Inspirations & Creations - Elizabeth Anne Designs: The Wedding Blog

Red Winter Wedding Inspiration

elizabeth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:00:02 +0000

I adore winter - it’s so soft and still. I hope your weekend is as peaceful as this board is!

{bird in winter branches via the All Things Bright and Beautiful blog (now defunct), place setting photographed by Sang An via Truly Smitten, floral photographed by Jenny Ebert via Thoughtful Day bride photo by Punam Bean}

Wedding day survival kits.

shelley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:00:21 +0000

A few months before our wedding, I was really struggling with what to get my bridesmaids for their gifts. You’ll remember this (rather desperate) post?

Well, I came up with putting together what I called a “wedding day survival kit” for my girls. I started by looking for a gray handmade tote bag on Etsy (gray was one of our wedding colors) and wound up with these fairly basic bags from Etsy seller Fantella (who was great to work with!). I thought these bags were simple enough to suit all of my bridesmaids’ varying tastes. They make great casual weekend bags and are big enough to fit books, laptops, whatever!

{author’s photo}

Then I went to the drug store and bought a ton of different little toiletries and travel size things that I thought might come in handy on the wedding day, like band aids, chapstick, hair spray, oil blotters, a Tide stain remover stick, a nail file, Advil and deodorant. I also got each girl a bottle of water, crackers, cookies, chocolate, tic tacs, and for a personal touch, a different magazine for each girl that I thought they would like.

{author’s photo}

I packaged it all together and gave it to them after the rehearsal dinner the day before the wedding. For each bag I made a handmade nametag for each girl. On the back of the nametag was a description of the wedding day survival kit. It read:

hello bridesmaid!
i’m so glad this wonderful weekend has
finally arrived! inside this bad you will find your
wedding day survival kit.
tomorrow will be a long day of running around,
getting pretty, taking pictures, and (hopefully)
dancing ’til you drop! these things will help in
getting through the day, whether you have dry lips,
need an extra spritz of hairspray,
or just something to read, i’ve got you covered.
love, the bride.

The bags were a huge hit and they all used their “survival kits” on the wedding day!

You Want to Hear About My Wedding… Really?

stephanie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:23 +0000

It occurred to me today at the doctor’s office…that when you are engaged…you can easily have a conversation with just about anyone…and at any time. Of course the subject of discussion is… the WEDDING!! Why is it that all of a sudden I feel like the lady at the bank that helped us set up our joint account wants to have us over for her next dinner party?? And does the pharmacy tech really care about what flowers I’m going to have on the cake table??

It’s amazing how a shinny rock on one’s finger can suddenly make everyone want to know everything about you and your husband to be…where you went to school…how you met…where you are getting married and when…the list goes on and on. Suddenly I find myself having 30min conversations about shoes and candles with people I used to just smile at and say ‘hello!’

Then when you go to wrap up the conversation…they end it with “oh you just HAVE to bring in pictures from the BIG DAY next time you’re in!!!!”

source

Really….you really want to see my wedding album? What so you think I’m just going to lug that thing around everywhere I go? (ok myabe I will) …and then what…so I drive through the bank to cash a check and you want me to shove it in that drawer-esq thing to you?? Or the cashier at Target…do you really want me to hold up the line while you go through every page??

I’m guessing most people say this just to make me feel good…so for that 1 min as I walk away I can think to myself, “heck yes…my weding is gonna ROCK…that’s right…you WILL want to see my pictures because it will pretty much be the most awesomest of awesome weddings ever…”

Heck…if someone brought in a wedding album for me to look at everyday at work….I know I wouldn’t complain…would you?

Don’t Press Me Giveaway Reminder

elizabeth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:34:12 +0000

UPDATE: Congratulations to our winner Julie!

Don’t forget to comment on this post before 12pm CT tomorrow for your chance to win letterpress wedding invitations by Don’t Press Me!

Her Pants May Stink, Her Invitations Do Not

dana — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:30:05 +0000

If you followed my wedding plans, you know there’s nothing I love more than custom illustrations. They add a level of personal flair and uniqueness that truly befits a wedding. We had custom drawings done for our save the dates, our invitations, and even for our maps and thank you cards (more to come on those later) - but if I could go back and do it again (or run into a future project that could use our cartoon likenesses), I’d have Sara from Stinkerpants Celebrations do something for us, too!

I love her sunny style and rich, colorful backgrounds! All her characters have tons of personality infused with the classic Stinkerpants touch. She makes a point of including little things that help define a couple’s style, and I love how quirky and sweet all of the designs are! Ultrafly!

Check out this cutesypie Venice themed Save the Date

Or this feast for the eyes tri-fold invitation - aren’t the settings the sweetest?

Her thank you cards give props in a personal and memorable way!

She also does greeting cards. I mean, who could resist this hysterical invitation? (ps: I have a photo of my MOH and BM holding up my dress while I pee, pre-ceremony. It happens to everyone!)

