Identifying the Yummies

After this wedding, I'm pretty sure I'll never want to create any sort of signage/labels/tags ever again.  Because let me tell ya, our guests are going to be the most fully-informed, non-confused, wedding guests ever.  As things have gotten down to the wire we decided to nix a few of the signs on our list because, in all of our wedding brain craziness, we came to our senses and realized our guests could probably figure some stuff out on their own (like, say, where the bathrooms are or how in the world to navigate the fifteen feet between the elevators and the ceremony space).

There were some signs that were always non-negotiable for us though, and those were the ones that were meant to be functional while also adding some crucial design flare (and, let's be honest here, that would make for some incredibly cool detail shots).  Labels for the dessert buffet and the candy buffet definitely fell into that category.

As is probably true with all good design, these little devils look much more beautifully simplistic than they actually were to create.  We're so proud of how they turned out, though, and are immensely relived that they're finished.  So relieved, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures of the dessert buffet tags before we packed them away, which means you'll just have to wait for the pro pics to come back to see how those turned out.  

But... here are some pics I did take during the process of attaching the candy buffet labels to our jars.  (And in true Ferris Wheel fashion, the ribbon I used for this has been discontinued and I ran out halfway through the job.  So cross your fingers that our feverish internet search actually yields the right replacement ribbon!)

Now, on to the pictures!

 Any chance that you'll be over-informing the guests at your wedding?  And admit it - you like pretty signs too, right?

Rehearsal Plans and Rhyming Words

Apparently the theme of my posts lately is "Ms. FW brags about Mr. FW's amazingness."  So to continue with that theme, I'd like to tell you about how instrumental Mr. FW was in creating our super fun rehearsal dinner invites.  It started when we were both standing in line at Michael's (so we could have two separate transactions and thus use two separate 40% off coupons - obvs) and he wandered over to the $1 bargain section, where he picked up the cutest little silverware set rubber stamp.  He suggested that it might be nice to emboss this little knife, fork, and spoon design onto the back of whatever rehearsal dinner invite we chose.  Of course I was all for that, so we snapped up the stamp and then went looking for a coordinating invite.

We fell in love with this design from Invitation Consultants.  (FYI... we were really happy with the quality of these invites.  The paper has a slight sheen to it that feels very luxe, and they are printed in color on both sides.  Also awesome was that we snagged a $10 off coupon from Retail Me Not!)

Now let me direct your eye to the truly amazing part.  See, Mr. FW is an incredible wordsmith (seriously, he can make anything sound good) so he had no trouble coming up with the most adorable rhyme to set the tone for our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

before the knot's tied come help set the mood

we're ready to celebrate with drinks and Thai food

at our rehearsal dinner we'd like you to be

if for no other reason than because it is free

Smooth Thai is in the lobby of the Parc 55

casual dress will match the laid-back vibe

we'll eat at 6PM on the tenth of november

and we hope it will be a night to remember

so please come and join us on the eve of our day

and know that we love you more than we can say!

You're impressed, right?  Yeah, me too.  He also decided to include these little personalized timelines for each person we were mailing the invitation to, so they would know exactly when and where to show up for the rehearsal part of the day.

Then we packaged them up, did a little embossing, slapped on our favorite celebration stamps, and they were ready to go.  (Of course, this was after the font freak in me insisted we find an address font that was similar to the invitation title font - because I just knew we already had one and it made me feel so good to see what a near perfect match they were.  All that, even though I knew rationally not a single guests would ever notice the fonts.  Nope, that level of detail-consciousness was just for me!)

And that makes one more project off the to-do list, courtesy of Mr. FW.  What would I do without him?

