Check out my loot!

Most brides know that vases are EXPEEEENSIVE!  Few brides know that you can find them for cheap.  But you have to hunt.  And you need to give yourself time.  And you have to be quick about it too.  A lot of it is luck, so you have to be patient.

I need to find vases for an assortment of things, but the most important are the centerpieces.  I didn't want vases of all sorts of shapes and sizes either.  I want them to be consistent.  Specifically, my vision is to have half tall trumpet vases (15 or more) and half short square vases (15 or more).  But if I found a good deal on Craigslist for say tall cylinder vases, I'd be willing to settle for that too.

My friend Lan-Anh, a previous bride back in October 2011, told me she got her 20" tall trumpet vases in downtown LA for $7.  That's a really good deal, but her husband said you have to wheel and deal a bit to get that price.  So even then, it wasn't a guaranteed price.  But that became my frame of reference.  It was either find vases for cheaper than $7 or bust.

I began my hunt when we decided we needed vases and dishes for the candy table.  That's easy.  Candy table vases are meant to be a variety and I could easily hit up the thrift stores for that.

My first thrift store visit was the Salvation Army store in Buena Park on Stanton:

Woohoo!  Found a square vase to use for the centerpieces!  And the fishbowl is good for the candy table.

My second thrift store run was during a long lunch break.  Randomly found a thrift store across the street from where I was pumping gas.  Took a look around Sav-Mor Thrift Store in Anaheim and got this:

This was the only vase so far where I've had to pay tax.  Kinda silly to pay tax to a thrift store, but whatever.  The vase is good for the candy table.  Not too tall -- 9.5".  

I've been scouring craigslist for a good deal on leftover vases from weddings.  Whenever I find the ones at great prices for $5, they're always taken by the time I reach the seller.  This time I got lucky.  Twice.  

I found 12 6-inch square vases selling for $5 each!  

Bought them from a mother-of-the-bride from Irvine.  She was so sweet.  Even offered me wedding help if I needed it.  After she helped me load my car with all the vases, she even gave me a hug before I left!  

 I found 20" tall trumpet vases for $5 each!

And yes, they were $5 each originally.  But upon inspection when I got home, one of the vases had a crack!  I told the seller and she offered me a partial refund!  Sent me a check for $8!  I don't know why she sent $8 and not $5, but whatever.  Now I have 13 intact trumpet vases averaging out to $4.77 each.

I thought I was a bit late to respond to this Craigslist listing too.  But lucky me, the seller still had the vases.  I hadn't even realized she was selling two different kinds though (notice one with the rim?).  Maybe that's why she still had them.  She had 8 with rim, 6 without rim.  I asked my florist friend Thi if she could work with them and she said she'd try to make it work.  It was a tad inconvenient to pick up too.  The seller was all the way in Monrovia and she worked late hours!  Eventually we agreed for a Saturday morning pick-up.  I have work at 9am on Saturdays so I had to wake up at 6am to meet her at her house by 7:30am to get the vases.  Then got home to unload them before I had to go to work that day.

I'm almost set on centerpiece vases.  I've got 15 square vases so far (I already had 2 from a previous friend's wedding where Mat and I looted 2 of their centerpieces).  And now I've got 13 tall vases!  If we have 30 tables, I still need 2 more vases... and still possibly more because I'm sure there will be more than 300 people at the wedding.

Over the weekend, Mat and I decided to go around more thrift stores.  Lucky us, Salvation Army Family Stores were having a 50% off sale!  Half off already dirt cheap prices!  HECK YEAH!

All that for $8!  (SA Family Store in Huntington Beach on Beach Blvd)

$4.90 paid at the Fountain Valley Salvation Army Family Store

 I was so proud of this loot that weekend.  6 vases for under $13!

Then during my lunch break at Long Beach work, I walked to the nearby Out of the Closet thrift shop on PCH.  

Stoked that I found that giant wine glass vase for only $3 (totally awesome for jelly bellies), but even more ecstatic that they had the exact same 6" square vase I need for centerpieces for $5.50!

Now I need at least one more centerpiece vase to make my minimum 30.  But will most likely still need more.  I'm still gonna hit up the thrift shops and check out craigslist for them.  Stay tuned for more loot!

Pillows, pillows, pillows

Per the discussion with our reception venue coordinator, we get to have a complimentary cocktail lounge area for the extra unused space at our large reception hall (as long as we have minimum 30 tables -- shouldn't be a problem).  She said they have sofas for us for the cocktail lounge.

