Hey, hey! Maryal here. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve been hanging around the blog, but we have a really, really good excuse… we got married last week! Woo hoo! Getting married and sharing this last month with our beloved friends and family was an all around incredible experience, and we’ve been loving every second of the newlywed life. So now we thought it would be fun to slowly share different snippets of our big day with you guys and give you a glimpse of some of the details that came into play over the last year while planning our celebration!
Today’s post involves one of my favorite things in the world… paper! Ever since I was a little girl I’ve had a love affair with beautiful paper. When I was very small my paper-loving mom taught me that there are few niceties in life that leave as positive an impression as a heartfelt, handwritten note on gorgeous stationery, and my love of a great thank you note and beautifully designed paper has been growing ever since.
Which is why when it came time to design our invitation suite and all of the other paper goods that we wanted to include in our wedding day, I was basically like a kid in a candy store. I knew I wanted our invitation suite and every other wedding paper item that followed to not only be beautiful, but also feel really fun (Chris and I are aaaallll about the fun!) and incorporate all of the feelings we associate with the locale of our wedding (Walloon Lake, MI and the surrounding area), which is that overwhelming feeling of laid back, classic Americana in the summer where fresh produce and small town charm abound!
Of course dreaming up all of the fun, funky details surrounding these paper items was all well and good, except I’m a total novice when it comes to graphic design and certainly don’t have the skills it put those ideas into motion in a polished way, so the second we saw the incredibly creative lady behind our blog’s design, Ayo at a party shortly after we got engaged and she mentioned that she’d be willing to help us with our invitation suite, I basically tackled her and begged her to help us. Ayo is the genius behind Ayofemi Creative Studio and we cannot tell you enough just how talented this beauty is.
What’s more, she’s one of the most easygoing, kind, selfless people on the planet and made the design process a total breeze. She even went along with me when I said things like, “I think we should make the Save the Date look kind of like a vintage jam jar!” Weird. I know. But we loved that the first bits of our wedding that people saw were her invites. After Ayo and I chatted about what I was envisioning and the vibe Chris and I were going for with our wedding, she brought it all to life in the most exciting way, and we’ve never loved the result of any project more. So of course after falling head over heels for the Save the Dates and invitation suite, I annoyingly asked Ayo to create every other paper item we needed for the big day like menus, welcome notes, ceremony programs, escort cards and signs and luckily, she obliged and created yet another set of perfect designs that we loved.
We also hadn’t planned on having a calligrapher address the envelopes for the invites and thought we’d be just fine addressing them ourselves or printing them, but when our amazing wedding planner Sarah Rhodes-Boyce from Sincerely Ginger showed us some stunning photos of Michigan-based Sable & Gray’s watercolor calligraphy work, we knew we had to do it. It was just too fun, beautiful and lake-like not to do! I’m so in awe of Kristin’s work and the kind of patience and dedication her craft takes to execute on a large scale. It’s mind-blowing. We sent an invite to ourselves and when we got the envelope in the mail, seeing that blue watercolor-lettered envelope and all of the goodness inside tied together with that blue gingham bow was like Christmas morning!
We’ll share so many more details and photos from our big day soon, but for now… paper delight!
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