On August 7, 2010, after a year long engagement (and 10 years of dating), I got married. It was a perfect day full of friends, family, love, and dancing!
I loved every minute I spent in the year planning my wedding. Honestly, I never got to the point of horrible stress and frantic meltdowns. Part of that is due to my Type-A nature and love of events and planning, but the other part is owed 100% to my work. Most brides are able to plan their weddings in spite of their job, I however, could not have executed my wedding without the help of mine. The day after the wedding, a friend asked “what is the greatest tip you would give another bride after planning your wedding?” My reply “…get a job at a graphic design firm.”
Our wedding took place in my dad’s backyard in Sonoma, CA, and despite what many people initially think, a wedding at home takes MORE planning and logistics (and is no more cost effective) than renting an established venue. Nothing is provided, nothing is included, every single item needs to be created and brought in. We rented chairs, tables, a bar, benches, glassware, flatware, etc. So once I had figured out all the big items to accommodate our 130 guests, it was time to think about the little details that give every event their own unique personality.
The wedding invitations were clean and simple; moss green ink on ivory paper, mounted on thick, moss green paper. Our wedding ceremony took place under a big oak tree, so our invitation featured a faded out oak tree with a quote on the bottom that read “Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground”. I designed the stamp on zazzle.com to match the invitation, with two connected acorns and our initials, M+C, on the top. Thus, without even meaning to, a theme was born.
So why, you may ask, would my best advice for other brides be to get a job at a design firm? All the little details; the things that people barely notice, but that pull everything together and make an event look complete and well thought out, that no detail was spared. WAG designed ten coordinating pieces for me; table numbers, a giant seating chart, menu cards, stickers for the favor boxes, photo sharing cards, programs (attached to paper fans, they were adorable!), and signs to direct guests in the right direction. They also designed a map, an information card and a closure sticker, all for the welcome bag given to guests staying for the weekend at The Lodge at Sonoma. These were the types of details that I simply could not have done on my own, or that would have cost me thousands of dollars to have a stationery company design and print for me. Even though WAG did not design my invitations everything still coordinated with the invitation, matched its clean and simple aesthetic, and played with the oak tree and acorn theme.
I am confident that having a job at a graphic design firm saved my sanity. It’s tiny little details, like all of these things, that I would have wanted to do and had a picture of in my mind, but that even with my rather savvy Microsoft Word and Excel skills, never would have come out looking as perfect as they did. I was able to have even the smallest detail (like the photo sharing information card that directed our guests to upload the photos they took to a shutterfly.com sharing site) fit seamlessly into the rest of the wedding. All the ideas that I had and thought, “Oh, that would be so cute!” were ideas that I was able to have turned into reality…all because of my job. I really don’t know how other brides do it (without spending thousands of course).
While I’m sure that not everyone noticed all these details that I spent 2 months concocting, and most people didn’t say anything, I’m confident that our guests walked away thinking “that was beautiful and everything was so well done”. Our wedding had the exact personality I dreamed of; simple, welcoming, romantic and classy. It wasn’t the chairs we rented, or the tables, or the bar (although that helped!)- it was the little things, and all the thought and care that not only I, but my very talented co-workers put in to make August 7, 2010 perfect.
Morgan Nelson
For more photos, check out the WAG Flickr Page!
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