Five.

Yup, that is how many days I have left until I become a mar­ried lady. I can now count them on one hand.

Miraculously I’ve only had one wed­ding anx­i­ety dream (hope­fully I’m not speak­ing too soon), which involved for­get­ting to tell my pho­tog­ra­pher where to be and sub­se­quently los­ing any and all con­tact infor­ma­tion for them, as well as my makeup artist not show­ing up and some ran­dom per­son from the hotel mak­ing me up to look like a hooker from the ‘80s. Lovely, huh?

__________________________________________________________

As usual I had the best inten­tions of still shar­ing a post here and there while in the final stages of prepa­ra­tions and plan­ning, and as usual I bit off more than I could chew. So this is a brief hello and a lit­tle bit of a longer (though tem­po­rary) goodbye.

I’ve seen a lot of soon-to-to-be-married blog­gers post about how their blog will change after the wed­ding. But I don’t see this one chang­ing much, aside from my per­spec­tive being a bit dif­fer­ent from the other side. I can’t wait to be mar­ried and I def­i­nitely can’t wait to spend a week and a half in Maui. But, believe me, I also can­not wait to be back to our nor­mal life (which will be sort of a new nor­mal, admit­tedly) so that I can resume post­ing, design­ing for Seamless Paperie, and maybe once and for all get­ting our apart­ment dec­o­rated and orga­nized (though I’m prob­a­bly kid­ding myself there). So in 3ish weeks you can look for­ward to more inspi­ra­tion boards, more awe­somely designed paper goods, and more cre­ative wed­ding finds. Not to men­tion a com­plete recap on the wed­ding and all of my vendors.

It still hasn’t com­pletely dawned on me that it’s all hap­pen­ing this week­end though. And I have a feel­ing it won’t until I’m sit­ting in our hotel suite get­ting my hair and makeup done sur­rounded by my favorite ladies. I’m feel­ing more emo­tions than I can even deci­pher — but mostly a com­bi­na­tion of nerves, excite­ment and gid­di­ness — and if I think about it for too long it gets a bit overwhelming.

So now I’m off to tie up the last few loose ends that are still lin­ger­ing around, spend time with friends and fam­ily and make the biggest and most excit­ing com­mit­ment I’ve ever made. Thanks for stick­ing around and shar­ing in this whole expe­ri­ence with me. Be back soon.

P.S. Welcome Inspired Bride read­ers! Please check back in a few weeks for a lot more posts!

July 13, 2010 – 11:00 am | By Courtney | Posted in About Us | Comments (6)

Revealed!

So remem­ber this tiny sneak peek I shared with you last month? I’m SO excited to finally reveal the whole project — I was lucky enough to be a con­trib­u­tor to the lat­est issue of Nonpareil Magazine!

The lat­est issue, “A Silver Screen Soirée”, is all about wed­dings and events inspired by TV and film. And my team, which con­sisted of the amaz­ingly tal­ented Sarah Brysk Cohen of Blossom of Branch and pho­tog­ra­pher Maggie Harkov—we also used a color board by Jillian Clark of 100 Layer Cake as our color palette inspiration/jumping off point — worked with Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

It was a lot of work, but so. Much. Fun. I would gladly do it again in a heart­beat. Please check out our entire spread start­ing on page 40, and def­i­nitely don’t miss all of the other events in this over­sized issue. We are in amaz­ing company!

June 23, 2010 – 9:57 am | By Courtney | Posted in About Us, Inspiration, Paper Goods | Comments (5)

Cherry

It has been awhile, but I finally got the chance to sit down and fin­ish a new mood board…


Clockwise from top left: 1. Flower photo by Casey Hyer , 2. Bouquet found on Sarah Pepper, 3. Cupcakes from Terry Tyson on Flickr, 4. Heart Fabric found at Folksy, 5. Bridesmaids dress from Urban Outfitters, 6. Invitation by Cheree Berry, 7. Book Design by Klas Ernflo, 8. Dessert table by Sweet & Saucy via The Sweetest Occasion,9. Ribbon Candy by nicole marie on Flickr

June 18, 2010 – 10:10 am | By Courtney | Posted in Inspiration | Comments (1)

Halloween Wedding Pt. 2

Again I know Halloween is months away so this isn’t exactly timely. But it looks like the wed­ding may have been for another hus­band and wife design team (love that), so I had to share what else I found. Here’s a few more images, this time of the invi­ta­tions, from the port­fo­lio of Kristan Butler.

June 18, 2010 – 7:44 am | By Courtney | Posted in Design, Paper Goods | Comments (0)

Wedding Beer

These beer labels by Wesley Schauble may not be so timely, but they are pretty darn cool.

