Happy Wedding Wednesday!!

I’m pretty proud of myself that I’m on top of this. As promised, part 2 of the stationery from our wedding!

If you remember, last week we went over all of the pre-wedding stationery. I know that it’s overwhelming if you’ve never done it before – I know it was for me, and I’ve seen lots of stationery! So far, this is what we’ve had before the wedding:

Save the Date cards
Formal invitations
Guest information cards – hotel block and wedding website
RSVP cards
Rehearsal dinner invitations

So now we’re onto the actual wedding day, and all of the stationery involved in that! First up, the ceremony! What is the one piece of paper that you usually get at a wedding ceremony – a program, right? I’ve seen some really cute ideas on what to do for programs, like fans, keepsakes, and things like that. We were fortunate to have PERFECT weather for our wedding – that’s September in Colorado! So we didn’t need fans. And we are laid back people, with a good sense of humor. This idea actually came to us the day after we got engaged, because we were talking about the flow of a wedding and how exactly it works. Tom was a little umm… clueless. Like a lot of guys. He told me his version of how weddings go, and of course, mine was just a TAD different. So we decided to take those differences and laugh about them with our programs!

The programs were again printed on pearl cardstock from Marathon Press, and I love love love them! There are a ton of printers that will print things for you, and a lot of them have beautiful stuff! In the end, I chose Marathon because they had the sizes and paper types that I wanted. It was not easy to find a printer that would print on 8.5×11 pearl paper! Most of them were in photo sizes, so the closest was 8×10 or 8×12. Working with a professional printer can be kind of daunting, I would highly recommend watching their tutorials or talking with them to make sure you understand how to design things. USE their templates!! I promise it will be much easier if you use the help they offer!

And onto the programs. :)

A quick note, with the images below, if you see my logo, they are my designs. If you don’t see a watermark, those are photos taken by our wedding photographer, Verve Studio. They were AMAZING!

Our programs were two sided. The last names have been removed from the photos to protect the not-so innocent, so if the spacing looks funky keep that in mind! First, my version – all of the pretty details, the important people, songs, and anything you could want to know!

And now, Tom’s version:

I had him handwrite his version, I scanned it, and used it in the digital design for the program. When we put together the stack of programs, they were flipped so that some had one version, and others had the other version on the front. I heard that you could hear the giggles when people realized there were two sides, they were a hit! I promise you… get the ideas of what “SHOULD” be done out of your head and make your wedding your own – people will love it! The only other piece of stationery that we had were reserved signs for the first two rows of seats – and they were very, very simple. Same border, same fonts, and that was it! Those were white with black lettering, and they were printed at a local photo lab as 8×10’s. Quick, easy, and simple.

After the ceremony, we moved into the reception. Because we chose to do a first look, we actually got to enjoy our cocktail hour with our guests! At our cocktail hour we had the guestbook out and a gift table, and the escort card table. Our escort cards continued our music theme, they were tickets! This was interesting to do… because each person/couple only required one ticket, and you can’t print in bulk when you only need one of each. So I designed the tickets without names, and printed clear labels for the names, which we stuck onto the tickets. They were displayed with records and a guitar, more of that music theme!

Again, completely different from the way things SHOULD be done, and again, a hit! People loved them. I saw lots of photos of them on Facebook later, and people took them home. They had our colors, and it took looking at a LOT of ticket stubs to determine how I wanted to design them, but I love the way they turned out. These were also printed by Marathon on the pearly cardstock.

Second in our reception stationery were menus. We opted to do menus at each station instead of at each place setting, and I’m really glad we did that. I bought 8×10 frames and had a menu for each table, framed so that it was easy to see. I’m sorry I don’t have the menus, because they were really simple, just like the reserved signs. They had our colors in them, same fonts, same border, and printed by the photo lab again, more 8×10’s. I found that was easier when I didn’t need multiple of the same thing. When you only need ONE menu, going through a large printer can be overkill, that’s why I did the photo lab.

I mentioned before that our table names were artists and bands that we loved. These were also done with the same fonts, border, and colors! When you use the same elements, the consistency is familiar and you avoid having things look out of place. Our table was Earth Wind & Fire!

It’s hard to see, but there are rhinestones on the band name. Not Tom approved on that one – he has this weird issue with rhinestones. But I need a little bit of bling! The records were sprayed with glitter spray paint. The neighbors thought I was nuts, doing that on our back porch.

Next was a piece of stationery that was very special to the three of us. Tom didn’t know it beforehand, but I had hired a fabulous cake designer and friend to make the guys’ cakes. Yes, I had two special cakes – one for Tom, and one for Kaden. Tom’s was Lord of the Rings, Kaden’s was Transformers. So SEE, I may have put rhinestones on things but they got their geek on at the wedding, even if I didn’t dress as Princess Leia! ;) I created a sign to accompany the cakes, for both of my guys. Again… same font, same border, super simple! Your guests will appreciate a little bit of explanation sometimes. Most of the people there will know you, of course – but not everyone. Your family members and friends might have a new boyfriend or girlfriend, or there might be family members of your fiance’s that you don’t really know.

After looking up the quote and Elvish writing, I texted my best friend telling her what I had been working on. She responded with “you nerded out for love” and that phrase was carried over throughout the wedding. Actually, it’s still used. Thanks Ryan!

Last but not least, we had decided on wine for favors. Oh believe me, Mr. Follow The Rules wasn’t completely on board with this at first either. But when he saw me super stressed, he knew this would be easy and quick to do, and went with it. If people don’t drink, they won’t take the wine. Or, they will give it to someone next to them. One of my friends took home five of the little bottles because her table didn’t drink! I used one of our engagement photos (also taken by the fabulous Verve Studio!) and our wedding logo. Yes, we had a wedding logo. It made for easy seals on the envelopes, and was a nice piece of decoration on things that looked a little blah. The wine bottles were a hit – again – and someone called us celebrities because we had our pictures on a wine label. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was just a label printed at home, nothing crazy, so I said thank you.

And for all of our guests that keep asking me – even though I’ve posted it lots – the wine was Verdi Spumante. One of my most favorite wines, from Italy, it’s SO yummy! Nice and light.

This is what the label looked like, you can see the wine on the table in the centerpiece photo above.

We didn’t have special shoes for people, or signs for the glow sticks… towards the end, I was just getting to be super overwhelmed. But in the end, those weren’t necessary. Menus at each place setting weren’t necessary. Our caterer actually offered to do the menus for the tables, but I wanted that consistency, so I did them. And how did I make sure that all of this was taken care of? I hired a fantastic coordinator and had LOTS of help. Everything was put into large Ziploc bags and labeled VERY clearly. People were making fun of me for being organized. To that I say :P . Everything worked out wonderfully!

I really, REALLY encourage you to make your wedding your own. Put yourself into all elements of it. Music, stationery, centerpieces, lighting, linens, everything! We had a lot of things that weren’t very traditional. Our parents were a little put-off by some of our choices, until they saw them on the wedding day. Everything came together beautifully, even if it was a little different.

As always, feel free to comment below or share this post! If you are planning a wedding and confused or overwhelmed, email me. I would be happy to help!

Happy Wedding Wednesday!!