Paper progress

Here's a little taste of what's been keeping us busy lately. Also known as: How to take advantage of the nice printer at your office!

Cookie tags

Our custom maps made by my friend Sasha! They're tabloid size, 11x17. Side 1 is a regional map with wedding details, and side 2 is a village map with shopping/eating recommendations.

All folded up and ready for our Welcome Bags, per the folding diagram that Sasha sent us!

Escort cards done and campaign buttons attached!

Escort cards bagged by letter!

Table signs all done and packaged with our table assignment diagram.

The final Welcome Bag tags.

Random signs

Paper packed up and ready for the suitcase!

One big project left... Ribbon Binding of the programs. Check back with us tonight as we negotiate PACKING, collecting childhood photos, getting our place ready to leave for ten days, PACKING, cutting pretty gingham ribbons, oh and PACKING.

Report from DIY Headquarters

Over at DIY Headquarters, Team Fam is nearing completion of all DIY projects and getting ready to deliver them to our Outer Banks holding station!

Under the leadership of 'Lil Sue (otherwise known as Mom), the hands of Big D (Dad), Best Woman with Unborn Child (sis), grandparents, neighbors, cousins, and more have been worked to the bone to turn our fun decor ideas into reality.

Here's what the tally board looks like back at the homestead:


First up, the fabric pomanders that will be mixed in with actual flower pomanders for the "altar" decor. I begged my mom to do a step-by-step post with photos, but I begged too late. Know this: each one takes up to 9 hours to create. We have 18 of them. Wow!


I'm going to try to explain our reception decor as best as I can. We ended up going with two types of fabric for tablecloths after all: Blue and Red (bottom right).

• On each table, there will be a pedestal (different types on each table) that will hold a single flower pomander from the ceremony (our florist is staying to trek them over to the reception for us, because she's awesome like that).
  
• Surrounding each pedestal will be paper-covered cans of varying sizes and shapes that will each hold an arrangement of one type of flower. For example, one can will hold all red tulips, one will hold all blue hydrangeas, one will hold all white ranunculus... you get the idea. To make the cans, my sister and I created sheets of paper using design elements from our invitation suite as well as additional graphics. They're covered in varying designs and are a range of colors and scales. There are 140 total cans. (Well okay, almost 140... they're in the 11th hour of production -- and hint, hint, we would love a photo when they're done!)
  
• Sprinkled amongst the paper-covered cans, we have white rice paper votives with small graphics applied to them. These are much simpler, keeping the white really visible to ground all the pattern a bit.

Here's how it comes together:

You have to imagine flowers in the cans!

The streamer things in the middle are creations that I don't have a name for yet. Our floral designer calls them "wish sticks" and my mom calls them "happy sticks." Basically, they are sticks with ribbons attached on the end. They'll be displayed on the back of each chair to give the ceremony site a punch of color without having to pay for chair ties. Photographed jumbled together, the streamers look a bit 4th of July, but they will be separated at the wedding. The sticks do not have both red and blue combined, never fear - one is all blue and white, and the next is all red and white. (An example of little decisions we've made to help downplay the patriotic look - in addition to lots of light blue.) The sticks will be waved in the air three times: After we're married and are walking back down the aisle, during our large group photo immediately following the ceremony, and later that night while we're exiting. I've been wavering between attaching a little tag to the sticks explaining this or explaining their use in the program - thoughts?

Votives lit up and pretty.

Yes, my mom really did line the front steps with the completed votives - all 165 of them. Hilarious and awesome!

A closer view... although I spotted a heart in there and have already given instructions that it must be eliminated! I'm so cold and heartless, you know.

One project unrelated to the tables: a card holder. I was thinking a random receptacle in my parents' attic would be great to hold cards in a cute way, rather than have them scattered on the table. My mom ran with the idea and found an antique birdcage for cheap on eBay. Lots of scrubbing and a fresh coat of paint later, and look what we have:


Adorable! It has a stand we can use, or we can place it on a table like this. At the reception it'll have a few flowers on it and also have a cute "Cards" sign attached.

That's all for now... whew! I'm exhausted! So (as you can see) is Team Fam!

Our escort cards

I'm bursting with the cuteness of these little guys. You remember our themed tables? Here's the first glimpse at our escort card display... with our tiny adorable campaign buttons attached to each one!


We had the buttons made by the Busy Beaver Button Company - a great value, by the way. And the rest came together using design elements from our invitations. Getting excited!!!

Coming up tomorrow: a DIY spectacular straight from DIY HQ in North Carolina.

Those age-old wedding planning questions

Time for the nitty-gritty decision-making. Here's where we're (still) stuck. Wanna help us out?

1. We're throwing the biggest party we'll ever throw, and making people travel to an inconvenient location to attend. When it comes down to it, are we cheaping out if we don't have a full bar?



