But I had a slight problem. Our theme, as defined as it may sound, is actually quite vague, especially if you’ll consider that different parts of the world conjure different images of the term ‘country-style’. British country-style depicts an English countryside landscape with its cottage houses, floral gardens and courtyards, with tea and teapots and bread pudding on the table. American country-style, particularly those in the Southern regions, paints the picture with a barn or a farm or a river view as the backdrop, complemented and accentuated with materials you would commonly see in these places. I’m sure other prominent cultures like Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Spanish, etc have their own take on what is ‘country’ for them.

So my challenge was to define a country-style wedding in Philippine setting. And the Filipino culture being so diverse and multi-faceted doesn’t help that much. I also had to go easy with ‘Filipino details’ so as not to cross the line between a Filipino country-style and a Filipiniana theme. To find ideas to work on, I had to revisit old memories of childhood summers spent in the province, because the province is where lies the true heart of a Filipino countryside. And what was I reminded of?

I was reminded of fruit-trees growing in the backyard; of potted plants lining the front yard; of pieces of furniture and home decors and almost everything inside the house made up of native materials such as wood, wicker, rattan and Capiz shells; of grandma’s laces and pearls and jewelry boxes; of oil lamps and wooden picture frames.

Warm, homey, laid-back and rustic notes dominate my memories and I want the same to resonate during our wedding.

It was 10 p.m. on the eve of our wedding and I was holding the unfinished craft on my hand, thinking whether or not I should spend the next two or three hours to finish it or sleep.

I decided to sleep. But before I did, I just took a picture of what I consider as my most ambitious DIY project. That didn’t make it on our wedding day.

Here they are:

Our DIY wedding cord made of faux pearls, metal beads (rose, Celtic, etc) and featuring

the Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal that I wore all throughout my high school years.

Our Spanish lace secondary veil that I ordered from eBay and got for less than P300 (shipping included).

Our wedding treasure boxes that served as our ring and arrhae holder.

I fitted them with foams wrapped with excess fabric from my bridesmaid’s gown.

For the ring box, I sew an organza ribbon onto the foam to hold our “treasure”.

This is our gift for the bridesmaids. Bought them for P100. I thought they looked too simple

so I decided to glam them up with pearl bracelets (P5) and rose and feather pins (P30).

And declared that they were “made with love”.

Each pouch bag contained mint, facial tissue and matching compact mirror.

Bought these totally adorable compact mirrors for P10 each. Fab find, wasn’t it?

Our gifts for the groomsmen: A stainless keychain with their names engraved on it.

Keychain costs P55 and engraving, P20.

To be consistent with the color motif, we wrapped the boxes with green silk ribbons.

Our gifts for the principal sponsors. Pink for the females. Blue for the males.

What’s inside? This chic candle holder.

Male principal sponsors also got wines as gifts that came inside these Buri wine bags. My mom bought them from Bicol for P10 each. Ribbon doesn’t suit most males so I fashioned a ‘neck tie’ instead. Our female sponsors got fruits baskets but I wasn’t able to take pictures of them. Baskets were also bought from Bicol for P25 each.

Our cute gift for the flower girls. Took advantage of the holiday sale at a toy store and bought them for P150.

This hat was supposed to be a headdress for our flower girls. But they looked so lovely on the teddies. Bought these nylon ribbon hats for P10 each and decorated them with DIY green silk rosettes and white ruffles.

Because the hats were taken, I made this instead. Glued sequin flowers on an ordinary headband. Sequin flowers were P5 each and headband was P25.

My mom tried one on. So pretty!

We used Kenshin and Kauro action figures as our caketopper. But we have 3 extras

which we gave to our bearers.

And lastly, the brown paper bags that held our wedding favors:

the money-tree plant.

]]> http://sweetsimplejoys.com/wedding/our-wedding-thingies/feed/ 23 http://sweetsimplejoys.com/wedding/more-paperie/ http://sweetsimplejoys.com/wedding/more-paperie/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:23:12 +0000 sheng http://sweetsimplejoys.com/wedding/?p=2438 The great thing about doing your own graphic design is that you can easily achieve a coordinated look in all your printed supplies.

You’ve seen the invite, the map and the monogram. Now, I’m sharing two more. First one is our menu card:

I told Maja, our event stylist, to place a menu card for each seat. And I volunteered to design and print all 150 of them. During our mock setup, I printed a few pieces to see how it will go with the table setting that she prepared for us. And we were surprised that it complements the linen and the accent leaves very well.

Next paperie is our Thank You card:

Of course, wedding favors and gifts are the best excuses for creating Thank You cards. We used them in every wrapped box, paper bag and basket. It blends nicely with the color of our silk ribbons as well.

Coordinated papers. Pure joy!

This is actually what’s going through my head as I was creating the design for our wedding invitation. D, having objected to my first few samples–because they were either too contemporary or has too much going on, said that it doesn’t have to look formal and conventional, just decent enough to make guests think they’re being invited to a decent wedding.