June 17, 2010 – 8:00 am | By Courtney | Posted in Design, Details | Comments (0)

THANK-YOU (and other things)

First, a HUGE, HUGE (incred­i­bly belated) thanks to every sin­gle one of you who com­mented, tweeted about or even just glanced at our invi­ta­tions. I’m still amazed that any­one is remotely inter­ested in the things I have to say or the work we’re doing. And I truly appre­ci­ate every kind word.

Designing them was an emo­tional process — we spent a lot of time and energy get­ting them just right. To many peo­ple an invi­ta­tion is just a dis­pos­able piece of paper, but for us, it was much more than that. It was really impor­tant that they reflect who we are. So although we didn’t inten­tion­ally design them to get out­side approval, it feels really good to know that we accom­plished what we set out to do, and that there are other peo­ple out there shar­ing in our excitement.

For those who asked, I haven’t yet sent an invi­ta­tion to the Obamas. Obviously they would never come to a wed­ding of a stranger, but I had heard that every invi­ta­tion gets an offi­cial response (plus I needed a fake address to use for online dis­play pur­poses), which is why I had Patricia include their address. So I’m think­ing I may do it just to get the cool keepsake.

And sec­ond, please know that I really hate when I have to dis­ap­pear from here for days at a time. It was very dif­fi­cult to not start off this post with an apol­ogy (some­thing I’m try­ing to do less of in these types of sit­u­a­tions), because I gen­uinely do feel badly about not being around.

Something I strug­gle with every day is that there are way too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them. So espe­cially in times like these, where the last minute wed­ding prepa­ra­tions need to take pri­or­ity over every­thing else, I have to pick and choose what I can spend my free min­utes — if you can call them that — on. And unfor­tu­nately, as much as I hate it, this blog tends to drop off the list. (I lit­er­ally have hun­dreds of posts drafted that are wait­ing to be finished.)

And as excited as the two of us are for the wed­ding, lately we’ve found our­selves fan­ta­siz­ing about what we’ll do with our time once the wed­ding is over. In real­ity it will just be filled with new projects and resum­ing projects that were hold for the wed­ding — hello Seamless Paperie site! — but it seems to be a place we’re con­stantly going to lately. Like, “I can’t wait til the wed­ding is over to I can finally orga­nize the office” or “I can’t wait til the wed­ding is over so I can do a craft project just for fun.” And as a list per­son, I’m hav­ing a tough time not mak­ing an after-wedding to do list, but so far I’ve resisted the urge.

So what I’m going to do for the next thirty days is try extra hard to be in the moment and enjoy every last detail. Because I really don’t want the wed­ding to fly by and feel like I missed out, which is where I feel like I’m headed if I keep myself buried under to do lists. But rest assured, I am not aban­don­ing you com­pletely. And pretty soon I’ll be able to share with you all the projects that have been keep­ing us busy. Stay tuned…

June 17, 2010 – 7:51 am | By Courtney | Posted in About Us | Comments (1)

Invitations! (Part 2)

As promised, here are the story lay­outs for your enjoy­ment (I’ve also added them to flickr.)! Just click on each image to get the larger view.

June 4, 2010 – 10:02 pm | By Courtney | Posted in About Us, Paper Goods | Comments (4)

Invitations! (Part 1)

Finally! The invi­ta­tions have gone out and arrived safely to all of our guests, so I’m now free to share them with you. I real­ize there are a TON of images here, apolo­gies for all the required scrolling. But it was a bit com­pli­cated to shoot in a way that you get the whole pic­ture, so it seemed that this many pho­tos were required to get the idea across. And in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I actu­ally took a ton more, some of which you can see right here on flickr. More descrip­tion below!

Lots of awe­some peo­ple were involved in help­ing us make these hap­pen, the first being Patricia of Primelle who is respon­si­ble for our incred­i­bly gor­geous cal­lig­ra­phy. I loved it so much I wished I could keep all the envelopes for my self!

We bought a fun embosser (from Wilshire Graphic Press) to use for all of our wed­ding things, which is so much fun to play with. We put it to use here on the invite folder cover with some col­ored stickers.

The bulk of our invi­ta­tions was made up of a story book that Brian and I wrote and designed together to tell the story of our rela­tion­ship. There were 5 parts, and each one included a small descrip­tion of a par­tic­u­lar stage in our rela­tion­ship along with a postcard-like illus­tra­tion to go along with it. It’s pretty tough to show through these pho­tos, so if you’re inter­ested in read­ing the story, I’ll do a follow-up post after this one with the flat spreads.

The final part leads to the actual invi­ta­tion, which along with the reply card and info card, were printed by the always awe­some Mama’s Sauce. They did an amaz­ing job and turned this around really quickly for us too. Highly rec­om­mend them!

