Reception Details

Sarah at Allium Designs was the only florist I met with who not only understood our "vision" for the wedding, but she encouraged our ideas. Other florists? "You want to use succulets? Like, cactuses??...::disgusted face::" "Hmm, I'm not sure I understand...your bridesmaids are wearing a different color than you want the flowers to be? Won't that not match?" "What do you mean 'tablescape'? You don't want just one big centerpiece in the middle of the table? We don't really do that..." etc, etc, etc...I was so relieved to meet her and am thrilled we left the florals in her hands!

The flowers were in a peach-pink-yellow palate and consisted mostly of peonies (!!she got them in July!!), garden roses, dahlias, ranunculus, and hydrangea. When I asked her if we could incorporate olive branches to make it feel more Spanish? Who cares that there are no olive trees even remotely close to Easton, she managed to get them for us! And, she kept me in check the entire time, working with me to stay within our budget.





The second photo shows our cookie favors from SomethingSweetsShoppe on Etsy. She put our monogram on different colored cookies.



We mixed lanterns, potted succulents, vintage bud vases, and smaller arrangements along rectangular tables to create a whole tablescape rather than one big centerpiece.





I created those 86 escort cards and I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of them. I love how they turned out and loved being able to use my own calligraphy for them! Trying to find excuses to do more things in calligraphy now. The escort cards and table numbers both had our Spanish tile pattern from our invitations on them.



{ all photos by Punam Bean }

Our guest book was made by my bridesmaid, Julie, and although it doesn't look like it in the photo above, we actually managed to get photos of all our guests at the wedding and had each person sign by their photo, just like a yearbook! It was a challenge to get all the photos, but it is one of my favorite mementos from the day!



{ this photo by the author }

Overall, I'm so happy with how the venue looked for our reception, although I can barely remember seeing any of it from that night! I'm glad that we have photos to show us what I missed while on cloud 9.

Did you really get to see what your venue looked like? Or were you in a total fog like I was?

Getting Ready

I woke up the morning of our wedding day at 6:30 to sunny skies and my mother playing "I'm Gettin' Married in the Mornin'" from My Fair Lady. It was a a beautiful day! After a shower and some juice the girls started showing up. Before I knew it, our hairdresser and makeup artist were already there and the preparations had begun! Our incredible florist, Sarah of Allium Design, dropped off the bouquets (3 bridesmaid, 1 flowergirl, and me!) at 8:30 before heading to setup the venue. I was floored at how beautiful they were! I think this was crying session #1 for my mom and step-mom?

{ all photos by Punam Bean }

I followed Sarah to our venue to drop some last minute things off (I had hoped to drop them off the day prior but our contact there never returned my phone call...?!?!?! What vendor doesn't call a bride back the day before her wedding?). The tables, place settings, linens, etc were to be set up the night before so that Sarah could just set up as soon as she got there at 9AM. Well...after waiting for the doors to finally be unlocked for us, this is what we walked in to:

After numerous phone calls to the girl we had been talking to and planning with for 14 months prior to our wedding in order to ask what the heck was going on, what do we learn? We learn that SHE IS ON VACATION AND DIDN'T TELL US.

Um, what? Even after she said the week before that she would be with us the entire time for our reception. I did my best though and restrained the bridezilla that had hatched inside of me. Besides, the people who I was with were not responsible for her actions, they were there to just figure out how to make it work. Sarah and her husband did an amazing job of figuring out how to keep me calm but work quickly as well. Anyway, I think you feel my frustration...let's just fast forward back to the fun stuff.

One of my bridesmaids was on tour with a drum & bugle corps all summer and flew from Denver to Philadelphia on a red eye the morning of the wedding. It was a little bit stressful for both of us (what if something happened with the flight??), but when I got back from the venue she had finally made it! Angel and Nicole (our hair and makeup artists) got to work with their magic and back at home things were running along quite smoothly. We finished up some last minute details, Julie and Caroline on the guest book and guest book sign (and Julie self-tannering her sock tan), while I finished an extra couple place cards. It was actually the first time we had all ever been together (not even for the shower, bachelorette party, or rehearsal) since everyone lives so far apart and I really enjoyed spending the morning with my favorite ladies.

