Save the Date + invites: Katie + Ben
Yay for Save the Date week! I thought we’d kickstart it with a bang….I’m pretty obsessed with these amazing Save the Date and invitation from Katie! Those custom made tubes are so beyond cool!
Ben and I met at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and dated for about 7 years before we got married. He was a design major, and I was a photographer. Ben was in charge of making a lot of the event posters while we were at school and when we would talk about getting married, we often said, wouldn’t it be cool if we did a show poster? So, fast forward a few years, Ben proposed after a Mark Kozelek show, and we began our 4 months of planning (engaged in June, married in October). When I thought about our stationery (I am a designer at Chellé Paperie) I thought about all the things that made us who we are, and I thought about pushing the envelope in print, since it is rare that I have clients who let me do such crazy things. I knew I wanted to do a mailing tube, and a book. Ben knew he wanted to do a poster – those work well together, so we set to work. In designing the suite, we made a list of important things in our lives, and we made them into silohuettes to create a graphic pattern that wrapped the guest addressed mailing tube, and lined the end pages of our invitation book (http://chellepaperie.com/custom/wedding/clear-eyes-full-hearts/) We joked about sending an invite that says we like to party – but then we decided wait, we do like to party, and we’d like to party with you. It was kind of awesome, and it still makes me smile! We did a custom map for my hometown, we wrote silly copy, and we fought over typefaces. We’re both designers and though it was a little frustrating at the time, I think we challenged each other and ultimately ended up with a perfect design that reflects our personalities, the tone of the event, and the light-hearted feel of our wedding. We did the whole wedding for under $5000 in a matter of 4 months. It was awesome, and I would do it again every year if I could. My favorite thing about the wedding (aside from marrying the man of my dreams of course) was that we got to create an experience, for ourselves and for our guests, that was different from any other wedding that any of us had been to. We wanted it to be as much of a celebration of all the guests, as it was about our marriage, and it really turned out that way. It was perfect, and full of love.
[images from Katie]
Save the date: Mary + Chris
Mary sent me her lovely save the date and I just had to share…heres what she had to say…
I just wanted to share our Save the Date with you. We loved it and have received a lot of positive feedback from our friends and family. It was folded into thirds and the addresses were printed directed on the back. It opens up to look like a concert poster, which was the look we were going for. I wanted to send it in case you do a showcase again of all different STD’s. I LOVED looking at all the different ideas and drew inspiration from what I found on your site.Our long time graphic-designer friend, Jillian Coron, designed and printed them for us for FREE! She also is the designer for an amazing line of tee-shirts that “promote
a message of love and unity rooted from the female experience”. They make amazing and affordable bridesmaids gifts! http://shopdelicioustees.com/
sub-studio Windsor Collection
I’m so into these semi-custom invites from sub-studio…while the designs are readymade, you can customize the colors to fit your palette.
[images from sub-studio]
Satsuma Press wedding line
It doesn’t get much better than Satsuma Press’s new letterpressed wedding invitations shot by Max Wanger. You can finally check them out on her site and they are truly stunning, every single one of them!
Real wedding: Kate + Michael
Kate sent me her wedding a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to finally get to post it! It looks like one of those weddings that you’d be so psyched that you just got invited!
I’ve been meaning to send you a few photos of our wedding, held last summer (July 5, 2008) at our house in Vermont, for ages. Michael and I live in Brooklyn and are fiercely devoted to our borough (he owns a company called Neighborhoodies, and I work at Brooklyn Botanic Garden), but our 1823 home in Vermont– Fern Hill– is where our hearts live. We built our wedding from the ground up with friends and family: making the food, putting together the flowers, designing and printing the paper goods, making playlists, and more. The wedding wasn’t only a carnival of love, but a proud productive moment for me, Michael, and our loved ones!
There are so many stories to share. I’ll try to structure some around the photos attached: we had the ceremony on a small hill overlooking a brook, the same spot where Michael proposed in June of 2007. Our officiant was my best friend (and maid of honor’s) mother, who led a Jewish-inflected ceremony that became very emotional for many of our guests, particularly when Michael read an excerpt he chose from Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” The end of the ceremony– when he smashed the glass– was pure joy, and we took off running down the hill in a totally strange & unplanned & and wonderful expression of delight!
We worked with a dear friend on creating the dinner menu, which used ingredients almost exclusively from Vermont purveyors. Another friend brought a quart of his famous salad dressing, and yet another drove up our favorite vegan whoopie pies from a bakery in Bethlehem, PA! My ivory lace dress was vintage in perfect condition (and I traded hundreds of dollars in alterations with a wonderful woman I met on Indiebride), and so was Michael’s three-piece navy suit, which came from Rue St. Denis in the East Village. The peony season in Vermont is only about three weeks, but luckily we fell right in the middle of it and bought 125 peonies from a nearby farm in shades of pink and white to arrange alongside soy votives in mason jars and simple glass vases over some old cotton lace I picked up at tag sales around town. My MOH hand-wrote all the place cards and table names, which were the names of New York Times sections (which Michael and I can’t function during the day without reading).
Our photographer, Heather Waraksa, and her second shooter Mike blew us away with their ease, skill, creativity, friendliness and, of course, the quality of the shots. I already have sent too many (and they’re out of order!), but we shot this amazingly cool series at night with sparklers (it was the day after July 4, after all), and some of the portraits they did were mindblowingly gorgeous.
[images by Heather Waraksa]
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