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Left to right, top to bottom: flickr, Philip Galanes via Coco+Kelley, Max Wanger, Ink & Peat

Our friend espresso is back.

Left to right, top to bottom: Charlotte Jenks Lewis, Saipua, Dustin Todd, Nanako Koyama, flickr, Lucky Luxe, La Tartine Gourmande.

Thanks Vané for demystifying the cupcake photo’s origins. You can see the entire wedding on Brooklyn Bride.

First off, Rachel is one of the craftiest gals in the blogosphere. If you’re in need of a little modern, down-to-earth Martha in your blog life right now you must visit Heart of Light.

Next, she was nice enough to let us come over and do a little project with her that we are super-dy duper-dy excited to share with you all. Surely we’ve all noticed the crazy belt trend in the wedding world as of late (thank you, J Crew). Well it turns out you don’t have to spend a ton on said accessory. They are surprisingly easy to make.

Supplies:

Quality ribbon – as wide as you’d like your belt to be. We used 1.5 inch grosgrain for our project, but you could certainly use a pretty double satin or something else entirely. Just make sure it will lay nicely on your waist.

Fabric – We used four different types/tones for this project. Rachel chose a few different silks and a tulle. Different textures and weights make for nice variation when they’re all mixed together. The remnants bin of your local fabric store is a great place to start if you’re looking for inspiration.

Needle

Thread

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

How to:

Find the center point of your belt/ribbon and start there. We’d recommend cutting your belt longer than you think so you can accommodate for an off center finished product and/or for a big bow in the back.

For the complete tutorial, we’re going to point you towards Rachel’s detailed explanation of a similar headband on her blog. But the gist is this…

Make your petals. Again, how-to is on Heart of Light.

(If you’re concerned with stray threads from rough-cut fabric, Rachel discovered that IF AND ONLY IF you are using 100% natural fiber fabric, you can actually singe the edges of your petals on the stove before you start. This seals the edge and stops your fabric from shedding threads. BUT we repeat, do not attempt this if you’re using synthetic fabric. Two words: Fire. Hazard.)

Stack 2 or 3 petals on top of each other (using a variety of fabrics and colors in each flower).

Twist the back of each flower so you catch the center of all 3 petals and lay it on your ribbon. Now tack it down with a few well placed stiches and repeat.

If you’re using a wider piece of ribbon like we did, you’ll need 2 flowers, side by side, per row. Working in one direction, add as many rows as you want to make the decorative part of your belt the right length. Once you have the general shape and length that you like, you can always go back in and add more flowers where you see fit.

This project is especially excellent because it requires little expertise in terms of sewing. As long as you’re familiar with a needle, thread, and a basic stitch, you are completely qualified to pull this off.

Once you’ve filled your belt with the number of ruffles you like, that’s it! The underside won’t be pretty, but don’t worry. No one’s going to see it. For a more finished product you could always back your belt with a second piece of ribbon.

We can see this project working with just a little flower for your hip or with a full row to accent your entire waist. Totally depends on you!

We’re making more of these, that’s for sure. And seriously, they are so simple you could easily make a whole set for your bridesmaids.

Though they do look lovely on the right wedding dress. Or any dress really.

Happy crafting!

Come join us! It will be fun. We’re hoping to show inspiration for our posts over there. You know, things that we’re working on, ideas that we’re loving, pretty photos we find around the internet… stuff like that.

100 Layer Cake on facebook.

See you there!

A beautiful wedding in Carmel, shot by one of our (and everyone’s?) favorite photogs, Max Wanger. How lovely. As always.

Thanks so much for sharing, Max. We love everything you do!

**update. Here are the details of the wedding. Thanks, Lorena!

Lorena’s silk taffeta dress is by Abigail Bridal Couture. They don’t have a website, but they are based in LA and you can find their contact info over at Project Wedding. Lorena bought the dress at Mon Amie in Costa Mesa, CA.

Ceremony/Reception location: A private estate in the Carmel/Point Lobos area.

The food was by the chef and owner, Colin MacLaggan of Avenue 5 Restaurant & Bar, of one of the restaurants Lorena represents in San Diego.