The entire invi­ta­tion was housed in a folder that con­tained all of the var­i­ous pieces. It included a folded pocket where the RSVP and info card sat. And the story book­let was stitched in, to make it a per­fectly com­pact piece and — hope­fully — a keep­sake. The con­struc­tion of the folder, print­ing and sewing of the book­let was all done by local shop Proof 7. They did an excel­lent job with all of the intri­cate details required to hold the whole thing together, and worked closely with us to make sure we were totally happy with the final product.

And that is it! Phew, it took a ridicu­lous amount of hours to get this done, but we are so happy with the results. We’ve got­ten some amaz­ing com­ments from our friends and fam­ily about how it is truly “us”, which really, is the best com­pli­ment I could have asked for. A spe­cial thanks is due to all the awe­some ven­dors who helped these come together. And a HUGE thanks to Kevin and Laura for slav­ing over these for sev­eral hours to get them ready for mail­ing. We owe you one!!

Stay tuned for Part 2, com­ing up shortly…

June 4, 2010 – 4:53 pm | By Courtney | Posted in About Us, Paper Goods | Comments (17)

Proof!

Proof that we’ve actu­ally been mak­ing some things hap­pen! These are my long over­due shower thank-you notes (If you’re wait­ing on one, so sorry, they’re com­ing soon!). Brian and I designed (that’s the new Eames Black Stencil if you’re curi­ous) and gocco’d these over the week­end. The screen actu­ally turned out really awe­some — in the past I haven’t got­ten it so clean. But B still touched up every one by hand. He’s a trooper that one. Now I just have to write them out!


June 4, 2010 – 11:09 am | By Courtney | Posted in About Us, Paper Goods | Comments (0)

2 Month (sort of) Check-In

Well, as usual I’m way behind. This check-in is less like two months and more like 6 weeks! Which is just insane to me. I can­not believe how quickly time is flying.

The bad news about the past month is that we did not get a whole lot done (com­pared to the entire list any­way). But the good news is that it was for good rea­sons — trav­el­ing to a good friend’s wed­ding (Hi Case!), work­ing on a promo for Seamless Paperie, col­lab­o­rat­ing on a photo shoot which I will share with you soon, and get­ting our invi­ta­tions put together and sent out (post­ing this after­noon I swear!). But despite not check­ing off as many things as I would have liked, I some­how do still feel on top of things at the moment. We’ll see how long that lasts!

Here’s where we are on what was sup­posed to have been finished:

  • Start some of our DIY projects (We’ve got­ten a cou­ple of these going and have plans for every­thing. More below.)
  • Write our vows (Just tweak­ing a lit­tle bit still.)
  • Ask our read­ers to be a part of the cer­e­mony and pick out our readings
  • Design and pro­duce our favors.
  • Figure out the rest of the grooms­men’ out­fits: shirts, ties etc. (Still work­ing on this, though we think we have a plan.)
  • Pick out our wed­ding bands
  • Design and print shower thank-you notes (Done! Will post a bit later.)
  • Buy all the acces­sories and under­gar­ments for my dress
  • Schedule and attend my first dress fitting.
  • Brainstorm and plan our escort cards and table numbers
  • Design and make our rehearsal din­ner invi­ta­tions (Going out today!)

Well, I guess that’s a few things off the list anyway.

And here’s what we’re adding to the list this month (basi­cally every­thing else!):

  • Purchase all the gifts for our fam­i­lies and bridal party (Got a few of these already.)
  • Solidify our after party loca­tion (Know where we want to have it, just have to put the plans in place.)
  • Finally send out my shower thank you notes
  • Pick up wel­come bag supplies
  • Start con­firm­ing details with pho­tog­ra­pher, florist etc.

And for what feels like the most gigan­tic por­tion of the to do list we have left — projects! We’re mak­ing a lot of things in the next 6 weeks. And the good thing is that we sat down last week­end, brain­stormed ideas and came up with a plan for each of these things. So now it’s just about design and pro­duc­tion, which we should have a lot of fun with. It’s been great to pull out the gocco twice in the last week — it had def­i­nitely been gath­er­ing dust the last few months. So here’s the list:

  • Table num­bers
  • “Escort Cards” and dis­play (in quotes because we’re not doing actual cards
  • Menus
  • Programs
  • Guest Book
  • Cupcake stand
  • Gift Bags
  • Misc. Signage

We sure have our work cut out for us! But every­thing is def­i­nitely com­ing together and we are get­ting SUPER excited. We went to our tast­ing the other night and the weather was so per­fectly beau­ti­ful down there. It almost doesn’t even feel like Manhattan. Can’t wait!

June 4, 2010 – 10:59 am | By Courtney | Posted in About Us, Planning | Comments (1)