August 8, 2012

Wedding inspiration _ unique invitation cards

This is the wedding invitation I made. The cartoon is of us. Me pulling my husband to be away from his dish of pasta to get to the altar. It has a fun feeling to it and shows our personalities quite well. I have included many details into the invitation that will later be shown at the wedding. 
This is the card when its layed out. You fold it in 3 parts. The bride and the address become the outside, and the groom eating the spaghetti is on the inside, as a surprise. 
This is the outside of the card. Showing a bride pulling what seems to be a rope... 

Only to find out that she is pulling the spaghetti. Her fiancè is eating, as usual (Italian). 

This is the inside of the card. It is full of useful information about the wedding.
- On the left page we have the map with directions on how to get there. It is a map of Lake Garda, a cartoon aeroplane shows nearby airports, the "spaghetti" continues and becomes the highway, as well as a dividing line on the other 2 parts.
- The addresses of the restaurant as well as the ceremony location are written on the bottom left page. The same symbol is then shown on the map.
- A road sign on the top left corner shows the distances that our guests are travelling to come to celebrate with us. This is to make them realise that we are very well aware of how fare they are travelling. It's also a fun topic to talk about during the dinner. I have made a real sign that will be placed in the garden of the restaurant where the guests will enjoy a refreshing drink and snacks before the actual dinner.
- A fiat 500 car has the text "just married" on the side.
- A cartoon of the castle has 3 flags: The Italian, The Swedish and the Australian, showing our nationalities. The real sign can be seen here.

The center of the card has the actual invitation details, time, date, place, etc.
In the center of the middle page we put the link of our wedding blog where people can get more info about the wedding, transport, accommodation, gift registry, etc. The bottom flowers are also shown again on the wedding blog and include the colour theme for our wedding.

The right part of the invitation is the RSVP page. Guests can fill in whether they are coming or not, if they are allergic or vegetarian, etc. Hardly anybody actually sent it back, as it meant cutting off the cartoon of the groom on the back. 


Wedding Inspiration _ wooden road sign

 We have guests coming from the whole world. I thought it would be a fun idea to show the distances on a wooden road sign. It is also a way to let our friends and family know that we are well aware of how far they have come to spend this day with us and that we are extremely grateful! 
This is a cheap decoration to make. I only had to buy the wooden pole for the middle, which cost 2,5 euro and the black paint which I just bought at the supermarket in the kids section. The rest was made out of old wooden crates that I found. 

Start by taking the crate apart. They are usually stapled together. Use something to lever them out. 

 I then attached a piece of wood to the table with a grip (I'm not sure what the exact word is=) and sawed one edge creating a pointed edge. 
 I got 10 pieces of wood all in all. 1 broke when I tried getting the staple out, so in the end I had 9. These aren't even all of the cities I wanted to include, but they are the main ones. Furthest distance: Brisbane Australia. 
Here are the road signs. You can also see the pots with grass on the floor. They are going to be on each table with the number of the table painted onto the pot. All my friends that have seen these think I'm completely crazy..but oh well, that's me! I still really like this idea and I'm sticking with it. :-p 
This is our invitation that I made. I put the road sign in the top left corner. So it will be recognised by the guests later during the dinner. There are many other details that had been thought about and will be shown again during our wedding, which I think is a nice way to tie everything together.
UPDATE: Here is the ready road sign at the venue on the day of our wedding. The guests loved this idea! It created a subject to talk about as well as realising how far they'd come.