shower invitation :: HIS & HER BBQ

Hello! Here is a shower invitation I recently designed for some sweet friends. The party was held outdoors and decorated with red and white checkered table cloths, red zinnias, teal blue mason jars, pennant flags, and local barbeque was catered. It was a lovely night and I think the couple felt very honored. 

To keep with the rustic, outdoor theme, I paired the red, white, and teal invitations with kraft paper envelopes and jazzed them up with his and her kitchen "tools" liners. 

If you are interested in this invitation, or custom design work, please feel free to contact me!

WEDDING SUITE: kristen and aaron

I recently designed a wedding suite for some sweet friends, Kristen and Aaron, that got married over the summer at Lake Martin, Alabama. The bride sent over the pictures from her photographer, Leslie Hollingsworth, and I wanted to share these beauties. We used a classic photograph of their ceremony venue, Church in the Pines, as the focal point on several of the pieces. Paired with pretty turquoise envelopes and a fun script - it was the perfect combination for a lovely, lake wedding! 

If you are interested in custom design work, please contact me!

WEDDING INVITATION SUITE: anna pate vanderbleek

Here is a recent wedding project for a sweet bride's "destination" wedding in Santa Rosa Beach. She wanted a vintage, rustic vibe so we used kraft paper envelopes, twine, quirky calligraphy, and shades of gray with cream. The wedding suite is very simple, but pretty using hand-written calligraphy to focus on the couple's important day. I designed an invitation, response card, and direction card - all bound by a self-addressed belly band with twine to replace an inner envelope. This is the second wedding suite I have designed a belly band for and it is such a fun and unique addition to a traditional suite. Here are some pictures of the final design.

The suite was printed on Mohawk's Loop Feltmark in natural white by Communication Arts, Inc. in Birmingham.

If you are interested in custom design services, please feel free to contact me!

MY LULIE

Look what I found today on Lulie Wallace's blog!

It's my commissioned wedding bouquet painting! I love it and I CAN NOT wait to see it in person! It is the perfect mix of my wedding flowers. Lulie did an amazing job!

COMING UP: our one year!

Well, this weekend (officially Sunday, the 26th) marks our one year anniversary and it just seems so surreal. I don't even know where the time has gone! Looking back at today a year ago, I was so anxious - nervous and excited - for the weekend events. Knowing my personality, I thought I would be wound up making sure everything was perfect, but surprisingly I was cool, calm, and collected (in my opinion!). I think I just had a peace about the wedding and knew it was all a part of the Lord's plan.


Here is the card I got Brandon that pretty much sums up my feelings for our weekend celebration.

Our plan is to go out to a fancy dinner tonight and then cook in Sunday and attempt to eat our frozen cake! I hope it is just as good as a year ago! Our cooking for Valentine's was quite successful - everything was delicious and I really enjoyed Brandon's help in the kitchen. Here is our night captured through pics.

 enjoying some bubbly!

And the best part of our anniversary is our trip that we have saved up for - we are going to skiing in Park City, Utah for three days! I am very excited because I have not been out West skiing before, but Brandon has been several times. Our trip isn't for two weeks, but in the meantime I will be day dreaming about being here:

 photos courtesy of Jessica Sanford @ Stage Fright Jitters

photos via Hyatt Escala Lodge

BEST OF 2011

I discovered a sweet surprise last week while back tracking through one of my favorite wedding blogs, Ruffled - our wedding reception was featured as one of their top 15 of 2011! How awesome is that? I was very excited to see this knowing how much time, effort, and creativity was put into making our night special. 

click here to see the full post and a link to more of the wedding pictures from the talented Heidi of Our Labor of Love

note - for some reason they say "Georgia" wedding in their listing ... !?!?! ... but it was definitely in Alabama!

Although our wedding has come and gone, I still love to thumb through wedding blogs for design and party inspiration. It is amazing how creative some people can be and I love to watch trends evolve. You never know where you will find inspiration these days!

Our first wedding anniversary is less than two months away and I still can't believe how fast the time has passed. Brandon and I have planned a little something special to celebrate the date, but I'll post more about that later. I am anxious to see how our frozen wedding cake has kept over this past year - should be interesting. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions from past experiences? Hope you all have a great start to your week!

BLURB BOOKS

Since we received our final disc of pictures from Heidi back in March, I have been slowly working on designing our wedding albums. I have been really excited about designing this book for several reasons ...
• I get to choose which pictures are in it
• It is a great way to have all your pictures in one place rather than individually printing them all
• Blurb now has an amazing InDesign plug-in that allows designers to customize their book any way imaginable


The books arrived a month ago and they are gorgeous. No, not because it is millions of pictures of Brandon and I, but because of the quality. I chose image wrapping for the hard cover, their new pro-line uncoated paper for the interior, and the largest square size available - 12"x12". The large size was quite surprising, but amazing. I love how vibrant and bold the pictures are. 


I would definitely recommend Blurb to everyone - it is not just for weddings. There are so many choices and templates (for the non-designer) to choose from that it makes the process really fun, and straight forward. Here are a few pictures of my blurb book:

you can see the rest of the book here

For the parents I chose a smaller size, 7"x7", and it turned out just as cute, and much easier to handle! I think they have really enjoyed having all the pictures in one place for easy browsing. You can tell the proportion differences in both sets of pictures.

LOOK WHAT I FOUND

As most of you know, I have a fascination with all things gold and rose gold. I was browsing one of my favorite wedding blogs, 100 layer cake (besides ruffled of course!), and found this awesome post on rose gold rings. The rose gold has such a vintage feel to me and I love the unique combinations of stones. 

I love numbers 1 and 10 ... and number 2 is pretty identical to one of my wedding bands. See the full post here to get all the details. Which one is your favorite?

RUFFLED

Just wanted to share that my wedding was featured on the beautiful wedding site, Ruffled today! Click here to get the scoop!

WEDDING INVITES : lauren semanson bryant

Over the course of my wedding planning and the month following, I worked tediously on a good friend's wedding suite. Lauren and I's taste is very similar so these invitations were not only fun and inspiring, but a breeze! Her rustic theme began with birdcages and lanterns while paired with natural elements and shades of gray and teal. We incorporated some other fun surprises into the wedding suite to expand the theme. She got married at a quaint chapel in Greensboro, Georgia and the reception was held at Reynolds Plantation at the beautiful Ritz-Carlton Lodge (same place Carrie Underwood got married!) on Lake Oconee.

This is the entire suite: save the date, wedding invitation with direction car & rsvp card, thank you cards, and programs.

 close up of bird cage stamp on front of progams

the wedding suite - printed on a cream linen paper with gray thermography.

The quirky handwriting is my own as well as the bird cages and flourishes. 

ABODE LOVE : guest post recap

In case you missed my guest post at Abode Love last week on the wedding photos then here is your chance to catch up! If you want the full scoop with all the nitty-gritty details, then check out Laurel-Dawn's fabulous post on it!