Wedding: Kala & Rob

I was, well, honored to have been asked to be Matron of Honor in the beautiful wedding of my friend Kala last weekend. As I blog, she and her new husband, Rob, have another week remaining of their Mexican honeymoon—nice!

The title of my blog looks strange to me—only because both Kala and I are Berkshire County natives. It seems like it should just read "Kala and Rob's Wedding." (This reminds me of a friend's question to me after I returned from a trip to China—he said, "So, do they just call it food there?") Anyway, the Berkshires actually played a significant role in this wedding. The hills offered a picturesque backdrop, and the crazy Berkshire weather did have an effect on the planned outdoor ceremony (this did not diminish the smile on Kala's face in the slightest!), but perhaps that was to be expected. Less expected was the decision of the bride and groom to name the tables after the famous cottages of the Gilded Age that populate the county. Researching this information and creating the table name cards was one of my (few!) duties as Matron, and I learned a lot of Berkshires history in the process. Mounting the cottage name and information on thick antique gold paper was a shiny, money-saving alternative to the copper frames we were originally planning to use. Below is the card from our table, The Mount—Edith Wharton's foreclosure-facing estate and gardens:


I also designed the programs for the ceremony, which incorporated both Italian and Jewish wedding traditions.


Many of the Jewish traditions were explained in the program, and I wanted to use the actual Hebrew words next to their English counterparts. This was unexpectedly problematic, basically due to a coding incompatibility between Unicode and InDesign. Although I had several Hebrew fonts on my Mac, and Wikipedia was a great source for the Hebrew words I needed (and my friend, Meira, knew enough Hebrew to make sure that Wikipedia got those words right), each word I cut from the web pasted in reverse letter order—not a mirror image—in InDesign. So, for example, the word "blog" pasted as "golb." It's an easy fix when you speak the language, but shuffling foreign letters around can be scary. This was further complicated by the accent-like vowel marks (nikkudot) that separated from the consonants to which they were attached when I tried to move them around. Oy vey! I solved this problem by converting the type to outlines (losing ability for edits), carefully rearranging the letters, and placing the new type image next to the English type. Perhaps there is an easier way?


This wedding provided the opportunity to participate in one of my strangest projects so far. The mother of the bride broke her foot not long before the wedding day—this, we thought, was tragic for a woman that was a constant presence on the dance floor at three other weddings this year. Of course, there's nothing that a few painkillers and some sparkly fabric can't cure! (Note: I am waiting to receive a photo of the glammed-up immobilization boot - in the meantime, here's the mother-of-the-bride's ceremony get-up...too funny!)

Wedding: Erin & John

John and I were married in November 2006. It took me some time to document the design-fest that took place between our engagement and "the big day." At last, I am posting the work, all of which I designed and made (or, in some cases, art directed, if you will) for our harvest-themed wedding. Yet another big round of thanks for the hands-on artistry of my family and friends!

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!

Baby Shower Invitation: Baby Madison

With the exception of two couples, all of the friends and family I grew up with have had baby boys. Statistically, things are way off - of the 17 children I have known to be born in the past 10 years, 15 of them are boys!

So, I'm very excited to have welcomed a baby girl into the family, and I was delighted to create the invitations for Baby Madison's shower. The design was inspired by the purple bedding and black furniture chosen for the nursery, and the mom-to-be suggested the honey-jar favors.

The nursery bedding pattern:

The invitation:

A close-up of the ribbon-fastener that also served as the butterfly's antennae:

A cute little honey favor:

Guest Book: Cape Cod

I was driven to create this ocean-inspired book after staying at our friends' home on the Cape on New Year's Eve of 2006. This one will nicely replace a makeshift guestbook in a 3-ring binder.

Birthday Invitation: Grandma's 80th

I am very happy to have finally crafted this photo album for my grandma, who is now 81, featuring the invitation and photos from her surprise 80th birthday party at the fabulous Pittsfield Elk's Club.

The birthday invite:


The lovely coordinating album:

Wedding Invitations: Josh & Twin

Our friends' June wedding will take place at Copia, a wine and food center in Napa Valley in California. I wanted to come up with a unique invitation design that spoke to the wineries of Napa without actually implementing illustrations of wine bottles, grapes, etc... To accomplish this, I employed cork paper — wonderfully crafted sheets of actual thinly sliced cork — and burgundy velvet ribbon to hint at the hue of red wine. I was inspired by a potential flower arrangement (chosen by the bride) containing chartreuse hydrangeas, and found that this color complimented both the decorative cork and rich velvet perfectly.






I made a guest book to go along with the invitations I designed for the lovely wedding we just attended in Napa Valley.



I also created a seating poster for the reception - rather than table numbers, each table was named "I love you" in a different language.



Placecards were created to match the chartreuse-based theme, held in place by corks, with wedding favor charity donation information Gocco screenprinted in gold ink on the back.




My friend, Kala, did a wonderful job with the table names and settings!