a button wedding

so I may have mentioned before that I'm incorporating antique buttons into our wedding. it started with a crazyyyy idea to just have button bouquets (inspired by something like this) and no fresh flowers at all. and then I woke up and realized I LOVE flowers, how could I even consider not having flowers at the wedding?? So I thought I would compromise and do fresh flower bouquets and then button bouquet centerpieces.
...and then I got frickin tired of making button flowers. I mean I didn't even make that many, it was more the idea of making that many of the darn things that exhausted me just thinking about it. so we're doing fresh flower bouquets AND fresh flower centerpieces.
...but I already had a gajillion old buttons (and ideas for the cake and favors already involved button-shaped candy), so I wanted to do something with them. My solution I just recently came up with: button flower pens, for the guest book. For the guest book we're not actually doing a real book, we're using this awesome recipe box my sister got for me, and asking people to write notes to us on index cards and then file them in the box by last name. So I thought we could put an index card at each place setting, and put a few of these button flower pens at each table, maybe with some crayons too so people can draw us pictures as well as write notes! I know the few kids there would have fun with that, and more than a handful of my friends and family will enjoy doodling a bit too. The pictures aren't great because I'm no pro photog but you should get the idea..
I'm really excited about how they're turning out, these little individual pens are a whole lot easier than making full bouquets.. Do you have a theme for your wedding that you thought of early on and then felt a bit, well, married to? Did you stick to it or scrap it? I'm glad I'm sticking to this one but I'm really glad I scaled it back a bit.

challenges of DIY

I'm starting to think all my DIY aspirations are a bit too optimistic! I have so many ideas rolling around in my head and I really want to make Everything myself, but this past long weekend I sat down and tried my hand at creating some of the pieces I was imagining and.. it's just not that easy! I think I'm going to rely even more on Etsy than I originally planned - as well as my mom. She is actually quite a seamstress, and she really wants to help. For some reason I'm having a really hard time delegating - is this an issue for any of you?

Here's my list of things I'd like to make:

- programs

- birdcage veil and fascinator

- shrug/bolero (I'm thinking satin or silk shantung, since my dress is all lace. I've never sewn anything like this in my life, not sure what's possessing me to think I should make this myself)

- button bouquets (more details later)

- a bunch of other tiny little details??

I still think I can handle the programs and some of the other little detail items, but after playing around with buttons the past few months, I'm losing a little steam. Using flowers would just be easier! But my sister is all excited about the button thing, she's making my cake and plans to incorporate little candy buttons as part of the cake decorations - I think she's a genius and it's going to look awesome. Here's a pic of her first attempt at making the candy buttons (she got a mold for these here). Photo source: personal.

Hmm I want to gush about my cake for a sec. She made a test cake for us and it was amazingly delicious - white cake with poppy seeds, with lemon curd and fresh strawberries for filling. And then european buttercream frosting (it's lighter and less sweet than other common buttercreams). I have pics of it somewhere, I'll have to share! I'm very excited about my cake. Mostly because Mr. Fairfax was blown away by it and he's not really big on sweets, so I was very pleased we came up with a cake he could really get behind.

Oh and the favors. My sister also had the brilliant idea to give away candy buttons as favors, and I found some sweet tins for cheap at Save-On-Crafts.com that I could buy and my mom has volunteered to hand paint each one.

So I'm feeling kind of committed to the button thing - which is awesome because I still love love vintage buttons and the whole idea is great. I'm just having doubts about my motivation to create hundreds of button flowers. They're really not as easy as they might look! Especially since each flower is basically a stack of 5 - 7 buttons and creating just-right color combos is a bit of a challenge. How does this lady make it look so easy?!