So how do two stridently independent and opinionated lovebirds get married in the age of Platinum Weddings, anyway? Like so many things that would follow, we found our inspiration in the world of wedding blogs.

After months of floundering for a wedding vision that felt like our own, I stumbled upon a blog post featuring a wedding “monogram” that looked like a campaign logo. I was instantly, head-over-heels smitten with how un-wedding it was. After all, politics run through both of us. I’d been writing about candidates long before I was old enough to vote, and the two of us never would’ve met at all had Trevor not been working on a political campaign. The discovery of that logo put the entire wedding planning process into focus for us. Suddenly, we weren’t grasping for wedding ideas anymore, but were full of them. The idea of a red and blue wedding felt fresh and new to us - neither of us had ever seen one before - and we loved the challenge of making sure it didn’t look too “4th of July” by using a palette of shades and a slew of mix-and-match patterns.

Blue would work wonderfully with our beachside location, and also meant that Trevor could wear his grandfather’s seersucker suit. Strong punches of red suited my sensibility perfectly - in flowers, on tables, and most importantly, in a killer pair of red satin heels on my feet! Very quickly, our wedding vision started to feel more like us than like a “normal” wedding, which was exactly what we’d wanted all along. Here’s our original inspiration board, featuring the wedding logo that kicked the whole thing off:

Meanwhile, in other stroke of blog-world luck, I won a contest online where the prize was a custom wedding logo designed by the one and only Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo of ABCD Designs (now a contributor at EAD Living!). I couldn’t believe my luck - we finally had our wedding inspiration, and now we had a super-talented designer on board to create our official “campaign logo,” too! Over the phone, I laid out our election theme for Amy to explain why we wanted her to design a campaign logo for us instead of a typical wedding monogram. Amy didn’t just get it, she loved it. Here’s the “campaign logo” that Amy designed for us. More than any other single detail, this logo set the tone for our crazy election-themed wedding:

Adams-Hanger ‘09… the ticket of a lifetime!

Next up: From logos to letterpress!

When I was in high school (or maybe even middle school?), I had a wax seal with the letter J on it (mom, any idea where that might be?). I loved how it made me feel like royalty and how it made everything I sealed with it much more important. The seal was only to be broken by the person to whom the note was addressed, and if it was broken in advance they’d know the secret enclosed in the note would be out! I mean really, as if the world didn’t already know that Frank had a crush on Erin, c’mon…but still, any notes sealed with it were TOP SECRET.

Now that I’m seeing all these pictures of invitations or favors from Flush Designs that use wax seals, I am convinced that I once again need one.

{images and designs by Flush Designs}

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One of the most inspirational blog posts for me so far has been How to Design Vintage Monograms by Vintage Glam Weddings. So, my official first day that I was absolutely 100% completely and totally done with grad school, what do I do? Oh, you know…went back to Lehigh and checked out a book on monograms. Guess I just can’t stay away from the place.

But oh.em.gee. I found the coolest book I have ever seen.

The Alphabet of Monograms by Henry Lillie. Oh, can’t find it on Amazon? Hmm, maybe that’s because ISBN numbers weren’t around in 1865. How cool was it to pull that book out of the stacks and open up the front cover to find:

Yup, 1885. Pretty neat I think. Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

While it would have been way too nice of Mr. Lillie to think of us back in the 1800’s and make us an awesome monogram, no such luck. There were, however, CK and CKJ (would work beautifully if he would take my last name :) ).

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