Sew Happy Programs

I love, love invitations that incorporate hand-lettering or illustration, particularly the work of Florida-based illustrator Anna Melcon Bond of Rifle Design.  Anna seems to effortlessly blend traditional illustration with folk art elements to create some of the most lovely Save the Dates and wedding invitations.

Yesterday was my birthday and after a long search, I finally found and purchased a Gocco as my birthday gift to myself. I’ve basically been on the fence about purchasing a Gocco for a year at this point and naturally, by the time I realized just how much I wanted one they were completely sold out basically everywhere. Oops! Oh well, after some sleuthing and a shout out on my blog and some great tips from my readers, I found one and it is supposed to ship today. Hooray! So in the spirit of all things Gocco, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Gocco inspiration.

Last week was all about invitations, but this week I thought I’d focus on Save the Dates – an important part of any wedding planning process and one of my favorite wedding stationery elements.

The past week or so has been a sort of unintentional woodgrain week over at Oh So Beautiful Paper – all starting with these DIY woodgrain save the dates.  Although woodgrain (also referred to as faux bois) has been popping up in weddings over the past few years, it really seems to be picking up steam as a trend – particularly in wedding stationery – this year.

While invitations are undoubtedly the most important element of a wedding stationery suite, it’s equally as important to not forget about other wedding paper ephemera – like seating cards!  Whether place cards or escort cards*, seating cards can help carry design elements from your invitation suite or wedding theme through to the reception and create a cohesive wedding style.  Here are a few of my favorite seating card options:

It’s been a busy week.  I got my dream job offer, flew to DC, found an apartment, and have packed 7 fridge-sized boxes since yesterday in preparation for my big move to DC this weekend.  Although this means my fiance and I will continue our long-distance relationship for another 6 months or so before we re-evaluate our next move, NYC (where he lives) is a lot closer to DC than Africa was (where I was living last year).

I love letterpress, but wedding budgets don’t always allow for letterpress or engraved invitations, particularly in today’s difficult economic environment.  For brides still seeking custom invitations, the Gocco (or now the Yudu!) can be an excellent, and more economical, alternative.  Some brides choose to go the DIY route, but for brides who don’t feel comfortable DIYing, there are a few invitation studios that specialize in Gocco-printed invitations.

While I love browsing the wedding collections of stationers and invitation studios, one of my absolute favorite things to do is to feature real invitations – particularly custom and diy invitations.  I just love seeing the way that real couples and designers work together to produce an invitation design that represents the bride and groom as a couple and suits their unique wedding style.  Today, I want to share this lovely custom invitation suite from Paperwink – both because of its beautiful design and the lovely meaning behind the invitations:

Throughout the planning process, I mentioned before that I wanted to stay sane and delegate where I could.  That included finding a florist who I trusted to do just about whatever she wanted, letting my parents be in charge of the catering and the alcohol, and letting my bridesmaids choose much of their own outfits.  However there was one thing I couldn’t let go of – I wanted to make the invitations and other stationery myself.  Naturally, that began with Save the Dates.

I absolutely adore the recent trend of using silhouettes as design inspiration in weddings.  Whether incorporated as a small design detail or the inspiration for the overall wedding theme, silhouettes can be easily integrated into many wedding details, from the Save the Dates to the favors.  I’ve collected a few of my favorite silhouette designs here to help provide some design inspiration.

Hi Everyone!  I am so, so happy to be back blogging here at EAD – and I just want to start off with a huge “thank you!” to Ami and Rebekah for inviting me to join them as a weekly columnist for the EAD Wedding Blog.

As promised, here are a few more of our favorite DIY details from our wedding. As I mentioned yesterday, going the DIY route was a great way to personalize our wedding. Menus, programs, and custom coasters aren’t new ideas for a wedding, but because my husband and I were able to do them ourselves, each one of these details helped to make our wedding a true reflection of us as a couple.

Ed Note: Today we are lucky to have Karry Castillo from Uniquely Yours Wedding and Event Specialist stop by EAD.  Karry was kind enough to share a planner’s perspective of DIY!

Right after my husband and I became engaged, we sat down together to think about our wedding – how we wanted it to feel, whether it would be formal or informal, inside or outside, etc. As I mentioned yesterday, I felt very strongly about having a Spring wedding, and my husband and I both knew that we wanted to have an informal wedding that took place entirely outdoors. We also sat down to discuss our priorities for the wedding. My father is semi-retired and my husband’s parents live on a single income, so we knew that we would have to keep our wedding budget relatively small – not the easiest thing to do in the metropolitan DC area, where wedding budgets can easily soar in to the $20,000 – $30,000 range or higher – and decided to focus the bulk of our budget on a few main priorities. We decided on photography, catering and the venue as the highest priorities, with our middle priorities on décor and flowers, followed by everything else.

Your budget is small, your wedding desires are large, so where do you draw the line when it comes to your paper products? Most wedding related expenses are necessary: the invitations, dress, photographer; these all play a major role in the celebration of a lifetime. To help you decide what paper products are a must at your wedding, lets take a look at some of the options.

One area where we decided we could save money was in all of the print materials. I had a pretty specific idea of how I wanted the final invitations to look and knew we could create a simple look on our own.

Having a husband who is a graphic designer is very convenient for my DIY tendencies. I can completely customize anything I want. From birthday cards to t-shirts, my sweet hubby helps me put it on paper (he designed our logo). Over the past year, he’s taught me a lot about what it takes to make your own event graphics. I thought I would share some ideas with you.

There may be nothing we love more than classic hand lettering. Whether it’s that little moment of joy when we see a thick, luxurious hand-addressed envelope in our mailbox, or that lovely keepsake escort card from our best friend’s wedding, we simply swoon over calligraphy details both large and small! At the top of our list? Elegant white ink. Beautiful on paper from soft dove to bold black and every color in between, white calligraphy is our current crush!

Happy Monday everyone! We hope you are having a great start to your week, and to make a sunny Monday just a smidge brighter, we have a beautiful free printable save the date from The Lovely Dept. to share!  The beautiful watercolor wreath is a lovely touch for any spring or summer wedding, and I just adore the light and airy green and yellow color palette.

This morning’s Pancakes & Honey Breakfast shoot featured several handmade wedding projects, and the team of Suzy from Lily Red Studio, Kelly Marie from Fleur, and Jaclyn Simpson Photography have been kind enough to share their DIY secrets with us! They created several projects – click on the links below to jump to the instructions for your favorite: