Wedding-y Stuff

So, my sister was recently engaged, and my five year wedding anniversary is in a month, so my mind has been on weddings lately. For my own wedding, as you might imagine, it was important that as many things as possible were handmade and meaningful to us. Our cake was made by my husband's cousin's wife (it was beautiful and spectacular and could have fed the guests of 3 weddings), and I handmade every favor, place card, table "number" (each of our tables was named for a place of some significance to us- Ireland was my family's table as we're both very Irish and we went to Ireland for our honeymoon, Alexandria is where we grew up, Masonic Temple is where we got engaged, Mount Vernon is where we had our prom night dinner and our rehearsal dinner, Paris is where we had our first kiss, Charlottesville is where he went to college and Harrisonburg is where I did, etc. Guest's placecards had a sketch of that place, and they had to match the sketch with the picture on the table (both said the name of the place too- we weren't trying to make it too hard!), and of course, our invitations.

Table "numbers" or titles or whatever you call it

Our favors- I didn't make the books of Irish blessings, I just made the book covers. That counts, right?

And here is our fantastic lemon raspberry cake!

I worked forever on these invitations, because I really wanted them to be something special and different. So I though it would be fun to upload some pics of the one I kept. Looking back there are a few things I wish were a bit more polished, but I am proud of them (if I wasn't, Devin, my sisters, my mom and all the other people who helped put them together would be kinda pissed). I designed them around the Irish claddagh ring, which symbolizes love (the heart), friendship (hands holding the heart), and loyalty (crown on the heart). I wanted to update it a little, and spotlight each symbol separately, so I made 3 logos, one for each symbol, which are embossed on the front of the invitation, and the corresponding words are embossed on the second flap of the invite. I then found quotes that had each of the 3 words in them that also dealt with love or marriage in some capacity. I matched the quotes with pictures of us growing up, moving closer together as we got older (metaphorically and on the pages the pictures get closer to the center) and coming together in the last page. The claddagh is usually described as meaning "love, friendship, loyalty" in that order, but for us friendship came first, then loyalty, then love, so that's how I ordered the symbols. Anyway, here are the pics!





awww, isn't 5 year old dev adorable in his little suit? hopefully our future children will be that cute! In my 5 yr old pic, I look like I'm plotting something (and most likely, I was)!








Oh, and I couldn't resist adding this in- this is a pic of my engagement "treasure hunt" clues. Every year, Devin's mom makes him a treasure hunt for his Christmas presents (or she did when he was younger and all- she doesn't anymore since he got married and also because when he was 18, they adopted his 3 sisters from Kazakhstan so they've had less time on their hands since going from one child to 4!). Anyway, I was there for quite a few of these treasure hunts, and just loved them. So when he was coming up with a way to propose, he remembered how much I love the hunt or any kind of thing I can "win", so he set it up as a treasure hunt. His best man drove me around in a giant SUV trying to find the clues, and each clue location was someplace of significance to us, and there I'd find one of my friends waiting there for me with a gift from Dev and a rose and the next clue, and we'd pile more and more people into the SUV as the day went on. Each clue was in the form of a poem, and there were I think 13 total. It was a seriously awesome day, I don't know how he coordinated all of it but he somehow got a bunch of my friends/family to all different spots all over DC and northern VA until I got to him at the Masonic Temple where the rest of my family and his family was waiting with cameras and champagne. He was waiting with a ring he'd had custom made for me from a pic I found of a diamond and sapphire art deco 1920's ring a few years before. It was a good day! So I still have all the poem clues, and I've been meaning to frame them all, but here's a pic of some of them.

And here's a pic of the proposal- look, umbrellas! OK, you can all throw things at me now, I'm a lucky girl :)