A Fairy Tale Reception

I didn't get an official picture of it, but in the background of this one you can see the arbor as you walk into the back yard. On the front it has a board hanging from it that says, "Once upon a time...," and on the way out it says, "...they lived happily ever after."


Each of the tables had a different fairy tale centerpiece on it. Months before Kimberly became engaged, I was at Big Lots with my mom and Christina, and Christina found the pumpkin we ended up using for Cinderella, and she joked, "Hey, when Kim gets married she can have a Cinderella wedding, and we can put glass slippers in the pumpkins and put them on the tables." We talked about how to do that in a cool way and add other fairy tales into it, but mainly we were joking, and Christina bought a pumpkin for an Autumn decoration. Then, when we went out looking for centerpieces with Kim, we weren't finding anything that she wanted, so on the way home I mentioned Christina's idea. Kim loved it, and things just took off from there.

It was so fun putting these together. A lot of the things we bought, like the swan and Snow White's cottage, were lucky finds from Value Village. It's not a whole lot of bride's that will let you shop for their center pieces at thrift stores, but Kimmy was so excited. The bed frames actually originally had snoring Santa's on them that we had to pull off. We sewed miniature quilts and mattresses, and then about a week before the wedding, we put together each centerpiece on Mom's kitchen table, and then ran around the house looking for things to add to each one. With Beauty and the Beast, we laid out the vase and the mirror, and we knew we needed to lift the mirror onto something, so I started looking throughout the rooms, trying to find a jewelry box, and on my third or fourth pass down the stairs, I saw a few old children's books on the shelf and grabbed those. Perfect! So yeah, we had a blast putting these together.

It was Christina's idea to put the open books with each one. Each book contains an excerpt from the actualy fairy tale. She and my dad put them together, and they turned out beautiful.

Sleeping Beauty


Cinderella


Repunzel
This was one of Mom's brilliant ideas. We took a glass vase taped off the window, and spray painted it with rock spray paint, so it was textured. The roof to the tower is actually the top to a wind chime that had some pretty ugly chimes hanging from it. Mom painted it a distressed gold, and used it as the roof.


The Frog Prince
My mom searched the entire Tri-Cities for weeks until she found the perfect frog. She said she wanted one that you could just hold in your hands and give a big kiss to.


The Little Mermaid


Swan Lake
This was the head table that Kim and Brian sat at.


The Princess and the Pea


Snow White


Beauty and the Beast


And this is the finished dress, before the wedding. It was a huge chore sewing it together, but it was fun to do, and like I said before, it went together perfectly.