Handkerchiefs
I am hand embroidering 6 handkerchiefs for our wedding. One each for me and my fiance, and our parents. This is what the handkerchiefs look like that I ordered.
This is what it looked like after I ironed on the pattern I designed in MS Word. I just printed it on that iron-on transfer paper, cut out the design and ironed them on. I made a template to slip under the handkerchief so I could make sure they were all aligned.
This is what the pattern looked like when I printed it out on the iron-on transfer paper and cut it out.
This is what ours look like finished. I am still working on the other 4. My future mother in law bought a plum dress for the wedding, so I will do the embroidery on her's & my future father in law's in purple. My mother hasn't picked out a dress yet, but I will do her's and my dad's in whatever color she picks out. I put the clubs upside down on ours. The clubs will be right side up on our parents. A 6 of clubs playing card has 4 clubs right side up and 2 upside down.
UPDATE (12/23/2009): I finished my FMIL & FFIL's today! Now I just have my parents' to do. Next week I'm going dress shopping with my mother, so maybe she'll pick her color then.
UPDATE (5/25/2010): I finished my mothers. I am almost done with my father's. My mother's dress is cornflower blue, so I picked a close color for the embroidery on my parents'.
UPDATE (12/23/2009): I finished my FMIL & FFIL's today! Now I just have my parents' to do. Next week I'm going dress shopping with my mother, so maybe she'll pick her color then.
UPDATE (5/25/2010): I finished my mothers. I am almost done with my father's. My mother's dress is cornflower blue, so I picked a close color for the embroidery on my parents'.
Out-of-Town Bags
We will be putting together gift bags for our out-of-town guests, most of whom will be visiting Boston for the first time. We are still deciding what to include, but so far these are our ideas:
1. The actual "bags" we got are Legal Sea Food Take-out bags!
2. Red or Blue Folder with our guide to Boston in it. It will include things to do, a list of restaurants, information about getting around the city, and an itinerary for our wedding weekend.
3. Red Sox Pencil
4. NECCO wafers
5. Legal Sea Foods Oyster Crackers
6. Cape Cod Potato Chips
7. Charlie Cards
8. Bottles of Water and/or Nantucket Nectars
9. Baked Beans Recipe
10. Aspirin/Tums/Band-aid
11. Hand written thank you note for coming
12. Lobster shaped candy: either lollipops or chocolate lobsters
13. Map of Boston
14. Hand Sanitizer
1. The actual "bags" we got are Legal Sea Food Take-out bags!
2. Red or Blue Folder with our guide to Boston in it. It will include things to do, a list of restaurants, information about getting around the city, and an itinerary for our wedding weekend.
3. Red Sox Pencil
4. NECCO wafers
5. Legal Sea Foods Oyster Crackers
6. Cape Cod Potato Chips
7. Charlie Cards
8. Bottles of Water and/or Nantucket Nectars
9. Baked Beans Recipe
10. Aspirin/Tums/Band-aid
11. Hand written thank you note for coming
12. Lobster shaped candy: either lollipops or chocolate lobsters
13. Map of Boston
14. Hand Sanitizer
Photo Sharing Cards
We printed these on blank index cards. We will include them in our thank yous--and might have some available at our reception too.
| photosharingcardtemplate.doc |
Stamps
I wanted to include my grandmother's wedding dress somehow into our wedding. We will be taking photographs of her dress in different settings and using the photos to have custom stamps printed to be used for our invitations, reply cards, & thank you notes. This is a picture of my grandparents on their wedding day. I LOVE her dress. If it wasn't so heavy/thick I might wear it myself!
Save the Dates
We are sending postcards through amazingmail.com. We used them for our engagement announcements and engagement party invites when we first got engaged. They have an awesome service. You design your postcard, upload the addresses in Excel format, and they send them out for you! It's so easy, and they are very reasonably priced (esp considering they do the addressing and shipping for you). My only complaint was that our engagement postcards were SO professional looking that some people thought they were junk mail and just threw them out (we ended up resending about a 1/2 dozen or so)!! Now that they know what to look for, hopefully our family & friends won't toss these without looking at them. :)
We have finished the design for the back of the postcard (see above), but are still working on the design for the front. I'll post it when we've finished. The pomegranate and tandem bike pics are also going to be used in our invitations I am designing.
