RSSOur big fat book-themed wedding
(Or: Move Over, Diana and Scott: There’s a New Book-Themed Wedding in Town!)
One month ago today, I married the girl of my dreams.
Despite a little bit of rain, the weekend came off spectacularly. None of the preparations went awry at the last minute (at least, none that didn’t fall under the heading “Acts of god”). Favors were made. Vows were written (and rewritten). Tables were assigned (and reassigned). The Van Dyck proved, as we hoped it would, to be a lovely space for an indoor-or-outdoor wedding. Rabbi Matt Cutler of Congregation Gates of Heaven said many beautiful things, and truly made the ceremony a spectacular event. Tears were shed. We served delicious food, what we’re told was the best wedding cake people had ever had (Bravo, Villa Italia!), and everyone seemed to have a delightful afternoon. By the end of the day, we were married. All told, a very successful wedding.
But, in the charming words of my beloved wife, all of this “wow” would have been merely “w–” without the extraordinary talent and dedication of Mr. Collin Morgan, who graciously agreed to do all of the design work we required for our book-themed wedding, and inventively realized most of our design ideas beyond anything we imagined. We were also fortunate enough to be blessed with the creations of an assortment of other artists, whose works are also included in this post. All the artifacts pictured below are entirely of Collin’s design, except where otherwise noted. All photos are hosted in high-resolution on Flickr. All rights to the photos belong to the photographer as noted in the photo description; all rights to stationery designs belong to Collin Morgan.
Save the Dates
The idea for our save-the-dates —one of few design ideas that was not book-themed— was L’s. The photo was taken by her brother A with a Nikon D60, and subsequently edited by Collin. Trust us, our hands do not look this lovely.
Invitations
Our invitations came in five parts. The invitation itself is an old-school book slip. Guest’s names were hand-written under “Borrower.” The date of the wedding —June 6 2010— was listed as the call number to avoid any confusion about response card due dates.
Response Cards
The response card was, of course, a library card application. The “Clayman Matthews Library” logo in the upper left hand corner makes several other appearances throughout this collection of wedding paraphernalia. Each guest was assigned a unique number in the patron ID field, just in case any cards were sent back nameless. Several couples/families objected to the “I”, and obligingly crossed it out and wrote “We” instead.
Information cards
To remind people of the existence of our wedding web site, we included an information card in the form of a card-catalog entry with some important information. We manually punched a hole in each of these for authenticity. Note the finely-realized water stains in the background!
Barbecue invitations
Finally, we asked Collin to create an invitation to the barbecue we held the day before our wedding. Our specifications included only light text on a dark blue background for a 5×7 card. Hours later, it became clear what was taking so long, for this is what Collin delivered. And this is why we love him. We were delighted that this invitation to a casual barbecue was far fancier and more elegant than the invitation to the wedding itself. We reused this design for our guest book, below.
Central Park maps
L, intrepid mapmaker that she is, drew this map to help people find the pavilion in Schenectady’s Central Park, where the barbecue was held. Note that this map is decidedly not to scale.
Escort Cards
Once it was revealed that L’s mother had an old card catalog drawer tucked away somewhere (to store her old cassette tapes), and her father revealed his portable typewriter, this was an obvious choice. Turns out it’s pretty hard to find anyone who can do typewriter repairs these days, but we managed to find a place not far from Providence. We picked up the repaired typewriter on our way to Schenectady, and L finished typing these up less than 24 hours before the ceremony, with help from her brother’s girlfriends. What you can’t see is that each card is typed up individually with the guest’s name and table assignment.
Guest Book
A guest book is, of course, already a book. But a book about books seemed fitting. Among the awards garnered, one finds “Best Book of the Millennium”, “Best wedding ever!”, “Pulitzer Prize”, “Nobel Prize”, and “Academy Award”, not to mention first edition copies of books such as Yaaaa buddy!!! and Observations of Permanent Human Mating.
Not wanting to impose on Collin’s good graces any more than we already had, we reused the barbecue invitation design to invite people to sign.
Card Drop Box
L’s mother contributed this idea. These hollowed-out books were a fortuitous find; our work was limited to carving a card-sized hole in the top, and finding the “A” and “Z” bookends to hold them up. We put our pens inside mugs labeled “K” and “L,” not pictured here.
Program
The length of this program speaks, I think, for itself. L and I put a tremendous amount of work into writing and formatting the text. The book jacket design is based on an early invitation design mock-up Collin had done for us. This seemed like the perfect manner to put his valuable work to good use. The text of the jacket (and any typos) were supplied by us. Collin realized this design in about 4 days, and we managed to finish affixing the book jackets to the programs the day before the wedding.
Rings
We always planned for the rings to be delivered in a hollowed-out book. Initially, we considered using The Princess Bride or Through the Looking Glass and carving the pages out ourselves. L’s mother’s hollowed-out books worked even better. L superglued ribbon inside to secure the rings, though not before supergluing the ribbon to her fingers first. Luckily, this was our only wedding-related injury.
Favors
Easily the most frequently brought up wedding-related conversation, and most frequently changed wedding-related idea. Of course we ultimately decided on books. The notebooks are from Moleskin, and the names stamped on by hand. The first page of each booklet is embossed with the official seal of the Clayman Matthews Library.
Ketubah
This beautiful ketubah —the Jewish marriage license— was painted for us by L’s aunt Claire. It features two intertwining trees as pictured in all four seasons. It is both gorgeous and meaningful, and L and I couldn’t be more excited about how it turned out! The text in the center, in Hebrew and English, contains legal (i.e. halachic) information about the marriage, as well as some of our promises to each other.
Huppah
Our huppah was created in part by each and every member of our immediate families. Each family member received a square and instructions to decorate it however they pleased. L’s mother and grandmother quilted the squares together to create the canopy. Like the ketubah, we are absolutely thrilled to hang such a beautiful, tangible work of art and reminder of our wedding in the new home we’re creating.
Beginning from the top left, the squares were created by my mother, my brother Scott, L’s brother Ben, L’s grandparents, L (in memory of her paternal grandparents), my grandmother, L’s father, L and me, L’s mother, my father and his wife, my brother Brian, my sister Morgan, L’s brother Andrew, my sister Shannon, and my maternal grandparents.
Thank You Cards
To be revealed once we actually send these out!
In conclusion…
Many many thanks to Collin, Claire, and our families for their endless patience, and the tremendous work they did for us. We owe them cookies, beer, and eternal gratitude.
If you’ve happened on this post and are in the midst of planning your own wedding, we wish only to leave you with these words: Remember that the details make it special, because they’re yours, but the most important thing is that they be a source of fun, not stress. If any of these images or designs spark your creativity, we are delighted to have helped. If you wish to use any of the images pictured here wholesale, please do, but remember to give credit where credit is due (i.e., mostly to Collin; a note on Flickr and short line in a wedding program will suffice).
More wedding photos will be arriving soon on Flickr! Check back soon! Did you take pictures at our wedding that you would like included on Flickr? Drop me a line!
(And a final parenthetical about Diana and Scott: We jest, of course, and mean no disrespect. In fact, we adore what they did, and were quite inspired by some of their design ideas and decisions, as you can plainly see if you glance at their images.)