A Westervin Wedding

A Westervin Wedding: Invited

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!

A Westervin Wedding, Needle Drop

A Westervin Wedding: Truman’s Ridge

A Westervin Wedding: Truman's Ridge Bluegrass Band

So most weddings have music, but guess what? Our wedding is going to have music, too! Shocking, right? Anyway, we were having some trouble thinking of what to do that could fit our Ozark-Mountain-romance-meets-punchy-geometry theme, when lo and behold we heard the plaintive melodies of a banjo in the distance. Well, by distance I mean across the street from my parents house. Turns out their neighbors are part of  a local Sycamore, IL bluegrass band called Truman’s Ridge. What fortuity! The picture above is from Homer Harvest Days, where we saw them earlier this fall. They seemed to have a lot of fun playing and had a great range of classic bluegrass numbers and some original songs.

Just to get all of you in the bluegrass mood, here’s a classic from the Stanley Brothers:

Out & About

Out & About: Plank Road Orchard

Plank Road Orchard apples in Sycamor, IL
Despite the fact that our car was hit on Saturday morning (we were just fine), we managed to make it out to Sycamore, IL (home of my parents, among other things) and visit Plank Road Orchard. I had been wanting to pick some apples and grab some apple cider (donuts) for a little while now. Unfortunately, U-Pick apple season was over, but they still had lots of bagged apples, fresh cider, and all the other apple-y things that you might expect to find at an orchard.
Continue reading