Assembling My Womenfolk

Dan has seven groomsmen. That's right, seven. He is not Greek or Italian, he just has a lot of great friends. I'm lucky because I have a lot of great girlfriends, so finding a comparable number of women to be bridesmaids was hardly difficult! As soon as we got engaged (and I mean within an hour), I had already talked to my sister and asked her to be my Matron of Honour. I emailed my oldest and dearest friend Stacey in Vancouver and asked her to be a bridesmaid in an email that I'm pretty sure was all in caps locks that went something along the lines of:

"OH MY GOD I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WILL YOU BE A BRIDESMAID?????? I THINK YOU'RE ON A MOUNTAIN TOP IN SWITZERLAND SOMEWHERE AND I CAN'T CALL YOU!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Thankfully for Alena, Sara, and Kathe they all live in the city and I was able to ask them each at a dinner. I like the face to face aspect since this is a fairly important job! And by fairly important I mean I need them to look pretty in dresses, show up on the day, and keep my stock of Pepto on hand so I don't throw up from nervousness on my dress. 

I had one girl left, my "cousin" Sami. She's one of those close-friends-of-the-family type of cousins. She's in university in Kansas and I love this girl like a little sister. But how to ask her? My initial freaking out "ohmygodwe'regettingmarried!!!" was done, and I wanted to do something special for her since she was so far away. Enter the "Will you be my bridesmaid?" book. Five pages, each of them relevant to the wedding. 

(Our venue the Alton Mill) 

So what I did is quite simple really. I used Photoshop and put about a half inch white strip along the left side of the photo since I would need to bind the finished pages together. Next I simply picked my font and typed my "Something old...." in the corner. I did all the photos as layers in the same file and just changed the text so would be in the same spot in each photo. 

(My ring)

(My Mom's pearls)

(Me!)

Next I made a "Will you be my bridesmaid?" page. I found an image I liked online (sorry I'm not going to be able to credit it, I can't remember where I stole it from, my apologies!), and isloated the green colour since I was on my green bridesmaid dress colour at the time. I turned the opacity waaaaaaay down so my text would really stand out. 

 

And now, assembly time! I lined them all up, punched holes in each photo and laced them up with blue ribbon (another "something blue") which I tied at the top with a little knot. Nothing complicated. If I had had a better hole puncher (not from the dollar store), I probably could have punched all the photos stacked up, but I'm cheap so I had to do them one by one. 

 

 

I popped it in the mail and off it went to Kansas! A week later I got an email from Sami saying she nearly cried when she read it and she's thrilled to be a bridesmaid! Hooray!!!!