Wedding with a View

Whew, this wedding was probably our biggest of the year! We don't usually take on executing a full wedding design, including flowers, by ourselves but we took exception for this one!

This wedding was lovely, feminine and elegant, in black, ivory and blush. My favorite part of the invitations were the black and ivory lace envelope liners, and a pattern we carried throughout the printed materials.

Natasha and Gene had an outdoor wedding in August, so we made the programs fans, repeating the lace pattern paper. The place cards mirrored the invitations, mounted on a blush pink paper. We also created CD cases as favors, with their custom playlist printed and mounted on the inside.

Here is the outside of the CD favor, on the table at the reception.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

The reception was held at Glen Oak Country Club, overlooking the golf course. I think I'll just let the photos speak for themselves on this one.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

We are loving these chair covers, they're spandex so they fit to the form of the banquet chair. We think it gave the room a much more streamlined look. We also went with floor length black tablecloths for a more elegant look, topped with an ivory satin runner. Table linens and chair covers are courtesy of Thelma and Louise catering, give them a ring if you'd like to rent these for your event!

 The sweetheart table was an ivory lace overlay on top of a floor length black tablecloth, topped with two small black vases holding ivory and blush flowers. In the center of the table was a box with their monogram that doubled as a vase for the bride's bouquet.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

In the entry way, like the sweetheart table, we used an ivory lace overlay for the entry table that held the placecards.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

We alternated three different ivory and blush centerpieces. One large globe of flowers on an elegant, slender black stand. Another was a grouping of 5 different small black vases with ivory and blush flowers, accented with wispy black ostrich feathers. The last was a small black urn, filled with blush garden roses.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Here is a shot of the lovely ladies with their bouquets, which we also did. They just wanted very simple, small bunches of roses. The bridesmaids carried ivory garden roses, wrapped with black satin ribbon. The bridal bouquet was blush garden roses, and delicate ivory and pink flowers, that {I think} are called tea roses, at the center. We surrounded the flowers with more wispy black ostrich feathers and wrapped them all in black ribbon.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

The program on the bouquets.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

The program fans hung from the chairs at the outdoor ceremony, which of course we did not get a photo of.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Here is a shot of the ceremony once everyone was sitting, and I think if you check out the front row you can see a program or two left on the chairs.

Photo by Stephanie Burns Images

Phew I think that does it for Natasha and Gene's wedding. Thank you for having me design your beautiful day, I hope you thought it was as lovely as we did.

Sparkle Sparkle!

So, my sister Kacie is seriously hilarious. She loves things that sparkle, shine, blink; she's our little magpie. So of course her wedding had to be covered in diamonds... literally.

Kacie's invitations were silver letterpressed onto super soft suede-like black paper. We started out with an idea of doing paper lanterns, but in the end opted for a more graphic theme.

The black card was mounted on a silver layer, then onto a red panel pocket. In the back pocket was the response envelope (letterpressed by the groom himself!!), the response card (letterpressed by the bride!) and the reception card. I loved how Mike and Kacie wanted to get in on the action!! Each pocket was finished off with a small jewel (a detail that would be carried throughout all the printed pieces!)

The programs were simple double sided black and white prints, mounted on red layers, with that small jewel embellishment again!

 For the reception, we did table number menu combinations, a piece we've done a few times this year, and I simply love it! The reception was at Banchetti's by Rizzo's, and their Family Style dinner was absolutely WONDERFUL! And so much fun to share, it really gave dinner such a relaxed, family feeling, while still being delicious and elegant!

More bling:

We also did the centerpieces, the candy bar, and all the flowers! Luckily, Ben, at Banchetti's, was so awesome to work with, he basically gave us the three days before the wedding to set up, all at our own pace. Which definitely helps when the designer is IN the wedding! PHEW!

Photo by Stephie Lei Photography

The bride's bouquet:

Photo by Stephie Lei Photography

Please enjoy these awesome iPhone photos: (I know, I am THE WORST)

Thank you so much, Kacie and Mike, for letting me be a part of your special day. You both looked amazing, and I don't think I've ever seen such a happy couple in my life!! Wishing you a lifetime of happiness and health, we love you so much. :)

Balboa Style

 I always say how lucky we are to have so many super creative friends around us. Andrea and her fiancé Michael, who you have met before, have been our letterpress-hobby guinea pigs going way back to their Save the Dates. So when they decided they also wanted us to letterpress their invitations, we were all over it.
And by "over" I mean in over our heads... way over. Andrea is seriously like, the nicest person you will ever meet, so of course she had roughly a million friends and family to invite to their big day. Okay... not a million, but a whole lot, and after giving it the old college try, we had to concede that our little table top sweetheart Kelsey was just not up to the challenge.
Enter our heroes Jodi and Shelly at French Press. They totally saved the day by finishing up these deliciously pressed invitations you see below.

