DIM - Doing It Myself!!

Some may say I have a little more time on my hands than others lately, so why not use that time productively?!  Ever since I bought my cricut (the most amazing scrapbooking tool ever made!), I knew that it could be a very handy tool in the future! I imagined making my own invitations, menus, programs, thank you cards, favors, ect., ect., ect.  Today I got to attempt my first project with the cricut. 

So it wasn't long after the proposal that you could find me hanging about the chapters looking for books/magazines.  This was a very surreal experience, even though I knew I was going there in order to purchase a bridal magazine and perhaps some wedding advice books - it still had not hit me at that moment that a wedding follows an engagement.  I know it sounds weird, but it was a bit of one of those out of body experiences, like even though I was going to grab these items, these items weren't for me.  While searching around I found these really interesting wedding planner binders.  Some of them had a bit of planning information in them, some of them had some neat little free items, and all of them had dividers for sections such as - attire, budget, calendar, flowers, ect.  I thought that this was such a great idea! I had seen them a year earlier while scoping out bridesmaid books for Jen's wedding and couldn't wait until I would actually need such a binder.  While looking through them, I had a thought that perhaps I could do this on my own - all I really need is a binder and some dividers!  Buy this time I was getting a little overwhelmed, and needed to remove myself from the wedding books and decided just to grab a magazine - the books could wait until this whole engagement sank in a little more (it had only been about 5 hours after all). 

The next couple days, after I had gathered 3 more magazines from Jen and Kris, I noticed I was starting to gather a small pile of magazine pages I'd torn out of the magazines.  It was officially time for me to start a binder.  I found an old large binder and made a stop to walmart where I picked up a few items that totalled under $9.  It took me a while to solidify exactly what I wanted to divide the sections into, but I eventually settled on:

      1) Basics - timelines, budget, colours - and some other general info
      2) Calendar
      3) Attire (which is split into Bride and Bridesmaids)
      4) Guests
      5) Venues
      6) Food/Drinks
      7    a)Decor
            b)Flowers
      8) Music/Photography

Once I get more into everything, those may change with time, but I figure they're a good start.  I've added clear page protector pages in order to easily insert and remove magazine clippings.  And I bought some pastel coloured line paper to write notes on - this was definetly a fun coloured paper situation!

After putting it all together, I was ready to start working on the cover.  I got a binder that had the option to add in a cover page so I could make it a little more personalized.  After a little bit of thought and a little bit of time, I arrived at my finished product.  I must say I'm very happy with it and it looks a lot better than the chapters options which would have cost me upwards of $35 + tax.

Chapters option:

 ~ Cute but very pink - I can be girly, but never really been a pink-girly girl

My Binder:

Still cute and pretty - but a whole lot more special!

Not surprisingly, now I'm even more excited to go through the magazines and start all the planning so I can  begin to fill up my binder. 

Another little project I did on the side was make labels for vendors/draws/ect. I'm quite proud of these as well and think they're super cute!

Oooohhhh! These projects get me so excited!!! I'm going to DIY the crap outta this wedding!