Disaster Transport

I vaguely hinted at the failure of my adventures into centerpieces in my last blog, so I shall tell you the tale. Oh, and if you guess where the title of my post is from I'll give you a cookie, or at least your computer a cookie (that's right, starting off with the geek jokes, we're in for a ride).

Anywho, like I said before I have stocked up on craft supplies like Armageddon is on the way and they are burning a whole in my pocket, figuratively speaking. I've been itching to do some crafty wedding things since my friend announced her engagement two years ago (and has since been married), but it wasn't her style so I had to wait until now to do some wedding crafts for myself. I know it's early, but I like to jump the gun on things. Like this whole wedding, I'm planning without the "official proposal" (BAH I say to that!). So I made my little earrings, and some matching bracelets (they are cute, but again super easy) for my BM, but I yearned for a bigger challenge. Bring on the centerpiece mock up. Mr. Tal and I sat down and carefully read through the instructions in The DIY Bride (aka Future Mrs. Tal's Bible) for submersible table number centerpieces. It seemed relatively easy. Ha.

The process was fairly simple, it involved: some white card stock, a pretty paper of our choice, printer, laminate sheets, a hole punch, craft wire, heavy weighted objects of our choosing and a cylinder vase (in this case 10'' tall 6'' wide). Basically, after cutting the card stock to a predetermined size, we had to load it in the printer and just format a word document however we wanted. This was the easy part. We made our pretty table name in the font we liked, really made it our own. Then tried to print it...nothing. It ended up taking 2 hours to try to print this tiny piece of card stock. That was merely a technical difficulty at the time, but as I look back, I think it was a sign from the DIY gods that this project was not meant to happen. We finally get it printed and then we have to use double sided adhesive to tape it on to our pretty boarder paper and then we laminate it. All of this goes down easily, YAY Team Tal! Hole punch the bottom of the laminate, use the craft wire to secure it to a rock. Done. Rock on Team Tal! Then we go to put that laminated piece of beauty into the vase and it doesn't fit. Fail Team Tal. Fail hard. Not really, just a minor set back, so we trim it down and get it into the vase. Then comes the big moment; adding the water, and our submersible isn't submersible, it looks more like a bobber. Tie more rocks to it. Still doesn't sink all the way. At this point, Mr. Tal tells me it's just a mock up, the real vases will be higher so just breathe. Then I see the ink begin to melt like the make-up off an extra-sad clown in 100 degree heat. UGH! Only a mock up, only a mock up. It's my mantra with this project. We figured that we hole punched a little too close to the paper, no biggie, just have to remember for the final version. Mock-up centerpiece was a nice learning experience and we both did like the way that it looked.

Now I realize that this doesn't sound too bad, and really it wasn't. The horror part of the story hasn't come yet. When we finished up I realized that I don't know how big the opening of the vases we plan on renting are. This actually gets me a little giddy, because I'm hoping for an extra half inch or so. I immediately e-mailed the rental facility and asked this question, not caring when the response comes. Well she got back to me quickly to tell me the openings on the vases we want are 3.5'' (Internally, !$&*#@) Externally, I say to Mr. Tal, "Umm, honey, we have a problem with the rental place..." And I proceed to explain. Basically it all boils down to this, we now have to buy 15 cylinder vases for our centerpieces because the size we need isn't available for rent in our area. ARGGGGG! We've found them at a decent price in bulk online, but it's still the matter of paying for something that isn't within our budget. The plan is that we can hopefully sell the vases after the wedding and maybe only lose the amount of what we would of paid renting them. I'll cross my fingers on that one.

What about you fellow DIY brides? Any projects that didn't go quite as planned or unexpected expenses because of projects?

Tune in next time for more tales of a DIY bride.