Wedding garters: Fancy schmancy and dinofied!

One of my really good friends Lindsay got married last weekend in a absolutely beautiful ceremony in Brocton, NY. We met as undergrads at RIT and both went through the whole switching from art to science together...and that was a bonding experience! Anyways Lindsay gave me the honor of sewing her wedding garters - both the whimsical one to be thrown at the ceremony and the fancy one for her to keep. I have never made a garter before but I was up for the challenge. I unfortunately couldn't use my sewing machine that I am now officially addicted to because I was nervous ripping all the lace and ribbon. So sewing by hand it was!

Anyways, for the whimsical garter, I was given one key word - dinosaur. I used this pink and black garter featuring Betty Boop as inspiration, changing the pink for red to incorporate Lindsay's favorite colors: red and black!

 














Here's a close up of the dinosaur charm. Talk about an awesome find!
















For the fancy garter, Lindsay showed me a photo of this beautiful tulle garter as a sample of what she wanted. That may or may not have led to hours spent scoping out other absolutely beautiful garters on Etsy...anyways here's what I came up with.

 












Here's a close up of the beautiful, vintage-inspired charm I found for the garter.
















Here's the fancy garter all packed up neatly in a simple white box. 

I decorated the simple white boxes (made with white cardstock paper) with light yellow ribbon and some green patterned scrapbooking paper (yellow, green and white were the colors for the wedding). I also added some pearls for an elegant look.

A close up of the gift tag and the pearls.

Thanks for looking!