Monday, January 2, 2012

I Do...Added Touches

Ready for a few more wedding ideas?  In the Something Old to Something Blue post, I outlined some of the details that helped to give a personal touch to my wedding.  Here are three more simple things to incorporate into your wedding without costing much.
Group Photo:  Just after the ceremony, we had all the guests gather together on the stairs outside our church for a group photo. I totally recommend this!  It was a great way to capture everyone who celebrated our special day with us in one photo. Just make sure you let your photographer know you want to do this beforehand, so he/she comes prepared. Our photographer raised his camera up on a huge pole to get everyone!

Guest Book:  Almost every wedding I go to has a framed photo of the couple with a mat around it for guests to write well wishes. I HATE THIS!!  The English teacher in me always notices the person that misspells "congratulations", and I couldn't imagine having to walk past this error (or others) on the wall of my house every day!!  Other couples have an actual book which is nice, but usually sits on a shelf and collects dust.  I do have a friend that used her guest book for every big event from the wedding on which was neat.  We signed for her housewarming, her child's first birthday, etc.  I thought this was a neat idea and a good way to record the history of your life's major milestones.
Another idea is the one we did for our wedding. I bought scrapbook paper and temporarily adhered it to foam board so it had a solid background.  I placed one of our engagement photos on each page and left the rest for guests to sign.  These signed pages (I had 4 total), I later added to the scrapbook of our wedding. So our guest book just became part of our album for the entire day.
Details in a Program:  Some type of program page/book is common for the wedding ceremony. I don't think it is essential, but I wanted to incorporate it into our wedding because I wanted to share the details of our wedding I felt were important. Our wedding program had a few aspects I really enjoyed.
The first was a photo/write up from each of our bridesmaids/groomsmen.  Each of these special people wrote a short paragraph on how they met us, favorite memories, and well-wishes. We included a headshot next to each writeup.
My favorite page of the program was the "Interesting Information" page.  This is where I explained the Something Old, Something New, etc. as well as other details (see previous post).  One other detail on this page was the fact that we were married by the same pastor and in the same church as my parents 38 years prior. There were just fun items for guests to read while they waited for the ceremony to start, but also neat details we added to our wedding to make it even more meaningful.

*All photos taken by Joel Eckman Maus of Studio EMP, Inc. except scanned images of bridesmaid page and details page of program.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

for my son's wedding 2 years ago, instead of signing a guest book or frame, we had the guests sign a quilt block and then for the 1st anniversary I made a quilt for them w/all the quilt blocks. It turned out great and they love it. Also for the quilt I used the bandana's that had been used at the wedding (western theme) for the rest of the quilt blocks. It was a total hit.