Wedding Week: Pretty Paper

{Photo by Shannon Belletti}
The first thing you might wonder is, how exactly did my man pop the big question? Well, to save myself from a simple copy & paste, you can visit this page from our wedding website to read all about that beautiful day in June 2009. Hint: it involved some delicious tapas, sangria, and a gorgeous grassy quad at our alma mater. :)

Once we established that we were officially gettin' hitched, we knew our first big decision to tackle was the date. I had always dreamed of a summer wedding, but that just wasn't in the cards for us seeing as Kyle would be in Physical Therapy school during the summer (aka NO time off for a honeymoon, and that just wouldn't fly!). So we chose the first Saturday of my spring break, March 6, which allowed us both a week off for a honeymoon trip and two full months of marriage before Kyle dove into his doctoral degree. So naturally what came next was...

...the Save the Date! We went the magnet route to guarantee easy placement on the fridge, ordering from (shocker!) Magnet Street Weddings. The photos were actually taken by us while on vacation in Sea Grove a year earlier, but we thought they perfectly captured our personalities and our relationship, hence they made the Save the Date cut. :)
From there, I started getting things together in my trusty wedding notebook. To make being somewhat organized more fun, I thought I would add some pizzazz to mine and design a personal cover. I used a few of our engagement photos in addition to some inspiration photos for our cake, flowers, and my shoes. Voilà! Filing that photography contract in the notebook just got easier on the eyes!

Next, my favorite part, the invitations! After fruitlessly scouring the internet for "the one," I decided to go into this quaint paper shop in Athens called plainjane Designs. I was looking for something elegant that still had a little color, something more unique than what I was seeing online. And there I found exactly what I was looking for, this tri-fold beauty:

Please forgive the unaligned and fragmented look, it was the only way I could show the invitation up close and the images just weren't cooperating with me. Boo! But you get the general idea. My favorite part about the invitations is how cost-effective they were. We had no inner and outer envelopes, because the invitation folded into its own envelope (which meant no licking, either! We used monogrammed seals). The invites also allowed us to save on postage, since the RSVP cards tore off as a postcard, which meant we could use the 28-cent postcard stamps. Awesome all around!

The programs were a semi-DIY project. I say semi because I had MAJOR help with these. First, I had a friend of mine design the programs, and she surprised me at the end of the process with no charge. What a great wedding gift! I then had them printed and cut at Kinko's, and then proceeded to punch two holes in each of them for the ribbon. (I found the cute yellow and green ribbon at Micheals, I was especially excited about the gingham!). From there, my mom stepped in and saved the day with her mad bow-tying skills. I could never thank her enough for her help! I loved the way they turned out, and loved the total price tag even better.

{Photo by Shannon Belletti}
Finally, I created an itinerary for the wedding party, so there would be no confusion about where they were supposed to be and when on the big day. It also proved to be really helpful for my wedding director. This was probably my favorite thing I made for the wedding, and one of my best friends liked it so much that she had me make one for her wedding this past July. You can see it here. For any future brides out there, I would love to make one for you too! You can contact me at lesleyanne.fenton [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll hook you up!
So that's our wedding paper story, folks! I hope it didn't bore you too much, I know this was a long post. But stay tuned for some more Wedding Week goodness tomorrow, just like marriage it only gets better as we go! :)