Wedding Papers

One part of the wedding that I had so much fun selecting was all the paper items that went along with the planning!  I've always loved stationery, especially if it was personalized, so this interest area probably comes as no surprise. :)  For today's 5 for Friday with Natasha, Darci, April, and Christina and as part of my 31 Day Journey to the Altar with the Nester, I'm talking about 5 of the different papers we selected to use for our big day.  I loved the way they all turned out and felt that each added a special touch to the wedding.

{1}  Selecting invitations was a little more challenging than I thought.  I had always dreamed of Crane & Co. invitations in ecru with black script, so when we went to the stationery store, we started with the Crane & Co. book.  Though these had been my childhood dream, my sweet fiance had some thoughts of his own about the invitations, but fortunately he also like a relatively simple look.  Now, though we both liked a simple style in varying degrees, there was still quite a variety of options for us to explore.  If we hadn't known this much ahead of time, I don't know how we would have every chosen our invitations because there are so many beautiful possibilities.  After a few hours of looking at the different choices and testing the waters of compromise ;), we found our winner!  To see a sample similar to the ones we selected, click here.

{2}  Rather than have place cards at every seat, I thought it would be nice to place guests at numbered tables, so they could choose where they would like to sit at the table, but would know where they could put their things right when they entered.  As guests entered the reception, they were directed to silver trays containing small ivory cards with the guest's name and table number in black script.

{3} The Table Number cards were matted on black card stock and were folded over to stand on each table.  This image is the proof that our local paper store sent me.  They did so much for our wedding, including wrapping the wedding party gifts!  If you have a local store like this in your area, don't be afraid to ask if they can help with things that might seem outside the box.  Our store helped us with so many different things that I am so glad I asked about.  They were so sweet and easy to work with, too!

{4} Our wedding programs were quite possibly one of my favorite pieces of the wedding.  Our local paper store had their own calligrapher who was able to do our names on the front of the program in the most beautiful calligraphy and the rest of the program was typed.  It was gorgeous and fit the look I had in my mind.  We included the order of worship on the inside left and the names of the wedding party on the inside right.  On the back we were able to include a note that explained the candles on the altar were in memory of our grandparents.  We also included our new address on the back.

{5} We had some small cards made in a similar style as the table cards with the Instagram hashtag we created for our wedding and placed them on the tables.  We thought that if people had Instagram on their phones, they could take photos and post them with the hashtag for us to look at later.  We had so much fun getting to see the reception from different perspectives!

I loved selecting all of these neat pieces for our wedding and hope they helped communicate clearly different things about the wedding to our guests.  One of my greatest hopes was that our wedding and reception would be fun for those who were so gracious to join our celebration!

This is day 11 of our 31 Day Journey to the Altar.  Click here for the previous days.