I Have A Bridal Party!!! Part 1

So one of the few things that I got done while we were back home was invite my friends to be in my bridal party! This was really exciting and I'd spent hours thinking about how to ask them. As a side note, it's so interesting to see the differences between men and women in these situations. Mr. Milk just straight up asked his guys to be in the bridal party. Some he went out for a coffee with and asked them, others he did over the phone, but either way it was quick and simple! Not that way for me!

To begin with the selection was hard for me. There were some people who I knew I wanted by my side for sure on that day, but the problem is I didn't want a large bridal party, 4 max, and Mr. Milk didn't want one at all. He just wanted his best man and that was it. So my sweetie is compromising big time for me! But I think I struggled most with the idea of disappointing or offending the people I couldn't include. I talked it over for hours and hours with Mr. Milk and got his input too. Again due to the long distance and us living in North America while most of our our close friends are in Europe, it has been hard to get to know all of each others special people. But after months of contemplating, and a series of events that sealed my ideas (I won't go into the details of these) I was able to put aside my feelings about offending others and be true to myself.

While I was trying to decide who to invite to be in the bridal party, I was also thinking about how to ask them. I had seen on a number of blogs, including Born to be Mrs. Beever's, that some brides-to-be were asking their friends by taking photos of themselves with the friend and turning those into puzzles. I loved the idea. I looked into a variety of sites that would do this, but shipping to Canada cost almost as much as the puzzles put together! Or the ones that were decently priced came in 200 pieces, not ideal! Then I thought about going the DIY route. Lets just say that was a HUGE failure! I even got Mr. Milk involved in trying to figure this out, as he as far better at these things than I. But alas, no success. 

A week or so before we left, I thought I was just going to place the pictures with "be my bridesmaid/maid of honor?" photoshoped on them into cute frames and present those to the girls as Christmas gifts, when Mr. Milk came up with the idea of turning the pics into magnets. I remembered seeing magnetic sheets with an adhesive side at our local craft store and new this would be an quick, inexpensive way to get something close to a puzzle. 

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So I bought one sheet of this stuff (which was more than enough) and set to work creating my puzzles. While the magnetic sheet was really easy to cut through, I decided that instead of having regular puzzle pieces I would just cut them all into 1 inch squares to make it easier and not ruin the pics. While at the craft store, I also found little square tins to place the cut magnet pic into.

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I used the cutter at Mr. Milk's work to get my squares, tied the pieces together in a small deck, wrapped them in blue tissue paper with the instructions "use the fridge to help you answer the question". I then presented my ladies with these:

The pink post-it had the girls name on it so I would know which ones to give to who! Stay tuned for Part 2, where I actually show you what went into these pretty boxes.

How did you ask your ladies to be in your bridal party?