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A DIY wedding: Part 4, the keepsake details

I’d like to thank everyone for following along with me this week during my guest blogging stint here on Elizabeth Anne Designs! I hope I’ve helped give you some ideas for DIY projects to incorporate into your own weddings. Before I return to my normal routine on my own blog, I wanted to share a few of our favorite keepsake details from our wedding.

Our wedding day was absolutely wonderful, but, as many other brides will tell you, it was also completely emotionally overwhelming and went by in a flash. Now, with the wedding more than six months behind us, we’re able to re-live parts of our wedding through the details that ended up becoming some of our most cherished keepsakes.

We tried to DIY as many of our details as possible to put our own personal spin on things, but in some cases, when we weren’t able to DIY, we went the handmade route:

Place Cards by Laura Hooper Calligraphy

Place cards designed by Nichelsons Invitations with calligraphy by the lovely Laura Hooper – she also made place cards that said “The Bride” and “The Groom,” which we happily display on a bookshelf in our living room as a wedding keepsake.

My wedding hair vine, which I wore in lieu of a veil, custom made for me by Etsy seller Chic Allure.

A couple of pictures of my hair vine in action on the wedding day…

Ring Bowl by Paloma's Nest

These ring bowls by Paloma’s Nest have been one of the biggest wedding trends this past year, but for good reason. Ours is one of our absolute favorite wedding keepsakes. The bowl was inscribed with the phrase “I love you” in English and the two of the languages that my husband and I have studied (French and Farsi) as well as our wedding date. We didn’t have a ring bearer, so my husband’s Best Man carried it down the aisle for us.

Our polaroid guestbook. We purchased this lilac and lavender letterpress album from Brooklyn Bookbinder and our guests did a great job filling up the pages at the wedding. After the wedding, we added the RSVP postcards from our invitation suite to complete the album. We love looking through all the comments from our friends and family.

These keepsake details, along with all of our DIY details from my previous posts, were some of our favorite elements of our wedding and still serve as some of our favorite wedding memories. For my husband and me, these details were important because they made our wedding a truly personal event that helped all of our guests feel even more connected to our wedding. Everything that we did at our wedding had personal meaning to both of us and I think this was apparent to all of our guests.

By DIYing many of them and using independent designers for others, we were able to incorporate these details into our wedding when our budget might have otherwise prevented us from doing so, and these details now represent so many of our happiest wedding memories and make us smile every time we see them.

Of course, our most favorite wedding keepsake are the photos from the wedding! As I mentioned in my post about our planning process, photography was one of our highest wedding priorities – and I’m really glad we made that decision:

That’s about it from me! I hope you’ve enjoyed my posts as much as I’ve enjoyed being here… and I’d just like to send a special “thank you” to E and A for allowing me to share our wedding with EAD readers. I also hope you’ll come visit me over at (Oh So) Beautiful Paper every once and a while!

{all photos by Punam Bean}