Ring My Bell

While browsing the Weddingbee classifieds several months ago, I ran across this post.  The bride was selling items used in her winter wedding and one of the pictures showed 2 sparkle navy baskets.  I was less interested in the baskets themselves and more interested in what was inside the baskets. 

Image via Weddingbee.com

I was curious what the bells were used for as I couldn't read the tags.  I e-mailed the seller and she responded they had used the bells after their ceremony.  Each guest grabbed a bell on their way out of the church and when she and her new husband exited, everyone rang the bell.  This was her alternative to the bubbles, rice or confetti post-ceremony toss.

Now I had been racking my brain up until this point for ideas for our church exit.  Being that it is going to be cold outside, bubbles were out, and the church doesn't allow for things to be thrown if there is clean-up required.  I wanted something that would be quick and would fit in with the season.  These were perfect!

The seller was even kind enough to send me the phrase on the tags:

I'm a little jingle bell,

I'm here to wish the couple well.

Shake me, ring me loud and clear

When you see (bride) and (groom) appear.

My tinkling sound is here to convey,

Your love and good wishes on their special day.

Bring me along to the reception too,

So they may share a kiss for you!

This was too sweet and I liked that this offered a different take on clinking the glasses to get the couple to kiss. 

MOB (as mom likes to call herself these days) loved the idea as well and picked up packages of bells from Hobby Lobby.  I knew my Silhouette would be perfect for cutting tags so I loaded the image in the software, printed out the verses, and sent the pages through the machine to be cut.

See that black 'L' shaped design in the corner of the page?  That is a registration mark.  I told the software that I didn't want my phrase cut out, only the outside of the tag.  Before printing the sheets of phrases, I made sure to check the box to print the registration marks as well.  After inserting the sheet, the Silhouette detects these registration marks so it knows exactly where to cut!

The paper you are cutting (or fabric or vinyl, etc.) is placed on a tacky cutting mat that holds your media down while the machine cuts away.  In the photo above, I've pulled off some of the cardstock so you can see the cut lines. 



Here are the labels on the cutting mat after removing the excess paper.  I also removed one of the pieces from inside the label hole.  No need for a hole punch and a separate step - the Silhouette did it for me!

All that was left to do after cutting the tags was to tie them to the bells!  We bought spools of 1/8" navy ribbon and tied them together with a bow.

They turned out pretty well!  I originally wanted to use a navy tag with white text but I had some issues getting that to work (and perhaps a small melt down as well) so I switched to the white cardstock and navy ink.

I hope our guests think they are as adorable as I do!  We'll have a basket of them for people to grab after the ceremony and then someone will take the basket of extras to the reception for other guests.

What unique things have you seen for a post-ceremony "toss?"

All photos personal unless otherwise noted.