A Smorgasbord of Wedding Extras

Let's just call this week a Wedding Extra Extravaganza, alright? First, because I love the word extravaganza. Second, because I'm (hopefully) rolling out all of the wedding extras I did from 2012 this week. 

This is important, because if you're like me, you have to close out one thing before you can fully move on to the next. So I've actually had several sets of wedding photos just sitting around from last year that I just never took the time to show off. Which is a great thing because it means that a lot of other projects got in the way, which caused me to not do what I intended to do. But it's also a small tragedy since all of the photos that I'm about to show are amazing and they deserve to be shown off. 

The thing about these particular weddings are that they happened a weeeeeee little bit ago. Like, last spring/summer. Yes, I'm late. But all of these weddings have already been blogged about; I just really wanted to show off how great the wedding extras looked at the actual wedding. So even though I'm running shamefully late, I must do this because I took the time to ask brides to share their photos and so I will show them off right here, right now. No more wasting time. 

First up is a wedding that I was honored to actually be invited to - Seth and Abby's. Here are some of the snapshots from that day. 

First up, a look back at their wedding invitations.

Image by Bella Pictures

After the invitations, we moved on to the extras for their wedding day. We designed some menus. 

Image by Bella Pictures

And the seating chart.

Image by Bella Pictures

And just as a fun bonus, check out how they actually projected the wedding logo we came up with up on the wall at the reception.

Image by Bella Pictures

I can honestly say (since I was a personal witness to it) that Abby and Seth's wedding was beautiful and Abby looked absolutely stunning!

After Abby and Seth's wedding, I began working on Kendra and Bob's wedding. I have to say that I think that their wedding was the one where I fell in love with using Michigan's shape in my wedding invites, as you can see by my pre-made designs in my Etsy shop.

Kendra was living in NYC, but getting married in Michigan. She wanted to bring Michigan into as much of her reception as possible. Check out how lovely everything looked.

Here are the menus...

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

We used five different shades to achieve an ombré effect with all of the extras.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

Side note: LOVE the chairs at this reception.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

We did tri-fold programs for Kendra's wedding, too.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

They placed them on each chair and put a different shade of blue in each row. It created such an awesome effect.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

And then came the ombré place cards. These pictures capture it so much better than I did with the amateur photos I took when I first showed off Kendra's extras.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

The reason behind the ombré was to bring the "lake feel" into their wedding. I think Kendra did this perfectly with the mix of the blue and brown shades.

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

Image by Mod 4 Photographic

In June, Carrie and Ryan got married. You might remember their wedding invitation.

Image by Amanda Williams Photography

Well, we did a few wedding extras for their special day, and Carrie even added little touches to them so they turned out like this.

Image by Amanda Williams Photography

We did very simple table numbers.

Image by Amanda Williams Photography

And programs that Carrie attached little bubbles to for their guests to use as they ran out of the church. (You know what? I'm completely guessing on this and have no proof that it happened whatsoever...but that's generally what bubbles are used for, so I'm going to go with that.)

Image by Amanda Williams Photography

And last, but certainly not least, Danika and James had me do several extras for their wedding. I showed them off in this post from last year, but here are the photos that their wedding photographer took.

Here's the wedding invitation that we designed, looking so pretty in this field.

Image by Capturing Subtleties

 We did a menu that was tucked ever so nicely into each guest's napkin.

Image by Capturing Subtleties

 The little place cards were put into a little moss holder, and the guest's food choice was indicated by a little brad that Danika and her mom attached to each card.

Image by Capturing Subtleties

Image by Capturing Subtleties

 The programs were so regal looking. A tassel was attached to each one to complete the look.

Image by Capturing Subtleties

Image by Capturing Subtleties

And Danika and her mom DIY'd their favor cards. They ordered the same card stock that I used for the rest of their extras and placed a little "enjoy" tag on each favor.

Image by Capturing Subtleties

Image by Capturing Subtleties

Why did I take so long to post this blog? These wedding pictures are beautiful and I'm so thankful that my brides shared them with me.

More wedding extras to come this week!

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post. 

Bethany and Devin's Wedding Extras

There is one font that I purchased last year that I believe changed my life forever.

Beloved blog readers, I introduce you to my new best friend:

Isn't she so ridiculously beautiful? The only acceptable answer is yes. And hark! You, too, can purchase this beauty here (beware...she's not exactly free). 

It was love at first sight for me and right when I purchased Samantha Script, I knew she was perfect for one wedding in particular - Bethany and Devin's. 

Bethany is the sweet bride who you may remember from here and here. Her wedding was coming up and we needed to get some extras done. Specifically, programs, a seating chart, table numbers, and a memory card to put on the tables. 

So I set out to design some wedding extras to fit Bethany's glamorous day. I'll roll them out here, real wedding style. You should note that all of the photos were done by New Song Photography, a photo business owned by a girlfriend from way back in my youth group days (this is so far back now, that I shall not reference how many years. it's been a while, let's just leave it at that). 

