Finished: Out of Town Bags

You may have learned from my previous post that I finished our Out of Town Bags (or OOTs for short). I wanted to share with you the design and contents of the bags for some last minute inspiration before I skip out of town on Thursday.
  
So you may remember that we used fabric spray paint to draw the design of Cathedral Rock in Sedona,AZ (also my blog header) onto each bag. We also tied on a little hang tag, printed by www.UPrinting.com, and then attached 3 beautiful buttons. The buttons (Kawaii Cactus, Space Cowboy and Vampire Cupcake) are a Steam Crow design.


Now let’s have a look on the inside…


Contents:

• An information folder with our timeline, restaurant reviews, locations of banks/salons/churches etc.
• 2 bottles of water (essential in Arizona)
• 2 Arizona Chocolate Bars
• 1 package of popcorn
• 1 bag of cookies
• 2 bags of peanuts

What do you think of our Out of Town Bags? Are you doing “Out of Town Bags?” What’s inside yours?

Mini Me...

Ok, remember how I won $150 to Pose Prints? Well originally I wanted to order Magnets for my graduation... well except for the fact that I don't want people to BE at my graduation... I'll have enough people staring at me 2 weeks later at the wedding. Enter the OOT Folders...

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Well I wanted to display our contact information in a cute way....

And behold... Pose Prints also does customizable cards! Sooooo we decided to make a cute version of us with our contact information for our guests...

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The only bad word I have to say about Pose Prints was a lack of Red Hair selections. We ended up making Mr. AZ dirty blonde- which he is not. He's got nice auburn hair and there were two red options- Fire Truck Red and Orange.

And yes the real version does have our phone number and email address, but it's not for readers eyes...

Adorable no? And pocket sized in case of emergency. I know I'm super paranoid but my fiancé did have his appendix taken out whilst attending an out of state wedding last year.... emergencies happen regardless of it "being our big day."

ANYWAY, back onto Pose Prints... I had some leftover gift certificate to spend and went ahead and got these...

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Personalized stationary  sans veil... because as MOH says "one day you will be over veils." A sad thought but an altogether true one. 

So do you have "wedding caricatures?" How are you using your mini-mes?

PSA: Emergencies Happen...

I would like to take a brief pause from sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, and all the happy things related to weddings to bring you this public service announcement....

Emergencies Happen.... 

even at Weddings.

There I said it... but why?

This past July my fiancé and I flew from Arizona to upstate New York for the nuptials of my friend....

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About 1 hour into the flight the fiancé started having what was described as "an upset stomach." No problem, we thought,  we're lactose intolerant- stomach aches happen.  It continued to progress, and the symptom became more severe. By the time we landed it was apparent I would need to drive. So he took pain killers and I drove us to the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at...when we got there it was nearly 10pm. That is when the pain started to localize to his right side, he became feverish and broke out into a cold sweat.

Uh-oh! Appendicitis!

Yup for a male in otherwise good health that is the absolutely ONLY diagnosis for his type of symptoms. We broke out the handy dandy GPS, which I never leave the state without (because... emergencies happen), and followed the hospital signs....

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So it's nearly 11pm the night before my friend's wedding... and where were we?

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The Cayuga Medical Center... which for your knowledge has wonderful physicians, nurses, and overlooks one of the fingerlakes. And my fiancé was seen and scheduled for surgery at 8am.

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His appendix was removed and we missed the wedding. But we did get snapshots, doesn't my friend R look beautiful?

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Anyway it was this very experience (and the fact that 100% of our guests are from out of town) that led us to put the following information into our OOT folders...

Medical Facilities 

Although we hope you will not need to use this information, we thought it best to include in case of emergency. We learned the hard way that knowing where the closest medical facility is, even when at an out-of-town wedding, is very important. Dirk had his appendix out at just such an occasion this year.

Verde Valley Medical Center- Sedona Campus

(928)204-3000 or 911 in case of emergency
3700 W. State Route 89A, Sedona, AZ

Sedona Urgent Care

(928) 203-4813

2530 W Highway 89A # A, Sedona, AZ

Are you a worrier? Will you be including any medical information in any form for your guests? Do you have an "emergency plan" for your wedding?

