Paper Crafts from Our Wedding

My husband and I got married about 2 and a half years ago.  It was a crafty lady's dream.  My creative enthusiasm was definitely bigger than my execution abilities, but man was it fun to look for inspiration and be able to say, "Sure.  I can spend $200 at Paper Source for supplies for our invitations.  That's a deal!"  (I don't think I have ever thought spending $200 at Paper Source was ever appropriate before.

This post will share with you how I went about paper crafting for our wedding as well as some photos and sites that gave me lots of inspiration.






Here is the absolute first step that you must spend quite a bit of time on:

Reasearch!
Read blogs, buy magazines (that match your taste, not necessarily are wedding magazines), look on etsy.com, stop into cute paper shops.  Tear out pages, print/bookmark sites, buy a greeting card, or anything that visually inspires you.  Don't focus on the idea of wedding.  Just try to answer "What do I like the look of?"  I researched for a good month (and we were only engaged 6 months) before I made any aesthetic decisions.

Then, look back at what you like.  All of it.  I had forgotten about so many of the ideas that I had ripped out or collected.  You may be surprised by what trends emerge.
Try to answer:
What colors are reoccurring? or What colors do I think look amazing and memorable?
Sure you wear a lot of blue, but that doesn't need to be your wedding color.  Yes, classic combinations can look nice.  But do you want nice?  Or do you want "so you guys!"?
What fonts look good?  What font would match the feel of the wedding?  
Your font should be a way to convey to your guests the vibe of the wedding.  Fancy cursive says traditional and dressy.  Other fonts let people know it might be more casual.  Also, I find the number of pieces of paper in a wedding invite match the fanciness usually.
What kinds of themes I am into?
Are you collecting all floral images?  Perhaps, you are really into more graphic and font driven styles.  Take note of what you still like.

Narrow it down to a few choices and then let your boo in on things.
No dude is interested in making every creative decision especially when it comes to paper. Follow our family mantra: "Choose 3, Pick 1".  Choose three color options, fonts, themes and let him pick what he likes.  Then everyone is happy!

Start Creating.
Keep in mind, this is supposed to be fun! (While saving money)
Try things out, make a few samples with different details, and then decide what you like.  Don't forget to keep in mind that you have to make (insert your number of guests here) of these things.  I definitely lost sight of that a few times, most notably when I created save-the-dates that required 62 cuts and 11 pieces being glued together for each one.

So there you have it.  Those are my tips.
Now here are a few pictures of my wedding paper crafts.  In a future post I will share my invitations and save-the-dates.

 Table number signs.  The stick is a cracked piece of really cheap bamboo from Michaels.  And it is stuck into mason jars filled with green and blue fish gravel.

I bought a really cheap cardboard cake stand online and then painted it teal and put some ribbon around each edge.  The ribbon didn't make it to the final round.
The cupcakes were vegan chocolate cake with peanut butter butter cream and vegan pumpkin chocolate chip with cinnamon butter cream.
The top row is mini apple and pumpkin pies.
The absolute tippy-top is a delicious cake from The Bleeding Heart Bakery that was purchased at 4pm the day of our wedding.  Oh, me.  Totally worth it, though, right?

The table card display.  We used magnets and wire to hang all of the table cards on an industrial door at the entry to the space.










If you made it this far into the post, congratulations.  You have earned this list of sites that I used for inspiration.
Paper Source's Wedding Section
One Pretty Wedding
Off Beat Bride
The Wedding Chicks
Hello, Lucky!

And that's just to get you started.