2. I've been to too many weddings where guests wish they'd been assigned a table and spend five minutes nervously deciding where to sit. Therefore... table assignments! So should we be social engineers and create a lively mix of people at each table, or just play it safe and put folks who know each other together?



Update: I'd love to hear your thoughts and reasoning behind your votes, too... As always, comments are open!

Our table signs

As everyone knows by now, we are total nerds. We might have met in a bar, but if not for politics, it never would have happened. Three years and three hundred Adams-Hanger '09 campaign stickers later, our guests have been invited to a wedding that will cement our "own perfect union," a play on The Constitution of all things. This gibber-gabber serves as context to set up our table signs, which I must say are awesome.

Each table will be named after a political figure. Yes, we've taken pains to match groupings of guests with particular political figures. Yes, it's all under wraps until May 24. But the table signs are making me so happy right now, I just had to post one as a preview. I used components of our invitation suite to build them.

Introducing... THE DUKE!!!!

Vote for our Trivia Napkins!

We've been playing around with the idea of having trivia printed on napkins for our cocktail hour. Fun, interactive, self-indulgent... you get the idea. My girl Kate sent me an e-mail with a discount code at For Your Party for tomorrow only, so it's decision time! Here are our napkin ideas thus far. Colors can change, obviously, but tell me... what are your favorites? We're probably going to order four designs, so vote for more than one napkin!



















































































Vote away, and vote more than once!

Parasols on the ceiling

I'm putting together an enormous binder to take with me to all the wedding planning meetings next week. This is cumbersome because my entire organization system for the wedding is digital; you wouldn't believe what my Google Notebook looks like. Turning this into a hard copy is quite a task - yay for covert color printing at work! - and interesting to notice how my inspiration has developed over the last several months. Some of these planning matters I cannot wait to check off my list. Others are still nerve-wracking for me.

Enter our reception tent. I haven't written much about how we're decorating the ceiling of our tent, probably because it's the one issue that can give me an instant headache. Being able to see the metal boning of the tent from underneath, for whatever reason, is something that makes me want to scream. So our choices are to completely cover the interior of the tent with a pleated liner - which is beautiful but perhaps a much more formal look that we're going for, use draping, or subtly distract from the metal with a mass of lanterns, colors, and clever lighting. I'm hoping we can use a combination of these that will work for us.

That said, using bright paper lanterns has been a pretty steady assumption from the start. Yet just now, deep in my "Tent Ceiling" folder in my Google Notebook, I came across an image of parasols on a tent ceiling, and I'm loving the look.

Here's the original image:


(Via Tying the Knot)


Now yes, you can still see boning, but I promise you I'll get to the bottom of the boning issue during my event rental meeting on Tuesday.











Try to imagine a combination of strung circle lanterns in fun colors and patterns AND parasols like this....





(From Luna Bazaar)





What do you guys think?

Chair signs: yes please

I love chair signs. Here, my all-time favorites, courtesy of Style Me Pretty.

Hooray!

After seeing this on Monday, I raced off to purchase one of these Hooray! flags made by etsy seller So Inviting. They do custom colors for weddings and offer discount pricing based on quantity and details like ribbons. I must report, they are adorable.

For a reception getaway where sparklers aren't allowed (those grinches!), my wheels are turning.

Hmmmm......

Sanderling wedding on Southern Weddings

One of my favorite wedding blogs is Southern Weddings, and they've just posted an Outer Banks wedding with a reception at the Sanderling! The photographer, Mary Basnight, does beautiful work... makes me wish our photographer Julie Dreelin would put more of her weddings online, because her work is equally outstanding. C'mon, Julie!

This wedding's ceremony was up the Beach Road at the Corolla Chapel, and back down again for a reception on the sound like we'll have. Here are some of their reception photos:

See more from Ashley + Jeremy.

Getaway modes

One of our favorite things about having the wedding at The Sanderling is how easy it will be for everyone to get to the reception... a simple walk across the street. For everyone staying at the Sanderling - including us! - the trip back "home" that night couldn't be any easier.

But in the spirit of getaway celebrations - and in lieu of having nothing more exotic than my surely fabulous footwear that night to travel in - here are some of my favorite getaway ideas for the rest of you.

Golf cart: East Hill Photography. Bicycle: Michele Waite. Pom pom'd vintage car: Martha Stewart. Canoe: Emilie, Inc. Scooter: East Hill Photography. Motorcycle: Red Fish Photo. Trolley: Bridal Wave TV. What the heck is that thing?!: Heartistic Foto.

Who says you can't get wet at a wedding?

Gorgeous.

I wonder if we can dress up canoes or kayaks and have them docked at the sound for people to paddle around in during the reception? I'm already thinking about organizing a kayaking trip on the sound while Trevor leads a golf outing at some point during the weekend, but having boating options at the wedding? So much fun!

So far this is the only canoe that we know will be at the reception, and it'll be filled with beer and ice. Not quite the same thing. ;-)