On my end, I also wanted our wedding invites to illustrate our romantic country-style theme and make use of our green and white color motif. But incorporating all those ideas was no easy feat. And coupling it with the desire to make the perfect design–because it is for our wedding–made it even harder.

We almost settled for a contemporary-country-birdie wedding template that I made months before. But it didn’t came out well with the new printer that we’re using and our choice of paper. So I sat back in front of the computer again and tried to wring out the last of my creative juices, hoping to create IT. December was fast approaching then and we barely had a month before we’re scheduled to hand/send out our invitations.

And that last attempt yielded the best result. Like pieces of the puzzle falling into place–the images, the fonts, the colors–everything came together wonderfully just as how we want them. We finally had our design:

(Notice the swirls that I used for the monogram were actually taken from the swirls I used in the first two pages.)

But designing was only half the task because we still had to make the actual invitations. We chose a shimmery paper board in lime green color. I experimented with some techniques on how to put the pages together (including hand-sewing!), and got frustrated with our printer and wasted more than a few papers. In the end, we agreed that tri-fold is the best layout and gluing is the best technique. As for the printer, we just decided to put up with it because we really had no choice. This is how it looks like when finished:

Of course, creativity spilled over the envelopes as well:

(I loved how our names were right on the center when I opened the envelope flap because it was just a happy coincidence.)

We distributed them last Christmas to take advantage of family gatherings and relatives coming over for the holidays.

Instructions on how we made our invites here.

And to cap off this invitation post, I’ll also share with you this simple wedding invitation video that we used for our friends whom we cannot personally give our invites to.

I wanted to do away with such dullness and give the map the respect it is due. But of course, I also wanted it to be accurate and possibly show our guests the easier and faster routes to get to us. I figured the best way to start the journey was in Google Maps. And here’s what happened when I converted the map I found via Google Maps:

into our very own Map To Happy Ever After:

Makes you wanna go there, doesn’t it?

Click here for the instructions on how to create your own DIY wedding map using MS PowerPoint.

But alas, none of them became our official monogram. I wanted something that will fit our theme and blend well with the design of our invitation and none of them seemed to be it. So, after creating the design for our invite, I came up with this:

In the next post (actually, the succeeding post after the next post), you will see how this monogram and our invite mesh perfectly.

I usually buy shoes that go with most of my wardrobe, which is predominantly jeans and tees, so I won’t have to buy many pairs. I also favor neutral colors such as black and brown for the same reason. (Just recently, I added shades of white and gray/silver to my palette).

But since I’m getting married, I realized that choosing the bridal shoes is a bit more complicated than my shoe-shopping habit. And to add to that, I am also burdened to choose something that I can wear again. Heck, most of my wedding stuffs are for one-time use only, I am determined to bestow the wedding shoes with a different fate.

I’ve ‘looked around’. But the stilettos scare me. And so do the wedges, and the clogs and the platforms. Anything that is taller than 2 inches and my knees will wobble. I’ve walked on flats for most of my life and I’m still not sure if I’m ready to trade-in the comfort for glamor even for a day.

It’s beautiful, yet not too flashy so it’s suitable for everyday use. Simple. Exactly the way we want them.

The combination of yellow and white gold, and shiny and matte surfaces gives them texture that make them a tad different from the usual wedding bands.

And I love the fact that I can wear it with either my gold or silver accessories.

The engravings are handcrafted which makes them more special, IMO. Much like an allegory of how love can never be perfect, but always beautiful.

Oh, I’m becoming poetic because of them.

But first, a bit about our love story:

D and I first met in cyberspace. I was waiting for my new computer to be installed in my room. I was bored. I had nothing to do so I decided to log in a chatroom. D, according to him, was playing an online game and got tired and decided to log in a chatroom. My nick was Shinta. He was intrigued as it sounded something familiar. And the rest, as we all know, is history.

Shinta was taken from my favorite Anime series, Samurai X (Rurouni Kenshin). Like me, D also loves Anime, that’s why the name sounded familiar to him. Our fondness for Anime is one of the many interests that we share in common and somehow helped ease out the transition from being strangers to being lovers.

When I was thinking of a perfect caketopper that will reflect something about us, nothing came close to being suitable as Kenshin and Kaoru of the Samurai X fame.

In many ways, we are like Kenshin and Kaoru. I, stubborn and strong-willed. D, would fight for the values he believes in.  And they both love each other very much and would go to any lengths to support one another. I believe our love is very much like that. And Shinta is Kenshin’s real name before he became the famous Battosai. Shinta represents our lives before we knew each other.

Note: This might not be the actual caketopper. D wants a funnier version of Kenshin and Kaoru and he’s still looking for it. If he doesn’t find any, then we’ll settle for this one. Either way, I love that we’ll have Kenshin and Kaoru atop our wedding cake.