Sooo... with sofas, Mat and I thought it'd be nice if we jazz it up a bit with some pops of color with some pillows!  Sounds easy... I actually have LOADS of toss pillows I've collected from IKEA (from trying to decorate my NY and LA apartments in the past).  While they vary in color (I've got red, yellow, blue, green, and pink), it's pretty easy to just make pillow covers with any fabric of my choice to cater to whatever I need it to coordinate with.

First I made my rounds to the local OC fabric shops to look for fabric.  But the fabrics I was interested in were so expensive at $14/yard!  That's ridiculous.  This time, I think a trip to downtown LA fabric district was worth the extra commute.

My mom decided to come with me and we made a morning trip out of it.  I got three fabrics that I needed:

  Silver pintuck taffeta $4/yd
Purple taffeta $1.50/yd
Purple leafy taffeta $7/yd

Plus I got zippers for 25 cents each!

After one evening of sewing (my least favorite part is sewing around zippers... I still don't know what I'm doing with zippers but I usually just wing it and it works out), I made 4 new pillow covers!  And I still have lots of fabrics leftover actually to make more!

I do have 3 more fuschia colored pillows to use so that gives me about 7 pillows in total to use for the cocktail lounge area.  It might be enough, but if I run across any more cheap pillows I can cover, I'll make some more with my leftover fabric.  

Cost of project: $15

4 zippers: $1

Silver pintuck taffeta: $4

Purple taffeta (2 yards): $3

Leafy purple taffeta: $7

4 toss pillows: free (had on hand already)

Time spent: 1 day

Bridesmaid dresses

My original budget for 4 bridesmaids was $50 per dress. This doesn't sound like a lot to some people, but it's because I'm paying for all the dresses and accessories myself. The only thing I expect my bridesmaids to be responsible for are their shoes.




My other issue with the dresses was the shade of purple. At first I didn't want to be picky about any exact shade of purple to make it easier on myself. But the future mother-in-law has this concern about our wedding color of purple often being perceived as a somber color. Thus, I felt the need to put the girls in a bright purple color. I fell in love with this dress on the left here, which I could get at near wholesale price through hookups, but it was questionable... I had no idea when and if the dresses would be available. So I told myself if I found a deal on my own, I wouldn't pass it up.









One day, I walked into the Forever 21 at Anaheim Plaza, where they have the biggest clearance ever. And I actually found dresses in the perfect shade of orchid purple that I wanted and for only $10 each! It was the perfect color, perfect price, but not quite the perfect silhouette. Could this be a DIY project I could do?

The dress looks not too bad on me. But I'm short and I had one of my taller girls try on the dress and it was definitely too short for my liking.

I played around in photoshop and did some mockups of what I could do to the original dress to see if my girls would approve. It was also a concern of how I would cover up the seam line on the hem addition on the skirt.

The votes went for black sash with either #2 or #5. I opted not to do #5 because a large block of black fabric might be hard if I couldn't find a fabric similar in texture. So #2 it is!

I bought three extra dresses to take apart and use for fabric. Those were more expensive because two of the three I bought were $13.50 since they had size large (more material!) for me to take apart.

Here are the extra dresses deconstructed. Made me quite nervous! Hoping that I didn't just make a mistake in my decision to do this!

I decided to tackle what I thought was going to be the most difficult: the hem.  The hem was pretty easy (even though I had to redo it a little bit later to taper the dress in).  The straps, which I thought was going to be easy was really the HARDEST thing to do!  But they're done!

And of course, I made sashes.  Sashes were so easy.... I felt like a sash making beast after I had finished my own sash!

So I originally wanted to add 2 black stripes at the bottom:

Seam or stripes?

 By popular vote from friends, I decided to not add stripes and just keep the seam showing.

Not bad, right?  I also bought rhinestone brooches to go on the sashes as well.  All that's left to do is get all the girls fitted so I can properly attach the straps to the dresses.

Cost of this project:  Under $30 per dress

Dresses: $9.99 x 5 plus tax (1 extra to take apart)

2 extra dresses for more scrap fabric: $13.50 x 2 plus tax

Fabric to make sashes: $4
Extra sewing materials (thread, fusible interfacing): $4
Brooches (5-pack): $25 on eBay
Time spent: 2 months on and off
Money saved: $85 under budget

They may not be as nice as the above dress that was made especially for wedding occasions.  But I think I managed to have bridesmaids dresses that fit the look I wanted and are well within my budget so I can afford to buy the girls accessories AND nicer bridesmaids gifts.

