DIY :: Happily Ever After Box

As a bridesmaid in Katie’s wedding, I knew my gift to her couldn’t be anything ordinary. It had to be personal, unique and representative of the couple. After hours of present research where nothing was quite “the one”, I had an idea. I’d make the happy couple a “Happily Ever After” box.

No, it wouldn’t contain glass slippers, and it certainly wouldn’t include 3 wishes. Instead, it’d be filled with a card to open for every year of marriage, in which a lyric from a love song would be written in the card. This way, on every anniversary, Katie and Andrew can open the card representing that year and dance to a love song. A gift that keeps on giving, as they say.

For my fellow DIY’ers who may be interested in creating a similar present, the details are below.

Step 1 :: Find a blank cardboard box and decorate it {I unfortunately only grabbed one picture of this step – sorry!}. The box I found was from Michael’s Craft Store, and I chose to paint the sides gold, glue a thick brown card stock to the top, and grabbed a “Happily Ever After” sticker for the side. The letters were painted the same gold as the sides of the box and were glued on with a hot glue gun. I hand-drew the ampersand with a gold sharpie, and hot glued the flowers onto the top to complete the box.

Step 2 :: The cards I chose were blank so that I could decorate them how I wanted. I glued flowers to every card front and used gold sharpie markers for the writing.

Step 3 :: Pick out love songs for your cards & start writing! The first card should be “The First Dance”, and there should be a card for every year following. {Note: This is a lot of cards, and my box wasn’t big enough to hold them all, so I ended up doing a card for every year from years 1 – 10, and a card for every 5 years for years 15 – 60}

Step 4 :: Put each card in an envelope and label the envelope according to the year.

Step 5 :: To help organize the cards, I bundled them into two sections: “Years 1 – 10” and then the rest were bundled under “And Beyond”.

Step 6 :: Place the cards in the box, and you’ve got yourself a nice little “Happily Ever After”.

Be sure to follow along on Instagram this weekend! We have Katie’s rehearsal dinner tonight, followed by the wedding on Saturday. I can’t wait!

Care to dance? Follow my lead.

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