They Said Yes! Proposing to Our Wedding Party

One of the first things we wanted to do after announcing our engagement was to start working on a plan to ask our bridal party to be a part of our big day. We knew we wanted to make them feel extra special, so we came up with two boxes to present them with – one for the girls, and one for the guys.

I knew that for the ladies I really wanted to tie in our wedding colors and by this time we had decided on a dark plum purple, peach tones, a light apricot color, and gold accents. I went to Michael’s and picked out seven brown paper bag colored shoe boxes they carry for storage and spray painted them a shimmery gold color. While at Michael’s, I also picked up some ivory colored crinkle paper, sparkly gold and plum colored card stock/scrapbook paper as well as some plum colored fake flowers, and some purple and gold ribbon.

I ended up doing two coats of gold spray paint on each box, inside and out, and let them dry for at least 24 hours between coats. Once that was done, I measured the inside of the lid and cut the sparkly gold paper so that it would fit inside (it’s a tight fit, so this took some trials and readjusting). I then measured and the plum paper so that it was a size smaller than the gold paper on each size (I think I did about an inch or so). Next, I created the sayings for the inside of each box and printed them out on regular printer paper, but then measured and cut them so that they would fit on top of the purple paper showing about 1 inch or so of purple around the edge. I used Elmer’s rubber cement glue to glue the sparkly gold paper into the lid of each box, glue the purple paper in the center of that, and then the white paper with the phrases on top of that. Rubber cement is my holy grail glue for all crafting needs, unless it’s something which requires hot glue like the ribbon on top of the boxes. For that, I measured out the gold and purple ribbons so that the ends tucked under each short end of the boxes, then I used a hot glue gun to secure the ends there and used the glue gun again to secure the purple flowers in the center of the top of the box, holding the ribbon in place.

In my case I was asking an old friend, two cousins, my future sister-in-law, and two of my future cousin-in-laws so for the sayings I chose to go with one of two phrases, depending on who each box was for. For example, my cousin’s box lid read, “Paige, you’ve been my cousin forever, but now…will you be my bridesmaid?” and my future cousin-in-law’s box lid read, “Amanda, soon you’ll be my cousin, but until then…will you be my bridesmaid?”.

For the contents of the box I wanted it to tie into the wedding as much as possible with the colors, the season (fall), and the celebration, so I included the following:

1. A swatch of our wedding colors tied with ribbon. So simple – just go to your local Home Depot, pick out paint samples of the colors you want, cut them so that they layer on top of each other with each color showing, and tie with a ribbon of your accent color.
2. A pair of cozy fuzzy socks in plum purple. I picked up mine on a great sale at Target, rolled them up and tied them with gold ribbon
3. A mini fall scented candle in either white or orange from Bath & Body Works.
4. A celebratory drink (mini bottle of champagne or apple cider, as I had some under-age girls in my group as well as some non-drinkers). I was able to find the mini champagnes at Safeway and the mini ciders at Walmart.
5. A cute paper straw to sip the drink with. I chose gold and white straws. You can find these on Etsy, party stores, or stores like Target most of the time.
6. A sweet treat of fall truffles. I found a package of pumpkin shaped truffles at World Market for a really great price and put two in each box held inside an adorable wedding dress shaped treat bags.

I placed the ivory colored crinkle paper in the bottom of each box, arranged the gifts on top, and made sure to place the lids on.

For the guys. Cody went with something similar, but a bit simpler. He and his groomsmen are big Avenger fans, so he used that as his box theme and chose black colored shoe boxes from Michael’s so he didn’t need to spray paint his. This was what he included:

1. Avenger pint glasses. He was able to find pint glasses with the Avenger A on them through Amazon.
2. A celebratory drink with a label from Etsy (beer or root beer as he too had some non-drinkers in his group) 
3. A can of peanuts.
4. A personalized letter from S.H.I.E.L.D. summoning each of the groomsmen for an important mission (our wedding). He found a template online and we tweaked and personalized the wording.

Both  boxes were a hit! The ladies loved their boxes and I don’t think the guys were expecting anything like it. Everyone said yes, a couple of the girls cried, and Cody and I were thrilled to have them by our side on our Wedding day. This was by far one of our favorite parts of the whole wedding process.

Check out my other Wedding Series posts!