem and their reactions were priceless! Chris’ sister told me “Nope, sorry I’m busy
that day” (kidding of course), some cried, some laughed but overall it was a
happy “yes” answer.
There are all kinds of ideas out there, some include:
-
treat them to lunch, drinks
or dinner
-
mail them a special package
with photos of you over the years, etc.
-
send them a cute note
-
a piece of jewelry
For guys you can do booze, beer or cigars with
a nice note or poem attached. That is of
course if you can get your groom to agree to it. Chris was not into the ideas I showed him,
especially the notes and poems!
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes
to bridal party ask ideas. Just choose
something that fits your personality and your budget and you’ll be all set!
Thanks again for clicking in to Wedding
Wednesday, it was such a pleasure sharing this fun wedding related post!
Cheers!
Steph
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Thanks again to Steph for sharing! I look forward to collaborating with her on future guest posts!
-Danielle
