Well here it is, our last wedding post. Time to go out with a bang! Time for dancin’!
What’s a wedding without refreshments? Well, I guess it’s still a wedding, but the point is everybody loves a good wedding bar. It took us a while to figure out exactly how we wanted to handle drinks at the wedding, and we’re pretty happy with how it all turned out.
Time for the wedding party portraits! These don’t need too much explainin’…
Let’s just get right to it! Here are the photos of the ceremony and all our wedding decor. Above is the “altar” made from a giant metal trellis and a vintage dresser scarf, on which I embroidered the word ‘happily’. Because that’s how we married–happily.
They have a arrived! We finally have our wedding pictures, and boy howdy are we excited to share them. We know you have been waiting in almost unbearable anticipation (humor us), so we’ll present them in a week-long wedding photo extravaganza! First up: the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.
This is exciting! I get to share one of my favorite things that came out of our wedding: the guest book. There are so many ways to handle a guest book, and we sure thought about a bunch of different ones, but ultimately Sarah had the idea of using postcards.
We already established postcards as a theme element with our embroidered save-the-dates and table numbers. After the collection phase, we realized we had quite a few surplus postcards that were really cool but that wouldn’t work for embroidering purposes. So we decided to put those extra postcards to use! We put stamps on all of them, addressed them to ourselves (using our custom address stamp), and displayed them in a rotating postcard tree on our “Welcome Wagon” table. Our guests were then instructed to pick their favorite, write us a little note, and mail it back to us when they got home or arrived at some other glamorous destination!
These are just a few of the ones we’ve received so far, and they’re still trickling in. Getting postcards is so much fun!
P.S. If you were one of our beloved wedding guests, but didn’t see or forgot to grab a postcard, please let us know! We’d love to send you one… perhaps with the Thank You card that we are late to mail to you…
Jed, the groomsman, helps wedding-goers Brandon and Alana at the bar. { photo by Sarah Hughes }
{ photo by Soraya Rowley }
Lynne & CC enjoy carefully crafted cocktails { photo by Sarah Hughes }
Layet, Scott & Soraya { photo by Grandma Jane }
Layet, Sarah & Brian { photo by Sarah Hughes }
So we had a pretty great time at our wedding and one of my favorite parts was how much our friends were willing to help out. A prime example was the bar. While Sarah and I procured all of the alcohol and came up with recipes that could be built in a single glass, we hadn’t made all of the garnishes and syrups, or totally thought through the best way to arrange everything. Luckily, our friends (especially Jed and Ben) stepped up in a big way, slicing oranges, juicing limes, and making grenadine. The result was amazing.
The Bar { photo by Soraya Rowley }
CC, Meredith & Jim, Sarah, Matt, and Alana { photo by Grandma Jane }
Here’s another one of the suggested cocktails we had–this one might be my favorite. It ends up looking like ice tea, but don’t be fooled.
start with 1/2 glass of ice
add:
2 dashes angostura bitters
2 dashes celery bitters
1/2 oz. honey syrup
1 oz. dry vermouth
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1 oz. bourbon
stir
enjoy with a slice of lemon
Adjusted from the Perfect Louis
We’re back, little dowggies, and boy howdy are you a sight for sore eyes. The big day came and went, and I realized, perhaps for the first time, why we did it all in the first place. Not so we could dress up and be super pretty for a day, although that part was mighty nice. Not so we could try to impress everyone with our wedding planning skillz, though I’m pretty sure we knocked the pants off a few. Not so we could have a Texas ton of presents lavished upon us, though our apartment is now looking pretty snazzy. And not even so we could be self-centered attention whores, though we all know how much Brian LOVES that. Nope. Turns out this whole wedding business helped us celebrate the love we share with each other AND with our dear, sweet, amazing, crazy, weird, foreign, cute, little, creative, beautiful, supportive, giving friends and family. Did I use too many adjectives there? I think I might have missed funny. Man did we have some laughs! And MAN, did we really luck out in the family/friends department. I can honestly say that I had the most amazing week of my whole young life, because I got to spend time with all the people that make my life wonderful.
But before I make myself cry, and before we get started with our recap–for which you can expect several little posts over the next few weeks–I wanted to share a poem with you. Written by one of the colorful friends, Matt Sharos, this poem was inspired by our wedding. It’s sweeter than strawberry jam.
You can read Matt’s other wedding-week inspired poems on his poetry blog, PushUp Poetry.
We’re less than a week away from this wedding thing, so I think we’ll be taking some time off from our blogging duties. Don’t worry though, we’ll be back and yes, we’ll show you some wedding photos. For now we’re busy finishing up a plethora of craft projects for the wedding, both large and small. Wish us luck!
We did it! We finally finished and mailed our invitations! Hopefully, all invited parties have received theirs by now, except for some overseas friends. But I just couldn’t wait any longer to share. We are so pleased with ourselves.
Let me give you a play by play. We started with the same French Paper Co. envelopes in four different colors: slate blue, grout grey, packing paper brown, and a darker brown (pictured above). We also used the custom return address stamp, which featured a typewriter font.
Now comes the good part. Open the envelope and what do you find? A delicate vintage handkerchief invite, designed by Brian West and screenprinted by Barrel Maker Printing.
Arrows!
Inside, the hankie was wrapped around a wood card, made of Sycamore wood and printed with our logo (above) and instructions to visit our website for more information (below).
Our vintage typewriter came in handy once again when it came time to address the envelopes.
I had to keep a few of my favorites. They’ve come in handy in other ways. More on that to come!
The real fun part was collecting all the vintage hankies. We searched every antique mall and flea market from here to Timbuktu and found a few winners in Etsy and Ebay lots. It sounds tedious, but you know I enjoyed every minute of it! The real challenge was finding ones that fit our color scheme and general aesthetic but weren’t more than $1 each, give or take.
You like?
Envelopes: { French Paper Co. }
Return Address Stamp: { Note Trunk }
Screenprinting: { Barrel Maker Printing }
Wood Cards: { Cards of Wood }
Handkerchiefs: vintage, various sources
Graphic Design: Brian West!
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