Did you do a rehearsal, complete with invitations and everything?  Honestly we didn't really expect to, but I guess it's happening now whether we like it or not!  :-)

At Last, the Invitation Reveal

The RSVP's have started to trickle in, which tells me that it's finally time to reveal the Ferris Wheel invitations to the world.  Are you as excited as I am? Oooh, I certainly hope so!  Truth be told, every single step of creating these little lovelies - design, production, and packaging - was unimaginably time-consuming.  The process involved unanticipated material costs, social isolation, lack of sleep, a ridiculous amount of mistake corrections, and at least one or two probably unnecessary freak-outs ("Oh no, I think I hate them.  Do I hate them?  Should I hate them?  Will other people hate them?  Maybe we should start over from the beginning.  Agh!").  But, BUT...  At the end of all that, thankfully we adore the outcome!  That would be enough on its own, but we've heard from at least a few people that they love them too, and somehow that makes it all worth it.

Okay, enough with the words.  On to the pictures!

{envelope back}

For no particular reason, let's start with the back.  It's difficult to tell from the picture but the spirograph is embossed on there, creating that amazing glossy, raised look that only heat embossing can give you.  You can also see the bow of the baker's twine that's wrapped around the pocketfold.

{envelope front and the wrapped pocketfold that goes inside}

If you've been around the hive long enough, you'll notice right away that I drew significant packaging inspiration from Mrs. Apple Cider's invitations.  Like her, we addressed the vellum envelopes by running them through our inkjet printer and it worked just fine.  Oh, and one more thing...  I just have to give a special shout-out to those celebration stamps because Mr. FW and I are obsessed with their awesomeness.  (Side note:  we also like to say that our stamps read "celebrate George Washington."  Silly!)

{our logo}

Mr. FW created this sleek logo for us that somehow manages to incorporate so many of our elements - spirograph, wedding date, ombre ink effect - into a little one inch circle.

{open pocketfold}

When our guests unwrap the baker's twine and open the pocketfold, this is what they'll see.  To walk you through it, there's our striped "liner" (printed at home on semi-gloss paper) on both sides, the matted invitation (printed on the Gocco), four inserts (printed on our printer) with a design that lines up along the right hand side, and of course a picture of us.  The part I adore most about the invitation itself, and that you can't see because I removed our names, is how only our names and the word "love" are highlighted by the blue text.  Aww...

{all of the inserts taken out of the pocketfold}

When our guests take out the inserts they'll find cards for accommodations, map, more information, and RSVP (both front and back pictured above).

{accommodations insert}

Our accommodations card offers brief information about how our guests can reserve rooms at the venue and points them to our website for other hotel information.  I am so in love with this little card - from the spirograph in the center to the fading ink for the text. *Swoon*

{map insert}

Mr. FW created this map insert from start to finish, and it's a great example of what an excellent team we are.  This is not anything I'd know how to do, nor do I have even have the programs for it.  So he did all of it and then we just dropped it into my layout.  How adorable is that little blue star?!

{more information insert}

We needed to find a way to let guests know all of this additional information that we didn't want to squeeze onto the invitation, so we gave it its own card.  The only thing I didn't remember to include was suggested attire, so I hope people actually do check the website and see that we're going more for cocktail attire than black tie.  I guess we'll find out soon enough.   

{RSVP postcard - of course the final ones actually had a stamp on them}

I really enjoyed designing the RSVP card.  I wanted to make them fun while also trying to increase the chances that they would serve their primary funcions - tell us who's coming and what they'd like to eat.  Skipping the M____________ blank that even I still don't totally understand, I labeled the name blank with the oh-so-helpful word "name" and put pictures of the entree choices right beside it.  (But just in case, we did also use an invisible blacklight marker to number each of them.)  Instead of accept/regret options, I used the words "yay" and "boo" because those are things we actually say all the time.  The hotel information will help us to distribute the out of town bags, and if people list a favorite song then we'll try to include it in our playlist for the night.  According to our current count, we will have at least 13 guests at our wedding.  :-)

{ready to go out into the world}

In designing this suite I found out that it's not easy to make predominantly black, gray, and white elements look special or artistic, especially when you're just going to print them on a regular inkjet printer.  But as we started to put all the pieces together, it really felt like we achieved exactly the look we were going for.  Yay!

