How to bustle a wedding dress with baling twine ... and other tips for the budget conscious bride (posted by Lorri)

Apparently, we are the marrying type in our family.  All four of us (my three daughters and myself) have gotten married in the past seven years.  Obviously, I've learned a lot from all the wedding extravaganzas.  Each daughter's wedding expressed their own individual tastes.
Since I am not a wealthy mom, each daughter had to choose was they felt was really important to include in their wedding.  I gave each daughter a set amount of money, they could either spend it, or receive a check for the balance not spent.  This system worked pretty darn well, I must say.
As any bride knows, it's all about the dress.  Having spent time at bridal stores, it seems the money really adds up with the accessories and the alterations.  I learned to make an elastic loop at the waist so the big fluffy slip (from wedding #1) was reused.  I have since learned that several friends have these slips at their house.  Borrowing one would make good sense.

Kelli's wedding dress (a beautiful beaded dress) was purchased from Ebay for $158, with the tags still intact. I am not a particularly brave E-bay shopper, but we took a leap of faith and ordered it.  I channeled my inner 4-Her and did some pleats and tucks and she looked beautiful.

The dress before being bustled.

Stephanie's dress had a lovely train that she wanted bustled for the reception.  For those who don't live in estrogen land, bustling a wedding dress is a way to gather up the train so the bride doesn't trip and crack her head open.  Well, I didn't really know how to to do this.  Having recently made roman shades, I had purchased a spool of ring tape.  This is a strip of twill tape with rings attached.  I hand stitched a row of this tape inside the train.

Ring tape stitched inside train

 I had run out of drapery cord, so I went to the garage to get the string that we used to tie up our tomatoes.

Bailing twine and spool of ring tape

This happened to be a spool of bailing twine my dad gave me some years back. Worked beautifully, I just tucked some twine in my mother-of-the-bride purse, and hitched that train right up after the wedding. 

The inside of the wedding dress, after being bustled.

Example of table decoration.  Other grains were used also, for variety.

Having handy aunts is always helpful, also.  Kelli and Stephanie married farm boys.  So, Aunt Sherry made table decorations with canning jars, filled with grain, topped with a votive candle holder and coordinating ribbon. Sherry is especially handy with tulle. Kay is always willing to help set up, also.

Wedding programs

We did similar programs for Kristy's wedding.  I used lavender spray paint to spray the paint sticks for her programs. I used quart sized cans of paint applied with a paintbrush for Stephanie's program sticks.  I would highly recommend using the cans of paint with a brush.  The spray paint was messier, and I'm pretty sure that I bought so many cans I was put on some spray paint huffing list at our local discount store.  I used spray adhesive to stick the front and back programs together.

Spy Games Posted by Lorri

My two 007's, Kristy at age10 and Kelli at age 7

Playing dress up was always a big hit at our house.   One of the girls favorite Christmas gifts was when I went to Goodwill, and bought all kinds of fun things to dress up with.  I added some colorful costume jewelry, and they were set.  Many a "Fashion Show" was staged in our basement, complete with flashlights for the runway lights.  I remember when the girls dressed up as spies, as seen in the above picture.  Still cracks me up just thinking about it.

Cows and whatnot - posted by Lorri

Kay is on the left, I am the enthusiastic one in the middle, Sherry smiling on the right.

As 4Hers, one of the projects that all three of us girls did was the Beef project.  Makes sense, I suppose, as we lived on a farm with cows and whatnot in the pasture.  I recall that Sherry really liked this project.  She fed, walked, washed and groomed her cows quite nicely. She ratted their tails, so they had that nice pouffy effect that was fashionable on livestock in the 60's and 70's. She could parade them around the show ring quite well, also.  I remember that I would much rather be sitting at the sewing machine, then improving my "cow whispering" skills.  Don't get me wrong, I like a good steak, and hamburgers are one of my favorite foods. And, I certainly appreciated depositing that check in my college savings account at the end of the Crawford County Fair Livestock Sale. 
Last weekend I saw a young lady wearing cowboy boots with shorts.  Who knew we were ahead of that fashion trend?