Thirsty?

Now, I might be a tad bit biased, since I adore Sara, but her creativity and talent here speaks for its adorable self! She also stands up for what she believes in, which I really admire, and has a sense of humor about her business that I really appreciate. See?

I hope y’all love her work as much as I do - it just makes me smile every time I see it!

Attending Our First Wedding Together

juel — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:34:05 +0000

Mr. and I went to our first wedding together this weekend and we had a wonderful time! Not to mention, we learned a TON. He was the best man in the wedding so between the two of us we were able to kinda see both sides of the day.

The part that stuck out as the most memorable of the day had nothing to do with the flowers or invitations or food, or actually anything at the reception at all. I will never forget how my heart was pounding after the moment that the bride and groom saw each other for the first time and she walked down the aisle.

It’s easy to put so much focus on the font for the invitations or the flavor of the cake or table decorations and the whole party that comes afterwards that sometimes I feel like we can lose sight of that big thing that happens before we crack open the champagne. I felt so honored to be a witness to the vows they said to each other. No, they didn’t write their own, but it felt so special to be able to see them take such a big step together. Special isn’t even the word…it was just…just something so sacred and I felt truly honored to be able to witness that moment.

Mr. only looked at me once during the entire ceremony because we knew we would just lose it. I have no idea how I’m not going to be a slobbering mess come the time that we have to say our vows. I mean, why can’t the girl say the vows first? I think I’d be less likely to cry then. Anyway…there are some things that we’re going to do a little differently.

PHOTOGRAPHY - Where to begin? First of all, it took them over 2 hours for the bridal party to meet the rest of the guests at the reception after photos. Made it totally blow that I didn’t know anyone except my future in-laws and I was seated at a table of 8 other people I didn’t know. Seriously now, 2 hours?? Also, Mr. said that the photographer was one of those, “now tilt your head this way…a little bit more to the left…a little less smile” type photographers. Also, he was so busy trying to pose shots, but when the bride was holding her baby nephew and they were gazing at each other both with big smiles, you’d better believe that it was not enough for the photographer. No, he needed them to look at the camera! It’s not even like the bride and groom had requested a lot of photos, it’s just that it really took him that long to just take a few shots. Sigh. NO thank you. I’ll pass on that please.
Food - Ok, I blame this on the photographer again, but there was like no food while we were waiting for the bridal party to get to the reception. I hope to have plenty of appetizers ready to go as soon as guests get there.
DJ’s Music - For the first 4 hours the DJ played only 1 song from the last 30 years. It was only during the last hour (overtime…the bride’s brother paid the DJ to stay a little later after all the old people left, well except for the bride’s 92 year grandmother who ROCKED it!) that he finally played some newer music. I get it, you need to have music to fit everyone’s tastes, but seriously, I had had enough with the disco and Motown by the third hour. I was ready to get out and shake it to some Michael Jackson! Wasn’t even going to hold my breath for some Black-Eyed Peas. Don’t think that Michael would have been too much of a compromise.

Overall though, what an amazing day. It certainly changed my view of wedding planning a bit and made me TOTALLY excited to get married :)

Updating Our Links

elizabeth — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:54:49 +0000

Lots of fun things are coming to EAD shortly and while looking things over I realized that our Link Love page has been sorely neglected.

So it’s definitely time for an update - please share your blog so that we can add it to the list (if you are a vendor please let us know your location and what your specialty is). And while you’re at it, I’d love to know a little bit about you too… wedding dates and location, colors, things you’d like to see more of on EAD, and anything else you’d like to chat about! If you don’t blog, that’s OK too, I’d still love to hear from you.

Getting to know ya’ll is one of my favorite parts of blogging so please say hello! :)

Letterpress Invitations! (squeal!)

kelly — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:00:40 +0000

I realized I haven’t posted pictures of our invitations yet! And I wasn’t even paranoid about wedding crashers. Anywho, I really wanted letterpress invitations more than anything else and it was my big splurge. But really, not that bad. I used someone local, Jenny Barry from Press Charming, and I brought in some art nouveau books I’d bought to try and figure out a design. Jenny sent me back so many possibilities and this is what we finally decided on!

We got a 5×7 invitation with a postcard size reply card (saved on postage for the envelope and the reply! One regular 44 cent stamp was enough for the invitation (we liked the king & queen so that worked out) and we used polar bear postcard stamps for the postcards (not my favorite but we didn’t really have an option and the colors didn’t clash).

One annoyance with the reply cards was the post office. Their machines consistently tore off parts of the card on its journey to us, I’m guessing because of the paper used. It was pretty thick but you might need to ask for an especially hard or thick paper to avoid this if you choose letterpressed postcards. Oh, and I didn’t hand cancel the invites because it would’ve been an extra 20 cents each, I couldn’t do it myself, and the 20 cents would have to be added as extra postage. No thanks.