Soon, Punam arrived and it was time for the finishing touches before getting dressed!

After makeup and hair were finished, I happened to look outside and see our transportation...a surprise from Kyle!

Not just one amazing car, but THREE vintage cars! A gift from a friend of Kyle's great-grandfather...even cooler.

The drama at the venue had pushed us all back a bit so the finishing touches were all kinda rushed and hectic...but totally fun and hilarious. Before I knew it, my bridesmaids were floating around in a flurry of blue getting me buttoned, zipped, primped, and ready to go!

Next up...I'll be a Mrs.!!

Welcome & Rehearsal Party

Most people thought I was crazy. Actually, I thought I was crazy at times too… but having a welcome party at our house instead of a traditional rehearsal dinner was one of the best ideas about the whole wedding weekend.

Before I get into the party itself, I want to quickly tell you about the week leading up to it. I’ve already blogged about the crafts and wedding-related tasks that filled our house the week of the wedding and how much a blessing it was having my sister and step-mom staying with us for a week before the big day. What I have not mentioned is the other visitors we had coming in and out of our house that week. Not family members, not friends, but instead? Contractors and workmen. Let me just put it this way:

Do NOT do major construction the week of the wedding unless you want to spend 50% of your time running back and forth between various home improvement stores, staying up until 7am painting, and installing toilet paper holders instead of being able to truly enjoy your manis and pedis rehearsal day.

The point of my story? It was absolute chaos leading up to our welcome party, making the fact that the party was a total success even more incredible! So, even though we had a lot of stress leading up to the day, here is what made our welcome party a success:

1. We hired help: I was hesitant at first since it would mean an extra expense, but I was *out of my mind* thinking I could play hostess to 80 people in our home and still be able to enjoy myself. My mom had suggested that we hire someone to be in charge of all the small stuff: setting up, clearing empty plates, refilling the food, taking out the trash, making sure fresh bottles of wine and beer were chilling, and all the things that I would have spent the entire evening doing if we hadn’t had our angel, Elvira. It made it possible for me to still enjoy getting a manicure with my step-mom and sister even though it made us about 15 minutes late to the party…I knew everything would be taken care of! I was actually a guest at our own party :)

2. Amazing but low-maintenance food: A friend of ours just graduated from the CIA. As our wedding present he did the food for the party. We wanted fancy barbecue food but it was important to us that most of it was grab-and-go: you could either eat with your hands or just a fork. The resulting menu? 4 different types of sliders (pineapple-mango, caramelized onion-blue cheese, plain, and barbecue I think?), lots of grilled veggies, bratwurst, a salad with a wonderful light vinaigrette, and other easy-to-devour goodies.

I hate to say it, but the food at our party was way better than the food at the reception.

3. Inviting everyone: Being able to spend time with everyone before the reception made the whole weekend so much more relaxed and enjoyable and gave us another opportunity to see our out of town friends and family.

Reunion with out of town friends!!

4. Inviting the neighbors: If you invite the neighbors who usually call the cops about EVERYTHING, they’ll be too busy downing sliders to notice that your great uncle is double parked in the street :)

5. Enough seating: Seems like a small and obvious detail, but since we had the party at our house, we had to make sure we had room enough to seat lots of people. We were lucky enough to have a family member who had access to a bunch of folding chairs and tables (Thanks Uncle Billy!)…can you imaging grandpa and grandma sitting on the ground? Yeah.

6. Help from family members and friends: buying food, drinks, setting up, cleaning up…it was all about delegating! The party would definitely not have been a success if everyone hadn’t pitched in to help!

{all photos by the author}

My mom and Me!

Did anyone else choose to do something aside from a traditional rehearsal dinner? How did it go? Would you do it the same way again?

Inspired by Letters

Planning a wedding has opened me up to so many new things in so many different areas. While I expected to learn about wedding etiquette, dress styles and fabrics, invitation wording...you know, the stereotypical wedding stuff, what surprises me the most is how much I learned about graphic design and print. Well, maybe not learned, but was exposed to...I still feel like I know nothing about it but at least have seen some of what is out there...and now I am starving for more.