OOT Bags- Inside the Folder

Remember the DIY Stencil and the OOT Bags? Well in addition to the munchies inside we will be placing an "informational packet". But I wanted it to look a little better than say a bunch of paper that's been stapled. So enter the DIY Stencil...

Our first idea was to use the regular stencil to make the folders a little less blah looking. Unfortunately the stencil of Cathedral Rock was a bit large, so we decided to try it out as a half front/half back sort of image... but that didn't work out exactly as we'd planned, take a look for yourselves...

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So were were forced to try a few other ideas...

We tried it more centered in the middle of the folder.... to no avail...

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But then we realized we also had the negative of the image and we tried that as a stencil....

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Perfection!!! We had our image... a beautiful sort of "nighttime" feeling of the beautiful Cathedral Rock in Sedona, AZ. So you've seen the folder, but what are we filling it with you ask?

A Welcome Letter

Information about the Area including Airports....

Shops and Salons....

Medical Facilities - yes my Fiance had his appendix out at a Wedding last year, emergencies happen!

And our personal reviews of Sedona restaurants, complete with Wedding Cake rating scale!!

How are you helping your guests to feel more at ease/at home? Are you making an informational folder?

OOT Bags

Well you've seen the DIY Stencil, but where did it work it's magic you might ask?

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Well you might remember that we had both the stencil and the negative of the stencil.... this is the story of the regular stencil and the OOT Bags. Come join us, won't you?

After making the stencil and buying the canvas bags from CheapTotes.com the only other thing we needed was fabric paint. But a dilemma, we didn't want the image to be too dark that it would bleed through. So we wandered around a Michaels one night and Eureka!

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The exact garnet/crimson color we were looking for. And what did the bottle say, spray paint- that's appropriate for FABRIC? Be-still my heart! Needless to say we got to crafting....

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You might recognize the stencil...

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The best part about this DIY project was the beautiful differences we got in every bag. The shading of the rock formation was always a bit different and it wound up looking a lot like the red rock formation that inspired it. Are you using any natural elements or iconic images from the area you're getting married?

Local OOT Bags

We already discussed how our OOT bags will be customized with the beautiful silhouette of Cathedral Rock in Sedona. But what to put INSIDE the OOT bags? We love going to a lot of farmer's markets throughout our Tempe/Ahwatukee area. Including: Ahwatukee Farmer's Market, Mill Ave Farmer's Market and Scottsdale Old Town Farmer's Market. 

Going to a Farmer's Market is the best way to find fabulous local companies:

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The Made by Bees company even mentioned to us that they do 4oz wedding favors complete with custom labels that read "Bride's Name+Groom's Name, Meant to Bee"

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These chocolate truffles offer a local alternative to Godiva with the same quality.

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As well as fresh + beautiful local flowers!

Most of the local sourced items we have found at the above Farmer's Markets have been comparable in price to their non-local counterparts. So we've devised a wonderful list of items to fill the bags with [if you are attending our wedding as guest please do not read on...] including:

• Made by Bees Desert Wildflower Honey
• Made by Bees Prickly Pear Jam (amazing!)
• Cowboy Chocolates
• Popcorn (from Costco)
• Cookies (from Costco)
• Perhaps a box of Truffles (depending on budget constraints)

Are you going Local in your wedding favors or OOT bags?

DIY Stencil

The wonderful and not so wonderful part about having a beautiful Sedona wedding is that everyone, literally everyone is an out of town guest. Since we only have about 60 guests total we decided to go whole hog and make beautiful little out of town bags that were inspired by Weddingbee.

On the multiple recommendations from Weddingbees, we set out to order from CheapTotes. But we still had one problem, the image we wanted on the canvas tote bags was detailed and larger than we could order, even from Impress Rubber Stamps! Never fear, as I have mentioned my Fiance's Sister is an art teacher and her husband is a graphic artist. They came to the rescue and made a crisp black and white silhouette of the beautiful mountain I wanted to put on the totes. They ended up finding this beautiful image of Cathedral Rock in Sedona, and used it to make an outline.

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Then my Fiance took a piece of plastic and carved out the silhouette using their light table...

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We ended up with two stencils really: a positive and a negative. We will be using the stencil to spray paint the image of Cathedral Rock onto of the canvas bags. Hopefully we will be able to show you finished OOT bags soon! Stay tuned for what we're putting INSIDE the OOT bags!