The reply card says

__Let us eat cake

(We’ll be there)

no. Attending ___

__Off with our heads! (We can’t make it!)

I didn’t hear any complaints and we definitely had a few people that were tickled by it. When Garrett’s mom was planning the Friday night BBQ her friends mentioned having a tagline of “let us eat BBQ”.

The envelope liners. They really made the invitation in my opinion, since they added some color and pizzaz, but they were a little bit of a pain to print. Note to all who undertake such a thing: make sure you have a printer that lets you replace the ink colors indvidually. Otherwise you will end up with a bunch of ink cartridges with just magenta and cyan ink left in them, a thinner wallet, and a frowny face. Jenny was so helpful though, she designed the page and cut them for me, I just had to print and place in the envelopes. I used one of those mini adhesive dispensers (works much better than a gluestick and you get in a rhythm so it’s easy).

I wish I had a picture of the addressing, but I did it myself with an ink pen (I thought about using a calligraphy pen but I liked the look of the script I chose with a pen better) and it’s probably better not to let you see what I was willing to send out.

The invitation itself was a double whammy. We waited a while to order the invitations (and I’m so glad we were able to get them in time to send out 6 weeks in advance!) and so by that time we knew we’d be getting married in San Francisco and wanted to include it so that people wouldn’t feel slighted or think they just weren’t invited to the wedding. So, it reads:

Together with their families

Kelly Scott Merrill

and

Garrett Barton Cummings

Joyfully announce their marriage

Thursday, August 13, 2009

San Francisco, California

Please Join them to celebrate

Saturday, October 3, 2009

7:00 PM

The Summit Club

Birmingham, Alabama

Cocktail Attire

Plenty of people asked about cocktail attire because apparently it’s different in everyone’s mind but Garrett and I were wearing a wedding dress and suit, our mothers were wearing standard mother of the bride dresses, and my bridesmaids were in knee length silky wrap dresses. So I felt like something you would wear to a cocktail party would suffice. We didn’t want people to be formal or in jeans, and I didn’t see anyone inappropriately dressed. So we win. Oh, and usually you announce separately but we wanted to save money and time and breaking the rules is more fun. And it was such a tiny way to break the rules.

So, I couldn’t be more pleased. We got custom, not too expensive (I think it was 3.75 for each invitation?) letterpress invitations and they were lovely! Jenny even let me crank a few because I have a not so secret crush on letterpresses.

How did you decide on your invitations?

You Can Wear It Again

mo — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:30:31 +0000

Does anyone ever really wear a bridesmaid dress again? {Crickets chirp}

I thought so. Please feel free to prove me wrong in the comments. :)

I hope that even if my sisters don’t wear their dresses again, that their photos don’t end up in a book like You Can Wear It Again by Meg Mateo Ilasco. (Despite how loud these dresses are, you really can’t deny that there’s something incredibly festive about them all! I think this book would make a great addition to a thank you gift for the maids.)

[Where has the hat gone in bridal fashion?? Photos from You Can Wear It Again by Meg Mateo Ilasco, published by Chronicle Books]

I {think} we have finally come to a compromise and chosen dresses to order! If you recall, I was on the hunt for green dresses and trying not to turn my sisters into props.

I recently fell in love with this dress and this dress but both got lukewarm reviews from the sisters. Some weeks went by, lots of Internet surfing happened, and then I saw this dress from Saja. Saja was the first place I had tried on wedding dresses, and is also where my sister almost bought her dress. So I already knew it might be a winner.

[Saja bridesmaid dress in jade]

And {woohoo!!} it was! Both sisters have agreed to get the dresses from Saja, they just need to choose a silhouette of their liking. Both dresses will be in that gorgeous green and shoes will be left up to them.

I’m also super excited to have found this photo from Grace Bonny’s wedding in Martha Stewart. I just love how the flowers pop against the bright green dress!

The best part of this all is that my sisters like what they will be wearing. Even if they will never wear the dress again, I can be comforted by this fact.

Have you ever had to wear an indescribably ugly bridesmaid dress? Can you wear any of your dresses again?

Save the Date Sneak Peek!

juel — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:02 +0000

Got our save the dates in already! Not sending them out until January, but I won a contest and had to get them printed by the end of September. One less thing to worry about!

On the left is the original, and then on the right is the final version after I used the corner punch (Fiskars “something old, something new”, purchased with my michael’s coupon of course!)

My mom did the drawing! The orange tree was meant to play off the whole Spain thing. I love what she did and I love the fact that my mom designed it!!

My friend Julie designed the back that has the actual Save the Date info. She’s a graphic design student and I’m so lucky to have her helping me!

{ photos by me }

So, the area on the right will be where I put the addresses. Do you think I should do anything fancy with how I write the addresses on the right? Or just write it with my neat teacher handwriting?

Here’s to getting things checked off the list!! :)