Crafting In The Name of Love

I've never really been much for arts and crafts, if I'm being honest. I never had the ideas, and if I did, I could never bring them to life. I was too busy or got too frustrated to ever stick to anything long enough to bring it into existence. I had friends who had Cricut machines and made tons of things by hand that ended up looking beautiful and helped them bring in extra cash. I was always envious and wished I could figure out something for myself to profit off of. I tried painting, I tried making bracelets, I tried refurbishing old furniture, but none of it stuck.

Then, I met my fiancée (who also isn't crafty, by the way). She changed my entire world. Flipped it on it's ends. Before meeting her, I was angry, depressed, destined to be alone and accepted that as a fact. I had been hurt, badly, several times over and wanted nothing to do with companionship or love. I saw her once and everything changed. I knew on that first day that I was going to marry her. I even told her so.

I don't think she believed me. She had been with another man for eight years, who proposed to her and she shot him down. She always told him, "What if you wake up one day and don't love me anymore?" and that was exactly what had happened, so she was a bit jaded to say the least. It wasn't enough to stop me, though. I proposed after only being with her for five months, no hesitation, no doubts, and her exact response was: "What? Yeah!"

We were engaged for 2 years before we started planning anything. We had always thought we would have to wait until we had LOADS more money to have the wedding we really wanted to have. Looking at all of the wedding websites, everything is expensive. Linens, signs, chair rentals, CATERING? Outrageous. There was no way we could ever afford all of that presently.

We decided though, to take the plunge and try our hand at a hands-on wedding.

Considering neither one of us is inherently wealthy and weddings are expensive, we decided to try and make as many pieces for the ceremony and reception as we could ourselves. Lanterns, centerpieces, champagne flutes, you name it. If we could have our hands in it, we did.

Scissors weren't necessarily a MAJOR part of anything we did, but it helped to have good quality ones when we did need them. They needed to be able to maneuver around vinyl lettering and be sharp enough to easily cut through ribbon (about a million times) without fraying the edges or bunching up.

In total, we made 22 custom champagne flutes, 31 center pieces, 17 lanterns, 9 necklace box cards, 10 custom hats, and cut about 10,000 pieces of ribbon all with the help of high quality scissors, which I suppose does make them a major part of our wedding crafts. It's the little things you don't think about until later that you realize really make a big difference.

For many people, scissors help them to create amazing things, to be creative and express themselves, and sometimes even make a profit off of something they love to do, and that's a beautiful thing. Scissors helped us to have the wedding of our dreams, a day that we'll never forget. They also helped us create memories of making everything for the wedding together, as hectic as it might have been sometimes. Most importantly, they helped to bring to life the wedding she never knew she wanted.