Would you ever make the crazy and yet absolutely worth it decision to design your own invitation suite?  If you have any questions about how we constructed anything, feel free to ask! 

Making Their Way Into The World

Can you guess what's in this box?

Here's a hint - this is what came next.

Yep, our invitations have officially left the building!  And look how excited I am about it!  :-) We walked them across the street to the mailbox tonight so that they would go out first thing in the morning.  And let me just say that finishing these babies has been such a huge relief.  In fact, after we got back home Mr. Ferris Wheel said, "Today is one of those days where I feel like everything might just work out okay."

I am so anxious to reveal them to the Hive, but I need to give them a few days to get to our recipients so I won't spoil the surprise that's been 100+ hours in the making.   (For real.  Not kidding.)  But I promise they're coming to you soon.  And in the meantime, it's back to work for us.  Crossing that three month mark really lit a fire under our a**es and we are cranking our projects left and right.  Even though the to-do list seems neverending, it feels really good to be making progress.

Do you think we're crazy for spending so much time on our invites?  (It's okay, you can tell me.)  And did you have a moment in your planning when things shifted into high gear?

White Knots for Equality

Marriage equality is an *extremely* important topic for the Ferris Wheels. In fact, our marriage talks began back when California legalized marriage for same sex couples because, at the time, we were a same sex couple. We knew we wanted to get married, but we were both still students and the timing just wasn't right for us yet. Unless you've been in this situation, it's impossible to explain what it feels like to consider rushing to get married because you're afraid you'll never again have the opportunity to legalize your union with the person you love. In the end we decided to wait until we were ready, even if it meant that our relationship wouldn't be legitimized by state and federal governments.

Unlike most other queer couples, we're now able to access the institution of marriage because of Mr. FW's gender change. We wrestled with the politics of our decision to get married, and we remain steadfast in our belief that all loving and committed couples deserve to be treated equally in the eyes of the law. We will openly talk about this belief during our marriage ceremony and we wanted to give our guests a way to visibly show their support of marriage equality as well. Enter white knots for marriage equality.

In our ceremony program we plan to include a page with the white knots and a description of their meaning.

Compared to how much this issue means to us personally, the supplies to make these were ridiculously affordable. We bought everything on eBay - 10 yards of 3/8" white grosgrain ribbon, 100 tiny plastic bags, and 144 small safety pins for a total cost of $11.60. The process of making them was equally as simple.

{5 easy steps, not including the step where I heat-singed the notched edges of the ribbon}

We hope that by including these knots right in the ceremony program people will have ample time to read the information, make a decision for themselves about whether or not to wear them throughout the rest of the night, and maybe even have conversations about the fact that we included them in the first place. And really, that's what it's all about.

How are you incorporating your own beliefs (cultural, political, personal, or otherwise) into your wedding day?

14 Hours and Counting (The Invite Madness Begins)

I've been trying not to notice the time, but having typed out that sentence I just couldn't help but steal a glance at the clock on my computer.  It's 3:24 a.m. and I'm wrapping up my wedding planning for the night.  By my sleep-deprived estimation I've spent at least fourteen hours today on my computer - each and every one of those hours dedicated to brainstorming and drafting ideas for our invitations. 

Luckily for me, we've finalized some of our other paper products and that gives me some stylistic direction for the invites.  Unluckily for me is that I can't visualize ideas. Either that, or I don't trust my visualizations. Whatever it is, I'm a person who has to make a prototype or create a digital mock-up or *something* before I'll have the slightest clue whether or not I like a particular idea. I don't need it to be pretty - just something that gives me a rough idea of what the end product might look like.  Also terribly unfortunate for me is my relative lack of skill with graphics programs, meaning that I'm constantly googling "how to do ____ in Photoshop Elements." 

Key words: rough, lack of skill

That's how I wind up with my computer desktop chock full of icons (and I hate a desktop full of icons!) for a zillion different versions of images like this. 