Andrea's wedding was at the Prado, in Balboa Park, in San Diego. Surrounded by gorgeous Spanish and Moorish design, Andrea and I went back and forth over many different designs to come up with an one that was inspired by both old wrought iron scrollwork and the patterns on Spanish tile. 

This was a Wedding Weekend Extravaganza, if there has ever been one! Andrea thought of everything, including arranging childcare for guests traveling with children. We did press the Childcare, Brunch, and Accommodations cards in-house! (Yay us!) 

We chose Crane's 220# super duper thick cotton paper, that was 100% tree-free!

 We also pressed the envelopes and envelope liners. The bride and groom's name was printed on the liner in charcoal ink for you to see when you opened the envelope. The outer and RSVP envelopes both had 2 color printing, with the design from the invitation in green around their names and address in charcoal, on the flap of the envelope for the return address, and the front of the RSVP envelope.

 Thank you Andrea and Michael for being our letterpress guinea pigs, it was an adventure, and we wish you all the best in the world as you start out on your new life together. I only wish we'd been able to be there to see it!! Congratulations, I know you will spend the rest of your lives making each other so happy. :)

We Solemnly Swear We Are Up To No Good...

THIS blog post has been a LONG time coming... I have kept putting it off because I wanted to do the invitation – and the couple – justice, and not just rush through it to get it up on the blog quickly. Unfortunately that has left us here, more than 3 months OVERDUE! So here it is, the Harry Potter, Marauder's Map-Inspired wedding invitation for Dina and Travis.

Let me start out by saying how absolutely SMITTEN I was with Dina and Travis from the moment I met them. I already had a soft spot for them before we even met since they had found us through Nickel City Studios, and I can't help but feel a kindred spirit with couples having the same wedding photographers as we did. As I spoke to them about their wedding plans, Dina laid out one eccentric, crazy, awesome idea after another, with the most amazing "I don't care if anyone gets it, we love it" attitude I've ever seen in a bride. It wasn't a Harry Potter-themed wedding, it was just one of the many things they loved that they wanted to be a part of their big day to make it perfectly "them." {i.e. the "table numbers" were Bruce Campbell characters and movie posters, and the pastor started off the ceremony with the wedding intro from the Princess Bride... yeah... #epic}

Every Harry Potter fan who swung through our booth at Brides World this past January noticed this unique invitation right away. We designed the front to look like the outside of the Marauder's Map from the Harry Potter movies, but included Dina and Travis' names in the banner, and a drawing of the small church in Salamanca they were married in in place of Hogwarts.

Any time I get an opportunity to do an old-school pen and ink drawing for an invitation, I am a happy camper... so doing two made me VERY happy...

Footprints (we, unfortunately, had no way of making them move} surrounded the reception information, which had little nods to the story without being all magic wands and owls. Another fun twist, the church was too small to invite everyone on their guest list, so the main invitation was for the reception, and a separate card had the information for the ceremony that only went to closest friends and family.

Sealing the whole thing up was a pearlized white wax seal, with a simple image of a house. I originally designed the seal as red, with a monogram, but Dina and Travis said they wanted white wax, with a house... because Travis' last name is Whitehouse. White. House. We all thought it was hilarious, so of course we ran with it!!

So if you want more, more, more of Dina and Travis' awesome leap day wedding (oh yeah, did I mention  they got married on a Wednesday? Because February 29th just sounded fun) you can check out their feature on Off Beat Bride or the rest of their amazing photos on the Nickel City Blog.

Thank you Dina and Travis for letting me be a part of your incredible day, and for being the epitome of why I love love love what I do, and where I do it. 

Casino Party!

Nick and I both come from very large families, and the best part of that is there is almost always a party to plan. Right now, we're planning my sister's wedding, and that means all the parties that go along with it! Including her bridal shower... but we didn't want to do a traditional afternoon shindig. Kacie is a BIG casino fan, so we decided on a Monte Carlo themed Casino Night!

We started with an invitation designed like a playing card; not a new idea, but a perfect fit.

As for the party itself, we set up card tables, and even rented a slot machine from a local company that specializes in casino parties.

As people walked in they picked up mini gift bags with poker chips and tokens for the slot machine.

The lovely ladies of Thelma and Louise Catering made themed appetizers - like clams casino and poker chip crackers!

We decorated spade, heart, diamond, and club shaped cookies, and tied with matching thank you tags.

AND NOW, the best part! Rather than see all of these party elements end up in the trash, we're giving them away to one lucky "fan." To enter the raffle, just make sure you've "liked" us on facebook, then comment on this blog post, or on our facebook page. The winner will get:
- Labeled mini-gift bags
- Thank you tags for favors
- Big stack of cardboard playing card coasters (we got from a bartender friend).
- Cards for appetizers, with menu cards, and/or 10% discount on catering services from Thelma and Louise Catering.
- 10% discount on customized invitations if you order from us.

Congratulations, Kacie and Mike, cannot WAIT for the big day!!! xoxo