Wedding Ideas

By Carol Duvall

Even the contents of our Shoebox followed the "romance" theme of today's show in that it contained many of the wonderful crafted items that our assistant director, Vicky Botka made to wear or use at her recent wedding to Jim Williams. Vicky couldn't be on the show with me because she was in the control room doing her job but she brought all the items into the studio so that I could share them with you.

The first item was an example of the arrangements Vicky put together to put at the end of the church pews. While most weddings feature large bows Vicky had vines of ivy that she bought at the craft store and painted gold. These she mixed with some holly berries and other artificial berries that she also bought at the craft store during the after-Christmas sales. The arrangements were all made of a combination of these purchases and wired together in the back so they could hang over the pews. Very pretty and very effective.

The wedding invitations were also a crafty affair. First, they were printed on ivory-colored, 5" x 8" stock then the family was put to work on a production line to assemble the finished items. The invitations were glued to the center of long strips of beautiful ivory embossed, handmade paper cut slightly wider than the cards and slightly over 2-1/2 times as long. A length of gossamer 3/4-inch wide ribbon was attached down the length of the center of the paper strip. The paper was then folded back over the card and a medallion that Vicky made of polymer clay, embossed by stamping with her initial and golded by rubbing with Rub 'n Buff, was glued to one edge of the folded-over paper. The weight of it held everything together. Very dramatic and elegant looking.

The guest book Vicky made from pieces of foam board which she covered with the same handmade paper used for the invitations and trimmed along the hinged edge with a contrasting handmade paper. The front featured two more polymer clay medallions that had been rubbed with gold Rub 'n Buff. One featured a "V" for Vicky, the other a "J" for Jim.

Vicky saves old jewelry and she put it to good use when preparing for her wedding. She bought an inexpensive pen in a stand . . . the kind of pen with a long white plume . . . and removed the plume. She then sprayed the stand and the pen gold and added a rather large rhinestone, triangular-shaped earring at the base of the pen. Totally graaaaand.

Vicky also added glittery rhinestone earrings to her white satin pumps and put white lace pieces at the heel of each shoe. They were lovely.

More jewelry made the tiara . . . or headband . . . that Vicky wore to secure and hold her veil in place. She insisted on referring to it as a cheap old bracelet. I saw it as an inexpensive piece of rhinestone jewelry. Whatever you chose to call it, it looked beautiful when she wired it to a headband and wore it with the veil.

Of course she had a darling little girl and boy as flower girl and ring bearer. The little girl carried flowers in a basket that had been an on-the-wall planter until Vicky sprayed it silver and added a handle and ribbon. The pillow started as a piece of fabric that a friend of Vicky's mother had beautifully embroidered and her mother then made into a pillow.

It was a beautiful, crafty wedding and Vicky was delighted that she was able to do so much that looked so nice and cost so much less that the store-bought versions.