Apologies for the grainy pics--these were taken from the proof .PDF file. The actual ones will be printed clearly.
We have finished the design for the back of the postcard (see above), but are still working on the design for the front. I'll post it when we've finished. The pomegranate and tandem bike pics are also going to be used in our invitations I am designing.
Apologies for the grainy pics--these were taken from the proof .PDF file. The actual ones will be printed clearly.
And here's the front of our save the date postcard.
Invitations
This is a labor of love. I designed, printed, cut, and put together our invitations. They are ivory & dark chocolate brown. They include:
dark brown outer envelope hand addressed with white calligraphy
ivory invitation: single sheet with dark brown printing
dark brown reply envelope stamped & hand addressed with white calligraphy
ivory reply card with dark brown printing customized with each guest's name & a line to RSVP for himself and guest for pre-wedding party, shuttle bus, ceremony & reception, and post-wedding brunch (if invited)
insert #1: ivory card dark brown printing with hotel/travel information for guests
insert #2: ivory card with dark brown printing with information/directions to pre-wedding party at Canobie Lake Park
insert #3: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about shuttle to wedding ceremony
insert #4: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about reception for guests
insert #5: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about post wedding brunch (for guests invited to brunch)
insert #6: ivory paper with dark brown printing with directions to wedding ceremony and map showing each venue location in relation to each other, hotels, etc.
dark brown outer envelope hand addressed with white calligraphy
ivory invitation: single sheet with dark brown printing
dark brown reply envelope stamped & hand addressed with white calligraphy
ivory reply card with dark brown printing customized with each guest's name & a line to RSVP for himself and guest for pre-wedding party, shuttle bus, ceremony & reception, and post-wedding brunch (if invited)
insert #1: ivory card dark brown printing with hotel/travel information for guests
insert #2: ivory card with dark brown printing with information/directions to pre-wedding party at Canobie Lake Park
insert #3: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about shuttle to wedding ceremony
insert #4: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about reception for guests
insert #5: ivory card with dark brown printing with information about post wedding brunch (for guests invited to brunch)
insert #6: ivory paper with dark brown printing with directions to wedding ceremony and map showing each venue location in relation to each other, hotels, etc.
front of outer envelope
back of outer envelope
close up of calligraphy
Envelopes
Dark brown linen cardstock envelopes from Paper & More. Hand calligraphy in white ink. Matching reply envelopes.
Thank Yous/Stationary
We wanted some simple stationary we could use for thank you cards, as well as personal notes in the future. We made a simple monogram in MS Word using a font we both like, and printed them in the same brown color we used for our invitations (RGB:36,15,0) on the same natural cream linen cardstock. It took a bit of trial & error to figure out how to center the image on the paper and have it print correctly on our printer, but in the end I used this template and put the printer setting to "2 per page." I printed one, then flipped the stack of paper and printed the other side. I then cut the paper in half using a paper cutter, folded each card, and paired them up with matching linen A2 envelopes. We both think they turned out great.
| thank_you_card_jn_final.doc |
Card box
Okay, so this is our idea: to park a tandem bicycle in the reception near the guestbook and attach a wicker bike basket with a lid (see pic below) in the front to hold the cards. We think if we use some heavy duty wire we can attach it really well on there, as well as rig the lid so that it's just open enough to slide the cards in, but so that it won't totally open (so none of the envelopes walk away without taking the whole bicycle). We will also put a little sign on it with a piece of ribbon that says "Cards," so people know that's where they are supposed to put them.
We think the tandem bike will also be awesome for some cute photos!
I bought this vintage blue Schwinn tandem bicycle from Boston Craigslist. It's it great condition. We think it's the perfect "classic" bike to fit with the style of our wedding. We might also add a little "Just Married" sign and some tin cans to the back.
The photo below is the basket I found online. I can't wait to see how this all fits together. We also have a drawing of a tandem bike on our map insert in our invitations.