{amidst this craziness, a little sneak peek of our engagement pics!}

I can't believe I'm actually posting a picture of my work in progress, but there's your window into the way my mind works.  Chaotic, no?  As hard as it might be to believe, that craptastic illustration is where all the magic starts for me.  In case you were curious as to what you're looking at, that's a potential layout for a 5x7 pocketfold.  Starting on the left we have a (horribly rendered) pointed flap lined with stripes, leading to the main invite in the middle (where you can clearly *ahem* see where the words and the graphics go, right?), and the enclosures in a pocket on the right-hand side that's also lined with stripes and may potentially feature a photo of us. 

No doubt I would've done a similar layout even if we were going to order our invites from a printer, just because it gives me a chance to see how everythings fits together.  But because we plan to DIY them, laying out all the individual elements like this gives me an opportunity to think about how each part needs to be made, what's feasible and what's not, how they'll have to be layered and adhered, what supplies we'll need, etc. 

It also gives me ample time to consider the likely possibility that we've bitten off more than we can chew here.  SO many individual parts.  SO many steps to put it all together.  SO little time to get it all done.  And ALL that for something people will just throw away.  I don't know why this is so important to me, except to say that it is.  I cherish the way Mr. FW and I collaborate on creative tasks like this (even if we drive each other crazy sometimes), and I love the idea that when it's all finished we'll have this amazing memento we made with our own hands. 

That said, we're not even done designing them yet and already I can't wait to cross them off the list! 

What project did you or will you take on, knowing full well it's probably more than you can reasonably handle?  What's YOUR explanation for that?

Pleated Paper Medallion... Thingies

Back in November of 2009 I came across the most amazing post on Design*Sponge, and I have been ridiculously excited about one particular DIY project ever since.

image via Design*Sponge; feature provided by Once Wed; photography by Jen Curtis; design by Gloria Wong Design; paper shapes by Lisa Wong Jackson of Good on Paper; flowers by Nancy Liu Chin

OMG, I can't even put into words how enamored I am with every aspect of this look. Mr. FW liked it, but he didn't want to kiss and hug it in quite the same way I did (probably because he's normal, and it's not normal to want to kiss and hug pictures on a computer screen. Jus' saying...). He did like the idea of paper décor suspended over the tables, though, so we started talking about how we could adapt those pleated paper medallions to better work with our wedding style and both of our personal aesthetics.

Here were our criteria: we knew we wanted to incorporate the graphic patterns we've woven through other projects, we liked the possibility of having a range of sizes including diameters over 12 inches, and the project needed to be affordable. Hmm... fun designs on large, affordable sheets of paper... Where could we find that? Ah yes, wrapping paper, of course!

I scooped up about 16 rolls of wrapping paper from Target, eBay, and The Container Store for a little less than $75. The tricky thing about estimating the amount you'll need is that wrapping paper comes in different lengths, different amounts per roll, and different types of materials. The best deals by far were the large rolls from Target. The other thing we purchased was the Scor-Pal ($25), to help us make more precise accordion folds.

image via Scor-Pal.com

Besides paper and a scoring board, the only other thing we used was to complete this project was our handy dandy glue gun. And now for the how-to.

First order of business, making the wrapping paper double-sided. To do this, Mr. FW cut it into squares and I used spray adhesive to stick one square to another. It's helpful to roll the paper against itself to flatten it a bit before you glue it. Might I also suggest using a very large box in a very open space - so you don't spray glue onto everything in your house and so you don't get high as a kite in the process.

{cutting the paper, rolling it in the opposite direction to flatten it, putting the paper in the large box before spraying the adhesive, and sticking similarly-sized sheets together}

Next you just have to trim them up square. For squares less than 12" we used our paper trimmer. For larger than 12" we used a yardstick and cutting mat. You'll need a pair of double-sided squares to make each pleated medallion. Once they're squared up you can begin the scoring process. I wanted 1/2 inch folds, so on one side I made score lines 1 inch apart, then I flipped the paper over and scored the 1/2 inch marks, also 1 inch apart. Then you can accordion fold them.