My beaded sash

My next project was my beaded sash for my wedding gown.  I had my dress custom made overseas.  While they did an excellent job on the construction of the dress and the fabrics... the rhinestone belt they put on it was horrid.  Ghastly.  PROM-ish.

I had little control of the dress after they finished it.  Before, the dress factory told me they'd make any changes I wanted them to make, but afterwards, they seemed really adamant about any of my wants and in the end, I gave in.   I told them to ship me the dress and I'll fix it myself!

And that, I did.

I was glad to see that taking off the ugly beaded belt didn't do any damage to the fabric on the dress. 

I saw this beaded belt on eBay go for $90:

And I thought, "I swear I've seen that as an applique."  And it is.  Here it is:

After playing around in photoshop to see how it'd work... I realized the tails were trimmed off and then the applique is rotated on its side and pieced together.  So I bought the supplies I needed (appliques ended up being the most costly... and then I wanted to kick myself for not checking Etsy first because a seller had the same appliques for about $15 cheaper total).  But oh well.

Ta-da!  My finished beaded sash.. next to the ugly one I'm not using and not sure what I'll use it for if I can recycle it for something else.

Cost to make: under $45.  Time to make: 1 week
- Satin fabric for sash: $2.70
- Appliques (5): $40.94

Money saved: at least $45

Money Box

The usual Vietnamese wedding custom has the bride and groom visit all the guest tables and collect gift money.  Of course, now friends usually make the happy couple do weird stunts and/or play games in order to earn their gift money.  While I think that is great (and I am guilty of making other wedded couples play embarrassing games on multiple occasions), my parents specifically didn't want Mat and I to collect money while we visit the guest tables.  My cousins have done the same at their weddings and so I guess my parents want to follow suit.  They say that it feels like we're "beggars" for money at our own wedding.  I suppose they're right and I want to keep them happy.  So in order to try to encourage guests not to save their gift money throughout the reception until we visit their table, there will be a card/money box for all the gifts to be held in.

I've seen DIY cardboxes on Etsy go for ridiculous prices of $50 up to $100 even.  Are you kidding me?  It's freaking shoeboxes with fabric wrapped around it and a slot cut into it!

So I attempted to make one myself.  I first hunted for boxes.  I ended up only needing to actually buy one box.  The other boxes I had was a square shoebox and then some old Cognac giftbox thingy that my friend My-Ann had used to gift me something back in high school (and I've always kept it for some reason!).  Then I hunted for fabric.  I didn't trek out to DTLA for the fabric district... I know fabric could've been tons cheaper there, but it wasn't worth the drive for this little project.  I found pretty cheap fabric at $3/yard at M&L fabric in Anaheim.  My only thing with it is that it's not purple.  It's more of a dark pink.  But oh well.  I figured I will try to offset it with enough purple decor around it that the pink from the cardbox will happily complement all the purple.

Anyway... here's the fabric:

My reason for picking this fabric was that it's two-toned!  I don't have to buy two different fabrics.  I can just flip it over!

Equipped with a box cutter knife, rulers, hot glue gun, and spray adhesive, I got to work.  I started out with the idea of doing 2 stacked boxes.  Then I realized this wasn't going to cut it for a 300-person wedding.  I need a bigger box!

After much more cutting and gluing... and actually even re-covering boxes twice (because it was ruined or dad was trying to help and cut through the fabric in wrong places... I can't believe 1 yard of fabric was enough for everything), I finally finished the card box!

Cost to make this? About $10!  Time spent making this -- about 2 weeks (spent a lot of time perfecting little details, hence redoing the fabric cover multiple times)
- fabric $3
- box (top) $2
- flowers $1
- spray glue $4

Saved?  At least $40.

6 months to the day!

Today marks 6 months until our wedding date! This means no more saying, "We've got plenty of time." Nope. From now on, we have less than 6 months to get the wedding together! Luckily, we've been so on top of things (especially having so many talented friends who are helping us out with the wedding), most of the things that need contracts are already done. Big things left to do are book an MC and get our wedding cake contracted. I should've started this blog earlier. Oh well. So there will be a few blog posts that should probably be backdated, but whatever. Bring on the DIY wedding projects!