The end, part 2

House number 7:  Bohemian style

Paulie on the porch of house #7;  11:30 p.m.

Master bedroom in house 7, Isn't it beautiful!  We made that queen duvet cover in eggplant, the pillows are on the end of the bed , missing their pillow forms.  :)

Sorry, i couldn't get it all into one post. I hope I still have your attention.  By now its 10:00 p.m.;   Two sets of curtains had been hung, with 12 heavy gold drapes to go yet in the  house #7.  But since I hadn't eaten since noon, I was fading fast.  I was really hungry!!! They had promised us food at 10, but where was it?  Kay and I wandered all over the neighborhood looking for the free food. We also wandered in and out of houses, yards and garages.  One of the houses had a brand new sewing machine in the garage along with bikes, toys and books.  One yard had a mini skateboard ramp, one had a fen shwa (??) garden.  One construction crew was grilling pork chops behind one of the houses for their crew.  I almost grabbed one off their grill as we walked by, but I didn't think I could out run them. They were young and in pretty darn good shape.   Finally we found the food tent.  Several companies, like Dole, Blue Bunny, and Krispy Kreme had donated food for the workers.  Fresh fruit, deli wraps, baked chips, ice cream bars, and donuts got us fortified for the rest of the night. We carried a big box of food for our crew back to the church van and checked in at house #7.   Curtain rods for the gold drapes had been found and the hardware was going up. Inside this house  there were three girls painting flowers on the kitchen walls, four people framing pictures in the living room, several people putting together the bedrooms, the designer and a rep from Pier 1 who was providing the decor for the house and 5 of us trying to hang up curtains.And more people going in and out the doors, both front and back.   Accessories and furniture from Pier I sitting everywhere.  Its a wonder only one candlestick got broke.  They didn't even know for sure what they were going to use to decorate the house yet, but they had plenty to pick from. And there was more in the garage!  YOu can see some of it in the picture below.   It was such an adventure and pretty exciting. ( maybe it was all that sugar, but I was having lots of fun.)  Finally we got them all up, and they looked beautiful!

Pillow forms had not ever shown up , but the wallpaper for the master bedroom in house 6 had arrived on a plane from St. Louis.  The wall paper hangers got busy working, and it was only 11:00 p.m.  We walked out side and there on the porch was Tracy and Paulie from the show.  Just sitting there visiting with some of the other workers.  Probably important heads of construction companies, we weren't formally introduced.  I whip out kay's camera  to get a picture and it says:  battery exhausted. (kind of like us)  Even the camera was tired.  Used my cellphone to snap a couple of pictures, but the lighting wasn't very good on the porch in the middle of the night.  Oh well, it still was pretty exciting.  Now we had a decision to make, should we head for home or wait for the pillow forms to arrive.  Since it was now after midnight, we thought it best to head for home.  We were still short one curtain rod, pillow forms and the master bedroom in house 6 was still being papered.  But we were out of steam and fresh volunteers were arriving every hour on the hour.  They were letting a few in each house at a time to work, still unpacking clothes, kitchen supplies, pictures, etc.   We decided to leave some of the work for them to do and pack it up and head for home. I got home after 1:30 a.m. (Phil was in bed shivering without any quilt to keep him warm)  s It had truly been a once in a lifetime experience we would never forget.  To get to help in some small way to give back to these families who had suffered so much.  Two of the families moving into a couple of the houses had lost children in the tornado, all the families had lost their homes and all their possessions.  This was such a wonderful thing that the EMHE team and all the volunteers from every state in the US was doing for them, and it was an honor to be a part of it.  We didn't go back the next day to say in person "Move that Bus!"  but our hearts and prayers are with the families as they begin this new chapter in their lives.