Since the wedding, it seems I can't get enough of anything artistic...whether it's print, photography, even dance (I was a dance major for my undergrad). Maybe it's because I know hardly anything about it, or maybe it's from studying a bit of calligraphy to get ready for the wedding, but I've been somewhat infatuated with graphic design for the past couple weeks...letterforms and typography in particular. Even for my wedding, using a font I loved was important to me, but now that I have a lot more free time, I've been trying to learn more about type and checking into different artists that catch my eye.

This brings me to where I was tonight. While I can't remember where I first heard about her (I do know it was somewhere in the 100+ wedding blogs I follow daily...most likely from the always-inspirational Nole at Oh So Beautiful Paper...), Jessica Hische had a way of popping up several times in my wedding planning. I think the biggest influence was from her "Hendrix" wedding invitations on Bella Figura:



I also remember seeing the work she did for Tiffany & Co.:



{ via JessicaHische.com }

The exhibition I went to see tonight at Art in the Age in Philadelphia though was of her Daily Drop Cap project:

"The Daily Drop Cap is an ongoing project by typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische. Each day (or at least each WORK day), a new hand-crafted decorative initial cap will be posted for your enjoyment and for the beautification of blog posts everywhere." { from DailyDropCap.com }




{ via Jessica Hische }

I went down to Philly right after work and was looking forward to seeing some of her prints in person. I felt a little out of my element and imagined that everyone else in there were all graphic designers/art students so I just casually checked everything out in the super-cool place while making my way to the back to see all the prints. I ended up talking to Daniel, the guy who is actually the curator for Art in the Age for a little bit! I explained my love of and appreciation for but lack of knowledge about type and design. He was super-nice as we discussed Jessica's work and even offered to take a picture of me in front of the prints with my iPhone:



He definitely made me feel more comfortable. I was able to meet Jessica and chat with her for a little while too. She was so friendly and encouraged me to keep feeding my love of type. I picked her brain about letterpress, how calligraphy can help with understanding letterforms, and how I should expand my vocabulary of letterform variations (...did I just geek out there for a minute?). Before leaving, I did end up purchasing the F unmounted print (although I had asked the girl working the desk if they had her ampersand print which is my absolute FAVORITE of the letterpressed ones, to which I received the response..."am...amp...huh?" Sigh. Oh well, maybe once I can fit another print in the budget?) and a little present for Mr. that was totally unrelated to Jessica's prints.

While her letters are "not for use in personal logos and branding", I can't help but be inspired by how one letter can completely change the feel of a document. Anyone else feel me here? So even though I'm already a huge fan of invitations that incorporate a unique font overall...



{ via RIFLE }



{ via Oh So Beautiful Paper }

...I'd be interested to see how the concept of a Daily Drop Cap could be incorporated into an invitation suite, aside from the traditional monogram.

First thing that comes to mind is the M on the reply card...the one where you're supposed to fill in your name after?



{ via Minted ... I don't think it'd look right with this type of RSVP but just so you know what "M" I'm talking about... }

Anyone else have any ideas? I would LOVE to receive an invitation that uses type creatively and it would certainly make me even more excited for the event! ...Is that bad?

It was awesome to be able to take the trip down to Art in the Age and meet Jessica. I am even more a fan of her work now than I was before! I will certainly have to get her ampersand print in the future too :)

Has anyone else developed a new, unexpected interest while wedding planning?

The Little Details - II

Here is round 2 or our wedding projects!

Our programs were inspired by Cyd's cute little booklet programs (I even had the same corner punch from when we did our save the dates! Hope that's not too weird, Cyd...). I loved how mini they were so I made little 4.25"x 5.5" booklets for our programs, printed all here at home on our printer.



Slicing and dicing...



Folding...



The finished product!

Another project I broke out the paper cutter for was our table numbers. I had some left over envelope lining paper so i used that as the background and then glue-sticked (glue-stuck?) the numbers on.