Lorena designed the flowers and purchased them wholesale through various growers in the Monterey Bay area. Melody King with Fleurish in Carmel helped to put them together.

Kay, first how cute is this packaging? We’ll just get that out of the way so we can move on. We saw this and the first thing we thought (because we’re obsessed, as you know) was, OOOH monogram punch for invite belly band???? You could alternately use a cute shape that goes with your wedding theme, (michaels has tons) but the letter is so nice. We found a few places that carry letter punches online, (here and here), but you can probably get a custom one made too. If we come across a great metal punch maker we’ll be sure to post.

The Q: Good Morning, My fiance and I are planning to get married at the Court House followed by a reception of 75 or so guests. Since most court house weddings only allow a small number of guests to witness the actual ceremony, how can I explain this on the invitations that they cannot come to the court house but we would appreciate their presence at the reception venue? What is the most proper way to do this without making any guest feel excluded? Thank you in advance for your time! I really love your site and have seen you a couple of times on Whose Wedding is it Anyway. I love your work and if it were in my budget, I’d definitely hire your team!   – Candice

The A:  Candice, thanks so much for the kudos, it’s appreciated!  In terms of your dilemma, I think that what you need to do is have invitations printed for your RECEPTION only.  There isn’t any point in providing the details to a ceremony that they aren’t invited to, and it’s totally not rude to keep the ceremony intimate (though, dear readers, the converse is not true- it’s TOTALLY rude to invite guests to the ceremony only and not the reception). 

But, back to the question at hand:  How do you word the invite?  First, for those who will be able to join you at the courthouse, simply offer a verbal invitation to that portion of the day. For the printed cards for the rest of  your guests, try playing around with a version of something like this:

Could not resist posting. Even though we’ve seen them making the rounds. Way too cute to bear. Could we just have one? We promise we won’t expect an actual invite.?

Beautiful photography from Luke and Alisha. Hankies from Lucky Luxe Couture Correspondence. (In case you haven’t seen yet).

Via Oh So Beautiful Paper.

The Q: “Xochitl, we enjoy your blog posts so much, if only we had a chance to hear your voice! Where could one go to hear that?”

The A: Haha! Ok, that question is COMPLETELY fictitious, but I couldn’t think of another segway to let everyone know that we are know available on itunes for a DOWNLOADABLE podcast interview with The Wedding Planning Audiocast.

Recently “Always a Bridesmaid” had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ralph Mucci the executive producer and show host of Wedding Planning Audiocast, the Internet’s resource wedding planning talk radio show. Every bride out there knows there are so many great bridal magazines filled with hundreds of pages of great material but sometimes it can be a tedious task searching for this material, because most magazines are hundreds of pages thick. With the Wedding Planning Audiocast you can listen to their shows through your computer or download their shows and listen to them through your ipod, zune player, mp3 player or any device that will support their shows. How easy is that! Apparently some of the biggest
names in the wedding and beauty world have embraced this new technology as well with such guest appearing on their shows as Colin Cowie, Marcy Blum, Linda Kessler, Jennifer Brisman, Ceci Invitations, Tavern on the Green, Sylvia Weinstock, Ron Ben-Israel (my personal wedding industry obsession!), Carmindy from the Learning Channel’s #1 hit show “What Not to Wear,” and the list goes on and on.

Since the Wedding Planning Audiocast is always looking for something unique & different to share with their audience on our show I inform their audience of the many other different avenues of venue locations couples may take to hold their special day. I also take their listeners on a step-by-step process as to everything they need to know and what to expect from their wedding specialist.

To listen to The Wedding Planning Audiocast’s shows visit their website at
www.theweddingplanningaudiocast.com

We had the best time putting together this fun board for a guest post on Etsy’s blog, The Storque (which if you don’t know, you should definitely check out because it’s so good!). As part of their handmade wedding series, we created a colorboard and chose a dozen etsy finds that you could use to plan a wedding based on this board’s mood and colors.

Go see our full post on their awesome blog!

(Ffffound, So*Sage, Scott Clark Photo, BusARG.ar, Bella Figura)