How I Asked My Girls

I got ENGAGED! :)  It finally happened ladies and gentlemen, in about a year and a half I will be Mrs. Caroline L Rawlings. (I'm still trying to get used to the whole changing my last name thing...) Now we all know that no one likes to have their Facebook newsfeed filled with gushy wedding details, and for that reason I have been trying to spare my friends and family. However, I feel like I am about to burst with excitement. So instead, I am going to use this blog as my blissful wedding detail escape. Also, if you happen to read this and feel like you have some excellent wedding planning advice, feel free to share in the comments. I will eventually write a post explaining the whole "Proposal Story" (Let's just say he knocked it out of the park...not to brag, but it was pretty perfect), but for now, I am sharing what I decided on for my "Will you be my bridesmaid?" gifts.

Step 1: My Bevy 

Choosing my girls was actually a little difficult. John and I decided on having 5 members each, which meant that I had to narrow down my list .. a lot. Choosing your girls can be such a potentially awkward situation. I definitely didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or offend family members. After a couple of days and multiple lists,  I was finally able to decide on my girls and I feel pretty good about my choices. 

My advice to anyone trying to choose their bridesmaids is to put feelings aside and choose the people who you can't imagine not having by your side on your special day.  :)

2. The Gift

Before I even started to look for ideas, I knew that whatever I did had to follow certain criteria. 

I wanted it to be something that I made. 

Being in a bridal party is a pretty big commitment both financially and time wise. I wanted it to feel like I put a lot of time into asking each girl. 

It had to be something that had multiple parts.

 Since all of my girls live in different cities, I knew that whatever I did was going do have to be sent in the mail. Since obviously I could't be there with each girl,  I wanted the gift itself to have layers so that opening it was a fun and special experience. 

I wanted something personalized for each girl.

This was very important to me! I wanted my girls to feel special, so whatever I chose had to be something that could be personalized for each girl. 

With my important criteria in mind, I went to the internet's hub of creativity, Pinterest for inspiration. There are SO many great ideas on there, but the one that really stuck out to me was the Bridesmaid Box. There are a ton of different boxes and examples for inspiration and I will link all of the blogs that I specifically used. This is something that you can totally make you own, which I loved! 

3. Putting Together The Boxes

First, I went to my local craft store and found the perfect box. (Oh so exciting ;) ) 

I loved the wooden box with a frame, because what better way to personalize something than with a picture?  

I panted the outside of the box with the aqua blue and the inside with a light pink. *Make sure that if you paint your box, that you remove all hardware first!* I also hand painted each girl's name on the front of their box. Once the boxes were painted, I used my phone and a photo app to put a black and white filter on the photos that I chose, and then printed them at my local CVS. I really like how they turned out! 

I lined the inside of each box with white tissue paper and filled it with the goodies that I chose. Then, I wrapped the tissue paper and topped it off with a hand written letter. This letter will be the first thing that my girls will see when they open their box. Here is my advice for writing these letters, write a draft first, and have a box of tissues sitting next to you while you write them. I don't know maybe it was just because I am an overly emotional person who feels too much, but I literally cried...hysterically when I wrote each letter. It was ridiculous. 

Picking out the goodies inside was a lot of fun! Since our wedding is going to be on the beach, I knew that I wanted to have a tropical theme.  

Sunglasses were a must, and I found this great Etsy page, JcDezigns where I was able to completely personalize each pair. The glasses were extremely affordable and they turned out better than I imagined! In fact, I love them so much, that now John and I want to get them for the entire wedding party. She has a lot of colors and fonts to choose from, so I highly recommend checking out her page!

For a little treat I put a handful of Lindor Chocolates and a mini Malibu Rum. :) 

Since I wasn't going to be there to explain anything, I wanted to include images to give a feel for our wedding inspiration. I used the collage app on my phone, POTO, to put together two collages of Pinterest images from my wedding inspiration board. I then printed them out at Walgreens (because they have a square option) and tied them together with a neat little bow. 

The final thing that my girls will find is the little packet of information. This seems to be pretty common with the whole box idea. You can write your own cards, but I also found a few blogs that offer free printables. ( The Wedding Scoop and Wedding Chicks were my favorite) I used the free cards from The Wedding Scoop because I really liked the look of them. I tweaked them a little to say what I wanted them to say and I added a "Dress Swatch Card". She has a "Your Role Card" that was REALLY cute. If you don't want to write your own,  I would definitely check out her free printable cards. 

My flower girl is only two, but I still wanted to get her something special so I found a cute flower necklace at Target and I panted a little heart box from the craft store to match the other boxes. 

When It came to wrapping the boxes, I simply used brown craft paper, pink tags from the Target dollar bin, and pink ribbon.  

Check out Pinterest for some more ideas (there are a ton!). You can really do whatever you want with the boxes, and overall they were pretty inexpensive. 

I am so proud of how they turned out, and I can't wait for my girls to receive them! 

XO, 

Mimi