In recent years there has been a growing trend towards finding unique ways for your guests to send you off into your newly married bliss.  You can have your guests throw petals or confetti, blow bubbles, hold “congrats” signs, light lanterns or sparklers, ring bells or come up with something completely different.  (Like our own, Mrs. Hyena)

We chose to take the ribbon wand route.  (That many sparklers would freak me out, petals are expensive, and I didn’t want to use bubbles.)  I found a tutorial online, and went to Hobby Lobby to collect my materials. I followed the list of supplies the tutorial gave me, with a few tweaks. I went ahead and skipped the fray check it recommended and I bought considerably less ribbon.  The tutorial suggested putting 5 feet of ribbon on each wand, but that seemed ridiculously long to me.  I planned to only make the ribbon as long as the dowel, so I bought enough ribbon to use 1 foot on every dowel.

I don’t know if we were doing it incorrectly, or if I had bought the wrong size of eye screw, but getting the eye screw into the dowel was freakin’ impossible.  Mr. Scepter spent the better part of an afternoon doing this:

Sorry!  (Personal Photo)

While he worked on the hard part, I drank sangria and finished the rest of the process.  (Once we got the eye screws into the dowels, it was smooth sailing.) First, I attached a split ring on to the eye screw:

Personal Photo

Then I attached the bell to the split ring.

Then I cut 13 inch strips of ribbon and tied the ribbon to the slit ring.  I ended up using three kinds of ribbon.  I chose a smaller navy blue and white ribbon and tied them together, and I also used a larger patterned ribbon I found at Hobby Lobby.

Finished!  (Personal Photo)

All together – Personal Photo

We still have about 30ish more to make, but I love how they turned out.  I need to find a few cool vases or containers to put them all in, but I’m sure a trip to the antique store or to HomeGoods will solve that problem.  The only other thing I need to figure out is when we should use them.  Should our guests wave these at the end of our ceremony or at the end of the reception?  What do you think?   What are you using for your send off?