Engagement Season

The Holiday season marks the beginning of engagement season. My sister-in-law and a child hood friend of mine just got engaged, and quickly following has been 3 additional engagements. I am sure there will be more in the next few weeks until Valentines. Weddings are often stressful and dramatic events, but there are some that provide some beautiful creative inspiration.

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♥♥ Firsts ♥♥

Today is my first anniversary with my husband. This past year has felt like forever, yet has sped right by. We had a lot firsts this past year: first grown-up apartment, first garden, first grown-up job, and ect. One of the most exciting parts of the wedding was that creating a system of designs that were sent out to friends and family. It was one of my first experiences in a semi-professional way. Weddings can be a designer's crack. It's addicting to create all the pieces to the wedding, and it can be hard to stop from designing every single part of the event. Today, I am only thinking of good parts of my wedding: like the simple joy I got from taking the extra effort to make envelope liners for every single one of my invitations that I sent out. Yes, I did like doing that, and I took the extra time to punch out cards for all of my wedding favors, which my husband did not enjoy at all (because I made him help buy punching them out while I tied the tags to the jar). We are both glad that we got to share in the experience of bringing our wedding together, and supporting my crazy ideas.

Tasty Wedding Favors

Wedding season is upon us (3 recent weddings have already come and gone for me and 5 more to come this summer). So I have just been keeping my out on things that I am loving about this wedding season. Edible Favors! Favors can be a pain that your guests don’t want to have nick knack around their house, well edible favors can be a change for your guests to take with them some of the feeling of your wedding day, while not being a permanent fixture in their homes. 

Edible gifts don’t have to be the same old tulle wrapped package of after dinner mints or colored m&ms. These favors can extenuate your wedding day with color, patterns, or replications of your dress or wedding cake.  A very simple way of helping your favor to feel like the rest of your wedding is using stationary. Using stickers, tags, or labels is an easy way to make it fit in with the rest of your wedding. Use similar typography that you used for your wedding invitation, and same paper stock if you can.

I did this for my own wedding. My husband and I love hot cocoa so we made our own mix and poured it into miniature bottles, and then tied tags to them with the invitation paper and coloring, as well as using sparkling ribbons that matched the centerpieces. Favors can be a simple way to show your guests how much you appreciate their presence at the wedding. Favors can often be a nuisance to some guests, which is perhaps why I have not received a favor at any of the weddings I have been at so far.

With scrapbooking becoming increasingly popular there are many cutters and other tools to help you achieve a custom look with little effort, or at least less effort and smaller cost than using a printer to die-cut or using an exacto to cut each piece out. Cutting using the tools is less difficult as long as you use a paper that is not too thick. I used 200 lb paper, so the scrapbooking tool was not meant for something so thick, but for cardstock of 80-110 lb. Keep that in mind when you are choosing paper and tools for customization.

Photography from theKnot.com