Guest Blog - MOH Nicole and her crafty craftiness

Hey all! Nicole here, the very enthusiastic (or perhaps just slightly crazy, you can be the judge after this post) MOH, well the female MOH that is. While the bride’s been busy busy making wish trees, and table numbers, figuring out the ceremony location, and taking care of the non-fun bureaucratic stuff as well, I’ve been trying to help out as much as I can by taking on a few DiY projects. I don’t live in Munich so unfortunately, we can’t work on projects together—although if that were the case I think we’d have to both quit our day jobs and only do wedding-related projects all day long!—but I do live in Germany (Berlin), so at least we're in the same time zone. And shipping things back and forth doesn't cost a small fortune, or take months that we don't have.  

So I thought I’d give a preview of the projects I’ve been working on, both small and (ridiculously) large. 

Bunting and Garlands 

It might sound a little Betty Draper of me, but I have to say, when I received a sewing machine this Christmas from my bf’s mom, I was overjoyed with domestic happiness (though come to think of it, I somewhat doubt Betty Draper would sew...). Then I got all worried that I was getting to old and domestic. And then I remembered the tediousness of hot glue-gunning bunting together for our Thanksgiving party last year. And I realized how fantastically helpful the sewing machine could when making bunting for this wedding! No pictures of that yet, we're still in the fabric-collecting phase. But there will be bunting. Oh will there be bunting.

I have gotten started on the garlands though. I've collected multiple paper supplies for circle paper bunting (that I imagine will look something like this. I also did a happy dance in the craft store when I found not one, but two circle punchers! (Just one of many things that I’m always convinced doesn’t exist outside of the USA.) And I’ve got three different colors of thread to play around with. 

First round of paper supply shopping

I still do a bit of a happy dance looking at those life-saving cirlce punchers!

Paper circles galore

On top of that, I receive two very exciting packages from the US lately, one very large one that required a trip to the Customs Office but was happily filled with happytape (http://www.happytape.bigcartel.com/) wooo!, and another that arrived literally seconds ago full of two gorgeous spools of divine twine! (http://www.divinetwine.bigcartel.com/) The Wedding DiY project possibilities are endless, and in time, all will be revealed… 

Reistütchen/Rice or Confetti Bags

How cute of an addition will THESE make to the ceremony!?! They’re little bags full of rice to throw at the bride and groom at the end of the ceremony, for those of you who don’t feel like entering all that into google translate. We have yet to decide if we’ll fill them with rice or confetti (in many venues in Germany it’s verboten to throw rice because it’s bad for the environment, meaning the birdies!), but I’ve been able to start working on them anyways. 

Chair Covers 

Now here comes the crazy  part. I haven’t been to the venue yet, but I did get a video tour of it! And, as you all probably already know, those chairs are RED! And while that probably looks great at most German weddings (red hearts are often a must), we decided pretty early on that that red would do little to complement the pretty blue and green color scheme Em has planned. So, never one to turn down a challenge or leave my best friend in distress, I courageously suggested I could make chair covers to cover the red. Yes, make. For all the chairs. All. 80. of. them. The goal here being, 1) to save money, and 2) to get something that really fits and can be personalized. I don’t think at the moment I was quite aware of what that meant, to sew 80 chair covers. After all, I’ve only had my sewing machine since December! But then I ordered some sample fabric and made my first prototype. 

I learned a few important things in the creation of this prototype. 1) ALWAYS iron creases before trying to sew them. Always always always. 2) Sewing in a straight line is difficult. It takes practice, which is why I bought an extra meter and a half to practice on (I promise they'll be straight (enough) for the wedding you guys!) and 3) Taking on such a big project is GREAT motivation to revamp my crafting/sewing/office space in the apartment. Sewing takes space and patience. 

And it always helps to have a glass of prosecco around to calm you down in moments of panic.

So there you have it. Wish me luck and I’ll make sure to stop by again and report on the further progress of the insane-but-totally-possible-extreme chair cover project 2010.

Thank you, Nicole, for your fabulous post and your amazing projects!!