{1" folds, flipped paper over to make 1" folds between the first folds, then accordion fold the paper}

Each accordion folded sheet now needs to be folded in half and glued to itself. The result is a fan shape that will be half of a finished medallion.  (If you're making smaller circles than I was then you can skip this middle step by starting with long rectangles rather than squares - as described in this tutorial.)

{fold, pinch the center to hold the shape, add hot glue - either all at once along the fold or a little at a time depending on the size of the medallion, then stick together}

Sometimes there would be a little extra tab of paper sticking out that I just trimmed up even with the other side. I used the same process to glue two "fans" together. Once the entire circle was together I noticed that some of the center pleats were expanding because they weren't rigid enough, making the middle area fold in half.  Dotting some hot glue in the middle of the pleats (on each side of the medallion) took care of this.

{trim any excess paper where the two fans come together, identify where the center of the medallion needs to be more rigid, add hot glue into those folds on both sides}

And that's pretty much it, but I do want to share with you some other important things I learned along the way.  If I were doing it all over again, I might prefer to stay away from really thick paper because it's harder to fold, and I would stay away from really shiny (almost plastic-like) paper because it's almost impossible for any glue other than super glue to stick to it.  It's also good to know that the finished size of the squares you start out with will be the same diameter of the circles you end up with. And finally, don't worry if your accordion folds aren't perfect because once the circle is completed the pleats are stretched out and it really doesn't make a hugely noticeable difference.

{uneven folds aren't noticeable when expanded}

We created about 90 of these in various sizes, and we're still waiting to string them up across our house in order to determine if this will be enough to suspend over 80 feet of tables.  I really hope it will be because, well, we used all the paper we had on-hand and we're pretty ready to call this project 'done.'  As for the time it took to create these, I estimate that Mr. FW and I worked together for about 20 hours each from start to finish.  So it might not have been a super expensive project, but we paid for it in person-hours for sure.  I'm hopeful that the visual impact will be all worth it in the end, though.

There are a lot of these pleated circles out there in blog land (also called pinwheels or rosettes). What's your favorite kind, and have you ever used them for any of your own projects?

Best Laid Plans

I swear we had it all worked out. The rules were simple. And there was only one rule. *Everyone* gets a +1, regardless of whether or not we've ever met the +1, no questions asked.

Here's a (poor quality, obvs) image of the wrap-around labels for our save the dates, which were mailed last December.  See you if you can catch my oversight.

{Does that look like it indicates "+1" to you???}

{How about this one? Would you think you could bring a guest if you received this?}

When we were printing these labels, we clearly didn't consider our rule.  I don't know what happened - maybe we thought the rule only applied to invitation labeling, or maybe we were just exhausted and wanted to finish these things and get them out.  Whatever it was, I didn't think about it at all until I was in Georgia over the holidays talking to one of my cousins who was trying to politely, and subtly, see if her boyfriend could come to the wedding. Of course he could come!  That's the rule!  But how the hell would she possibly know that since we stupidly sent the save the date addressed only to her?? 

I mean, sure, when she gets the invitation it would have said "and guest" on the label. But the invitation won't be mailed until about two months before the wedding, which is pretty last minute to plan a cross-country trip for two people that will require taking at least one day off work. Wasn't that the point of the save the dates in the first place - to give people almost a year of notice, so they'd have plenty of time to plan and thus be more likely to come?!  Now I'm stuck sending pitiful emails along the lines of, "By the way, you can totally bring someone to the wedding if you want to. But if not, or if you can't come, that's cool too. Whatevs."

Moral of the story: Do as I say, not as I do. However you intend to label your invitations, DO THE SAME for your save the dates.

What "oversights" (or, as some would call them, mistakes) have you made in your process, and how did you fix them?