My sister, and MOH, Caroline, needs to open up her own Etsy shop. She did such a wonderful job with the bridesmaids' jewelry: aqua pearl bracelet for herself, blue drop earrings and a blue lariat necklace for the other two bridesmaids. Pardon the beautiful blue printed paper towel in the background...



And some stalker photos from facebook to go with it...

Julie's lariat necklace:



Megan's earrings:



No good action photos of Caroline's bracelet, but it certainly looked cute on her.

{ all photos from author's private collection }

Speaking of how ridiculously talented my sister is, I wanted to include one of the photos that she took from the wedding as well.



Can you believe she is only 18? Starting school in Minnesota this fall for art education and photography. She actually is booked for her first wedding next year. Can't wait to see how those turn out.

The last photo of hers I'll share is one of my favorite from the end of the night...a very happy, teary-eyed bride, and four-legged best friend.



Was anyone else lucky enough to have a family member or close friend offer up their talents in order to help out in a big way for their wedding?

The Little Details

Understatement of the year: I feel like I spent a lot of time planning this wedding. But the end result? A day filled not only with people that we love but details that I loved as well!

We are still waiting for our official photos from Punam Bean, but in the meantime I'll share with you some of the projects we took on for the wedding.

Early on, I was inspired by this tutorial on The Bride's Cafe and decided to make one similar using our CK monogram that my mom created. I was lucky enough to be substitute teaching for a couple months so I used an old teacher trick to start out the project. I printed out the CK on a sheet of 8.5x11 paper and then traced it onto a transparency sheet. I threw the sheet up on the overhead projector and then traced the projection onto a larger sheet of paper. That larger paper is what I used to create the wire frames for the monogram.



I then followed the instructions in the tutorial and wrapped both moss (I just got the fake stuff from Michael's for this project) and some seeded eucalyptus onto the frame with floral wire. To finish it off, I attached two small sedums onto each of the monograms (the photo below only shows one though...I added those on the wire last minute because they wouldn't last as long out of water).



A quick little project that we also did was our welcome bags for the hotel guests. I was shocked, but Mr. actually took the lead on assembling these. Once I brought home all the stuff to make them, he just started putting the bags together. I did have to stop him so I could stuff the bags with colorful tissue and put our monogram sticker on it (which I still have about 200 of...any ideas what to use them for?)



We filled the bags with some of our favorites: pretzels, trail mix, gum, york peppermint patties, tootsie rolls, and a couple bottles of water. I love how colorful they were! Although they were not expensive to make and we didn't make them very fancy, they were very much appreciated by all our wedding guests who stayed at the hotel.

Thank goodness for my sister and my stepmom. They came in from South Dakota before the wedding and spent a LOT of time helping me with the last minute details for the wedding. One of which were the table runners! I had a difficult time finding affordable fabric that I liked, and finally I found a natural colored linen type fabric from Ikea at something crazy like $2.50/yd. My sister, stepmom, and I tirelessly cut, steam-a-seamed, and ironed until we had 10 beautiful 10 ft table runners!





Although now I have 10 10' natural colored table runners (and fabric cut to make 2 more)...anyone need them?

My favorite detail and HANDS DOWN the most time consuming (from studying and practicing calligraphy...to messing around with different inks and finally deciding that no calligraphy ink I could afford wouldn't bleed on the escort cards I had already ordered...to actually doing the calligraphy itself) was our escort cards.

I was inspired by calligraphers like Jenna Hein and Laura Hooper but actually using them for our wedding did not fit into our budget. So, I set to it myself, buying a book on copperplate calligraphy last summer and practicing the basics until I felt somewhat comfortable enough to start playing around with the traditional style to get something a little more whimsical. Here's the final result:



For the actual arrangement of the escort cards, I once again was inspired by a tutorial on Bride's Cafe. The moss I used was real moss so it was a bit of a pain to keep misted and fresh until the wedding, so if you try it and use real moss (I think it made a difference to use real) I'd definitely suggest to do it as close to the wedding as will keep you sane.