Let's start with the programs. 

(Thank you, unidentifiable hand model.)

The programs were simple - 4x11 metallic card stock, front and back. Bethany saw the quote, "Once in awhile, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tail" from one of the other weddings I did so we used that for her progams, too.

You may remember the "Bethany Diamond" that I used in her rehearsal dinner invites. Well, I kind of took that and made a little monogram out of it and we used it on several of the extras.

Like on the seating chart, which was my favorite seating chart yet.

And on the meaningful favor cards that we put at every table.

I absolutely love when couples choose to do this in lieu of traditional favors. As a guest, I can't say I've ever been disappointed to see money go towards a cause instead of towards a little favor (and let me be clear that I do love an edible treat). 

And here are the table numbers (notice the adorable holders that Bethany's mom picked up for them). 

Fun fact about fonts: they come with these things called glyphs. See the little ornaments framing the table number above? Those are glyphs. See the little swirl coming off of the e in table? That's a glyph, too. Any of the lavish swirls or little ornaments you see in the photos above are basically in addition to your purchase of a font. 

So that's it for Bethany. Next week I'll post on a few different days so I can finish up with wedding extras from last year and move onto my 2013 projects. Stay tuned. :) 

Jaime and Dan's Wedding Extras

Remember Jaime? If not, let's recap. 

I did Jaime's Save the Dates early last year.

And then I did a little shower invite for her.

And then came the wedding invitation.

(which was then made into stone as a wedding gift to them - how cool is that?)

Photo by Art Light Photography

And then came the wedding thank you postcards. 

Well, I also did some fun wedding extras for Jaime's wedding that happened back in August, but I hadn't shown them yet. Well, folks, today is the day. Hurrah!

Jaime and Dan had a backyard wedding (something a little near and dear to my heart), so she just needed a couple of items to keep her day running efficiently. First up, we did a program...but not your standard run of the mill program.

Photo by Art Light Photography

Instead of printing out 100 different programs that would be passed out, we did a poster sized program for the guests to read as they walked in.

Photo by Art Light Photography

It had the ceremony order, the wedding party, and a sweet thank you from Jaime and Dan to their guests.

Because of the nature of their wedding, one thing Jaime and Dan had to deal with were those beautiful porta-potties we all are so fond of. So to make that a little more tolerable, Jaime wanted me to make some cute bathroom signs, using photos of her and Dan when they were little.

(sorry for the super dark photos - these were taken by yours truly)

We used the same fonts, artwork, and colors to tie their invitation into their wedding day. Font is Currency Regular.

That's it! Jaime kept everything so simple and easy and fun, as usual. :)

More wedding extras to come next week!

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post. 

Vivian Elle Invitations Wins The Best of the Knot 2013!

Before I show off some wedding extras, I just have a little announcement. 

Every year at the end of January, The Knot puts out their Best of List.

(Do you see where this is going?)

Vivian Elle made the 2013 list! 

And it's all thanks to my brides. They are the ones that took the time to review me. They are the ones that said wonderfully kind and humbling words about this business. They are the ones that make me so grateful to do what I do.  How did I happen to get so fortunate to work with them??

So I've been really excited about this honor for the last few months and just wanted to officially share it on here. I promise to not make every single blog post from here on out about it (maybe).

Moving on though. 

I've been wanting to show off some wedding extras for quite a while now. However, I really wanted to do it with the actual photos from the weddings, which I thought might be a little more exciting than when I try to take photos myself. 

The reason that I want to show these extras at the actual wedding is that a professional photographer definitely takes better photos than I do (inserting something like "duh" would be appropriate here). But I also want to do it because sometimes when I give a bride simple programs like this...

they end up looking like this...

Photography by Amanda Williams

And even if my brides don't add a little something something to their extras, the extras still look better when they're set up exactly where they're supposed to go. 

So the next few weeks I'll be rolling out some wedding extras - Real Wedding style. Starting NOW. (I envision that being said with jazz hands.)

Brandon and Mary got married back in October in D.C. They were married in a beautiful old church just a few blocks from the mall area and had their reception at Elizabeth's on L, a renovated Federalist townhouse in downtown D.C. 

The venue was gorgeous and I felt so honored to have been asked to contribute a few pieces to such an elegant evening. 

First up, Mary had me do their menus. 

I love the Albemarle Swash font they wanted to use. :)

I also did these little place cards. Mary picked the most beautiful colors for them, each one corresponding with the guest's dinner choice. They were blush pink, ecru, and gold.

For their guest book, Brandon and Mary ditched tradition and had their guests sign cards and give well wishes and advice to them to read at a later date. Here's the little instruction card.

(I am in LOVE with that bowl.)

And here are the little cards.

All of the photography was done by the talented Zareth Acosta. And if you just love weddings and would like to see her blog about Brandon and Mary's wedding, you can go here.

More wedding extras to come later in the week!

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post.