It’s second post time already and haven’t we all been busy! I have to say I’m loving the opportunity our wedding has given me to be hellaciously creative. It wasn’t long after the ‘glitter madness’ of project Bridesmaid/man boxes that I got stuck into my next bout of creativeness. Although this time it didn’t involve anything that would end up scratching Callum’s corneas, lucky really otherwise there might not be a wedding to plan for!
‘Project Nuermo Dos’ was our Save the Dates. As we are expecting (massively hoping!) our friends and family will be joining us from New Zealand, we wanted to send the Save the Dates out nice and early, to give them plenty of time to fill those piggy banks with flight money. I knew from the get go I wanted to make our own stationery and gathering inspiration for styles and designs was one of the first things I started filling my wedding scrap book with; an A3 art book also known as ‘The Little (BIG) Black (Wedding) Book’! Side Bar: How freaking awesome is scrap booking? I love that I can have a good excuse to do it at the age of 30! It’s great being able to grab bits on the run and just shove them in my book… I have to say though; Sophie of our RMW 2013-14 crew still holds the crown for scrap book queen!
Designing & Whining
We were set on our wedding colours and theme from early on so as far as I was concerned, designing the Save the Dates was going to be easy (I had been calling them STD’s, which I have had to stop doing as Callum’s best man got a little concerned when I emailed him saying “you just wait, you’ll love the STD I’m going to give you”…whoops!) We knew we didn’t want anything too plain or simple, we wanted something unique that would represent us and be transferable across the whole wedding. Something that captured how me met, was funny and not too ‘squiffy’! So yes, now I write this I guess you could say I was making a bed of nails for myself! My scrapbook was soon filled with inspiration that matched our theme. You may remember from our competition entry which you can check out here, that travel and heritage was important to us and soon enough my Photoshop was filled with my drafting Save the Date ideas of maps, dragons, planes, boarding passes and of course, my favourite thing next to Ryan Reynolds (and of course Callum), GLITTER.
As a matter of interest, Wales looks much more sassy as a country when it’s covered in gold glitter.
Buzzing away on the right track, you would think I was making headway, but no, I kept getting distracted by the abundance of options out there for travel themes and nothing was making my big-fat-wedding-heart beat. I needed a drafting breather and one afternoon I went through my scrap book and circled (in gold pen of course) the Save the Dates that I found most striking and one thing started to stand out, I was massively hearting the invites that were made super personal with silhouettes of the happy couple. I know its very 19th century but I’m joining the gang bringing it back! Just look how cute and modern these silhouettes are!
So you guessed it, I decided I wanted to make our very own silhouette and that’s exactly what I did! A Sarah and Callum logo – ‘The Wiwi’s’. The silhouette I designed perfectly meets our theme. It reflects our heritage of Welshy-ness and Kiwi-ness with a little play on how we got together, as featured in our competition entry, Callum and I got together over a bet on a Wales vs. NZ rugby match (that and we’re both a little rugby mad). It was simple really; all I included was a dragon lady and a kiwi-bird-man kicking a rugby ball! If you ever wondered what Richie McCaw’s hot legs would look like on a kiwi bird, well this is what you get! After all this is a wedding, not an invite to the RWC 2015, so I ditched the rugby ball for some mushiness by changing it to a heart. Whalah! Making a play on our heritage for our W-day allows our friends and family to get a little bit of Wales or NZ for those guests making their first trip to Wales and others who have never, and may never get to see beautiful New Zealand.
I was totally chuffed with it when I had finished. Although my Bridesman thought it looked like a ballet dancing kiwi, so poor Callum is getting some stick for that! I stuck to my guns though as I loved it. With our little logo done, I went straight back to the drawing board, full of excitement to design the Save the Dates. ‘These will be done in no time’ I thought, as the logo will take centre stage, we don’t need much more! I was combining everything and anything to meet our mandate, not forgetting that smart sexy touch of sparkle. By the 16th draft nothing was WOW-WEE’ING me. I combined my love for the bokeh effect and before long hearts, planes and maps were being featured with our logo. At draft 18 my poor eyes were so over Photoshop and I had gone certifiably bokeh crazy.
I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Why isn’t anything looking fabulous??!! After a good whinge to various friends, the general consensus (from a survey of married perfectionists, control freaks and cruise-y Susie’s) was “if you can help it, DO NOT make your own stationary, you will end up fretting over every small thing and it will be a nightmare!” I have to admit, I am a victim of perfectionism so we made the decision to find someone totally independent of us to either make our ideas a reality, or steer us to a finish line.
Now We’re Getting Somewhere!
The requirements we gave Paisley Quill were much simpler than the Everest sized specification I gave myself. Quite literally “Hi there, here’s our theme, colour board and logo – see what you can do! Oh and don’t forget that touch of sparkle!” Whilst I found letting the reigns go a little hard, it really was a massive relief. She came back with a few ideas and before long we had everything we desired, I even thought it looked a bit like a treasure map, something exciting for those international guests. Result! While the STDs (whoops there I go again…) were underway I started planning other ways to use our logo and things started to become really ‘wiwi’fied’. I made a stamp courtesy of Bloom Stamps; check out Martina’s stamps here. She has been truly amazing with our custom design (watch out this stamp will be used on various things over the next 338 days!) I also made Save the Date stickers too as we liked the idea that guests could use the stickers in their diaries or elsewhere.
When the Save the Dates were ready to send, we folded them up just like a map and attached the sticker with some gold glitter twine, before placing in lovely gold envelopes. It wouldn’t be complete without the stamp on the back of the envelope either would it!
We loved hearing everyone’s excitement on receiving their ‘golden tickets’ (I might of even named myself Willi(ams) Wonker 
). I was super happy to see how they made it to the UK from NZ too; this was hanging out of a friend’s letterbox! Cute!!
It’s All in The Detail
You may (or may not) be wondering why SJ 4 CB is on our stickers? A little school-yard you think? Well, I’ll tell you something a little lovey-dovey. Rewind 3 ½ years, Callum and Sarah are sat in a bar having only been together 3 months, full of love, laughs and gin and having a right good time one Sunday ‘school’ night. They were having so much fun the night turned somewhat blurry. Awaking at a friend’s house the next morning, they had no recollection of the taxi ride home, or the pen that was scribbled on their hands (and a little bit on Callum’s face – ha!). For whatever reason, the night before they had asked the bar man for a side of pens with their gin and tonic and proceeded to write statements and proclamations of love on each others hands and arms; “SJ 4 CB” and “CB loves SJ”. WOW they were embarrassed when the hazy memories started flooding back; what on earth did that taxi driver think?! But with a raging gin fling of a hangover they laughed and took photos…
Fast forward to when Callum proposed. After the excitement subsided at seeing my AMAZING custom ring, bubbles in hand, I saw the inside of my ring had an engraving and a hidden diamond. What it said was simple and witty yet so meaningful and heartfelt – “CB for SJ”. I loved it. Every time I see that I remember a time when we laughed till we cried (and when we thought gin actually made us invincible). It’s quirky, it’s fun, it’s different, it’s us and because of that, we made our simple abbreviations feature in our day. FYI – SJ stands for Sarah-Jayne (that’s right, I’m a Sarah-Jayne not a Sarah!) and CB stands for Callum Bruce.
Our silhouette logo is unique and sentimental and does what I wanted it to… scream us. I hope it has given you some inspiration to make even a tiny detail, no matter how silly you think it might be, into something special for your W-day. After all, it’s all in the detail right? That’s what makes my heart go boom boom. As the infamous Coco Chanel once said “in order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different”.
Sarah.
