Centerpieces!

So I decided to save money on centerpieces to skip the flowers, due to cost. And I skipped the candles because I hate fire. So I decided on Cupcakes - and can now save money by not getting a giant cake! Cupcakes from Wegmans are under $1 a piece - and their bakery rocks! Then we can get a cute, small two tiered cake for us! 

But now what to put the cupcakes on??? I wanted to DIY it - and found this awesome site:

http://www.cakejournal.com/archives/how-to-make-a-cake-stand-for-cupcakes-or-mini-cakes/

with this great looking cupcake stand:

Except when i tried to make a mock-up stand of my own, it looked like a bad arts and crafts project! I tried using paper, fabric, ribbon  - with no luck. 

So I found these instead on ebay - 12 centerpieces - under $150 dollars! :

But mine came black - seeing as though our colors are brown - i am going to spray paint a few and see how they look!!! 

Bridesmaid Dresses

So I really wanted my bridesmaids to all have dresses that they really would wear again - and with chocolate brown as the color - this should be no problem, right? Brown is the new black, so they say. 

Well, all my lovely ladies are different shapes, ive got curvy, stick thin, very tall, very short, giant boobies, teeny boobies, etc. This is what happens when you have 7 girls... 

so picking one dress or even two dresses was out - i could see it being "unflattering" on someone... so then i thought - well, let me pick a designer and everyone could pick one dress from that designer in the dark brown/chocolate/espresso hue... except all the designers i loved - jim hjelm, namely - had dresses wayyy above the $100 price range i wanted to stick with. i cant justify a $200 dress for my BMs when I only spent $100 on mine!

which brings me to plan c - now my brilliant idea. im letting my girls all wear ANY dress of their choosing, from any store, as long as its a dark brown... even if the colors are a little off, everyone will be comfortable, wearing a dress they are comfortable in, something they each like individually, spending an amount of money they are comfortable spending.

So now ive been perusing all sorts of websites finding all sorts of great dresses - some of my favs - overstock.com, and victoriassecret.com. Also, there are some great dresses in the ann taylor line ( a lil pricey), as well as, lots of good ideas on nordstrom.com!