Before the wedding
The Save-the-Dates for our wedding doubled as our holiday cards in 2005, allowing guests to pencil in the date on their new 2006 calendars.
I made a 4-panel accordion-folded card that featured the (altered) lyrics to the holiday song Winter Wonderland:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he is Parson Brown...
The final panel announced our wedding date and location AND wished our guests happy holidays.
Our wedding invitation was created with chiyogami Japanese paper and wonderful materials from The Paper Source. The first page of the invitation was hand screen-printed with a gocco printer. The second page contained a perforated reply postcard, which, when removed, left our guests with the invitation, information, and directions still nicely bundled together. Click on the image to see additional, rotating pages:
A close-up of the gold gocco ink used to print the first page of the invitation:
I gave myself a break from desiging the rehearsal invites (phew!) and bought these cute pre-printed blank cards. At each placesetting in the Chinese restaurant was a to-go container filled with M&Ms (for Murphy, of course!):
For dessert at the restaurant, I had custom fortune cookies made. They were dipped in different types of chocolate and covered with sprinkles, and contained amazing fortunes such as, "You will attend a wedding tomorrow."
At the church
The wedding ceremony program - click to see inside spreads:
Bundles of paper flowers hung on each pew:
Nothing compared to the real flowers I held, however, which were the creation of our friend, Joanne:
At the party
Guests entered the country club to find a (fake) pumpkin into which I carved our new initials. I had also created a pile of leaves from fall-colored papers, and added glitter to some oversized pinecones for extra festivity:
The welcome table, with table seating chart, guest book, and multi-tier cake-shaped card box:
Our guestbook was designed to look like a large version of the wedding invitation:
The fantastically autumnal carrot cake (made by our friend, Jeff):
Joanne also created our beautiful bundled wheat centerpieces:
The wheat sat upon squares of jewel-toned velvet cloth that were assembled and hand-debossed by my mom, creating a decorative leaf pattern (she made a quilt out of the combined squares!) - this photo really doesn't do the arrangement much justice, unfortunately:
Each guest received a personalized miniature accordion book as a wedding favor:
No two books were the same, as I chose a variety of jewel-toned and autumnal paper and ribbon to create the books. Here are some scraps from the bookbinding project:
My dad built the table number stands, which he painted gold.
The table number cards had a multi-color jewel-tone beaded border adhered with super sticky tape:
A coloring book for kid guests was placed in each child goodie bag (along with crayons, finger monsters, and animated flip books) - click to see a spread (illustrations adapted from iStockPhoto):
A menu card was placed at each table:
Cocktail napkins were gocco printed, and emphasized our love of music lyrics:
And, with cocktails sometimes comes the need for a ride home. I wanted our guests to know that there were alternatives to getting behind the wheel, and these table-tents were placed throughout the reception hall after dinner:
I rubber-stamped boxes of matchsticks in a November-y pattern so our guests might light up their celebratory cigars:
So many of the desserts we provided were generously made by our guests, themselves. I wanted to be sure to acknowledge their delicious contributions:
Also on the dessert table, I placed a bunch of self-addressed, stamped envelopes containing a blank CD. Most of our guests took digital photos throughout the day, and they were able to easily share their shots with us after the wedding:
The dessert table also had a basket full of miniature tabasco sauces, commemorating the Mexican restaurant where John and I met — so cute!
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