I am so so so happy with how they turned out! Although it was ridiculously time consuming, it is probably my favorite detail that I created for our wedding.

{ all photos from author's personal collection }

What was your favorite project from your wedding? Was it the project that took you longest to complete?

We did!

…and now we’re heading north for our honeymoon! But before we leave, I wanted to share the sneak peek Punam sent to us:

{photo by Punam Bean}

We spread the festivities out all weekend and are now thoroughly exhausted! Time for some rest and relaxation with my husband. Can’t wait to share more when we get back!

A Fourth of July Riddle

Here's a good one for ya:

What's red, blue, and white all over?

The answer?

Hopefully not me on my wedding day!!!

With 8 days left until the wedding, I've been working very hard to get rid of the cuts, bruises, and marks I get from my daily klutzy life. I have my 3x daily routine:

Neosporin for any cuts or scrapes



Mederma for the marks left by said cuts and scrapes (and the huge burn mark on my left hand from the oven in December)



Arnica gel for bruises



Lots of stuff, right?? Just to make sure I'm not all black and blue and completely cut up. Should be enough to keep our photographer from spending even more hours photoshopping, right? Well, I'll share with you the letter I wrote yesterday.

Dear Mr. Poison Ivy,

Seriously?

-Me

Um, has anyone else been smart enough to do yardwork in a yard full of poison ivy 2 weeks before your wedding? Sigh. Yes, with 8 days to go, I now have a few beautiful spots on my left forearm and all over the back of my neck (thank goodness I'm not doing an up-do!). So now I add to the list:

Ivarest wash (for the shower)



Ivy-Dry



My stepmom says Ivy it's the best, so I'll let you know after the wedding how things went. Keep your fingers crossed!

{ images via drugstore.com; ivydry.com }

Dear Mr. Zit,

Wherever you're vacationing, I hope you're enjoying it! Please feel free to remain there for the next 9 days...I'll cover your bar tab!

Thanks,
me

Do you have any favorite remedies for poison ivy? Did you have any major skin issues right before your wedding?? If so, how did you deal with it?

It's not you, it's me

I have difficulty committing sometimes. I take a long time making my final decision, especially in something as serious and important as this! I mean, it's not like it's something that will only last a moment and then be over...maybe I rushed into things?

I wasn't having second thoughts until I saw my other options. Although I thought my decision was the right one, it turns out there are other fish in the sea. Sigh.

This story is about my new fish, Eavan.

At the time, I had already made my choice and committed to Sheila for our wedding day:



{ via Amazon }

I was happy with my decision. Very excited in fact, talk about party shoes!!! Way fun. I couldn't wait to spend the whole night with her. Or so I thought...

We were shopping for bridesmaids shoes and decided on these beauties for all the girls:



{ via Aldo }

They look so cute on and all the girls are very excited to wear them again after the wedding. I read somewhere that nude shoes make your legs look longer, total plus!! As I said though, I take a while to finally commit to things so I still wanted to walk around a bit to see if there was anything else we liked. Unfortunately, the shoes I found next were not to be for the bridesmaids.



{ via Zappos }

Meet Eavan. She had style, she had flair, she was there (as in, at the outlet on sale...and um, please tell me someone gets this reference)! Although I felt so glamorous when I put them on, they were still way more than what I wanted to spend...especially when I found a pair of shoes that I already liked. I just couldn't see spending that much money, even if they were already significantly reduced.

Oh, but "I'll give you 30% off" says the woman. Excuse me...What??? Quick mental math and I realized that made them only $10 more than the pink ones. Yes please!! I'm sorry Sheila, but I'm going to have to go with Eavan. Sold.

While I'm not big on bling, I'm excited to have a little more glam on my wedding day. I like to keep things pretty simple, clean, and low on the bling factor, but I think these give just the right amount to balance out with everything else I'm wearing that day. I'm happy I found these shoes and while I'm sure I would have still loved the original ones and been just as happy, I'm ridiculously excited that I'll be wearing the new ones!

Did you change your mind on anything you were going to wear less than a month before your wedding day?