We think the tandem bike will also be awesome for some cute photos!
I bought this vintage blue Schwinn tandem bicycle from Boston Craigslist. It's it great condition. We think it's the perfect "classic" bike to fit with the style of our wedding. We might also add a little "Just Married" sign and some tin cans to the back.
The photo below is the basket I found online. I can't wait to see how this all fits together. We also have a drawing of a tandem bike on our map insert in our invitations.
Tandem prototypes date back to the 1860s, perhaps earlier, according to Jack Goertz, co-editor of Double Talk, a tandem bicycling newsletter. But it wasn't until near the turn of the century that the bicycle built for two first gained great national attention. In 1897, as legend claims, Bobby Walthour, Sr., a champion cyclist of the era, suggested to his underage girlfriend they leave Birmingham, Alabama on their tandem, pedal across state boundaries and find a person in Georgia who would marry them. The duo traveled to several sites on a moonlit night looking for a person who would conduct their vows, before finally succeeding.
Word of the marriage spread quickly and was picked up by a reporter. Along with an accompanying verse, a picture of the couple on their tandem with Cupid sitting on the handlebars was printed in the local newspaper. A short while later, a songwriter added music and lyrics to the newspaper account and the ballad became known as "A Bicycle Built For Two." The chorus of the song ends: "It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, But you'll look sweet upon the seat, Of a bicycle built for two."
Excerpt from "A sport built for two - tandem bicycling," American Fitness, July-August, 1990 by James M. Rala
Word of the marriage spread quickly and was picked up by a reporter. Along with an accompanying verse, a picture of the couple on their tandem with Cupid sitting on the handlebars was printed in the local newspaper. A short while later, a songwriter added music and lyrics to the newspaper account and the ballad became known as "A Bicycle Built For Two." The chorus of the song ends: "It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, But you'll look sweet upon the seat, Of a bicycle built for two."
Excerpt from "A sport built for two - tandem bicycling," American Fitness, July-August, 1990 by James M. Rala
Sign for Shuttle Buses
We saw this and LOVED it! The couple attached helium filled balloons to where their hands are to make it look like they are holding them. We will be making a similar type of sign to direct our guests to the shuttle bus for when we go to Canobie and for our ceremony.
Remembrance
Most of our grandparents have passed: all but fiance's grandmother and step-grandfather. We will have our favorite photos of them when they were young in colorful frames on display. For my grandparents I will be using photos from their weddings in the early 1950s. For fiance's grandparents we will be using their wedding photo for one side and a photo of his grandfather at the track for the other side (his grandmother is still alive & kicking!). Here are some of the photos we will be using.
Guestbook
To go along with showing The Dot and the Line at the start of our ceremony, we are going to use illustrations from the book to make our own guestbook. We purchased a vintage manual Smith Corona Sterling Typewriter and plan on printing out pages with illustrations from The Dot and the Line at the top of a bunch of pages. Guests can then type us out a message below the image on the page using the typewriter, and after the ceremony we will have the pages bound. We will print out some instructions & typewriter "tips" for those who have never used a typewriter before (or haven't in a LONG time). We are very excited about this project!
Pic of the typewriter & pic of the tips sheet I made for our guests--I had to type it out 6 times before I got one without any typos :P
| guestbook_instructions.doc |
Programs
We're making our own programs. They will be very simple. We're using the same ivory 8-1/2 x 11'' cardstock we used for our invites, cutting them in half (lengthwise, so they'll be 4-1/4 x 11'') and simply printing on the front & back--haven't picked an ink color yet for that. On the front we will have the list of important people and the program for the ceremony, and on the back we are going to put "fun facts" about us to entertain people during the boring parts.
*grin* And our favorite part? We will have 7 different mustaches at the top of each program on the back. When guests hold the program in front of their face, they will have a funny mustache! Below are the mustache pictures J drew.
This is a pic of J holding up an example program. We <3 them!
*grin* And our favorite part? We will have 7 different mustaches at the top of each program on the back. When guests hold the program in front of their face, they will have a funny mustache! Below are the mustache pictures J drew.
This is a pic of J holding up an example program. We <3 them!
