Photo by Cornish Wedding Photography
With the recapping complete, I thought I’d back-track a bit to give a little detail on a few of our last minute wedding DIY projects for our UK wedding. First up, our airmail wedding programs! Given that our wedding was going to be an all-day event, we wanted our guests to be informed about the goings-on and to have a little welcome from us prior to the ceremony. Also, we didn’t just want a one-time only booklet-held-together-by-ribbons program that we had often tossed in the recycle bin ourselves. So, we figured we just write our guests a letter…and hope it was as much a keepsake for them as it was for us.
But why airmail? Well, for starters, we love mail. After a year long distance, there was a lot of mail that was posted across the Atlantic: from letters to photos to postcards to care packages. From that (and wanting to be a bit more eco-friendly) we chose our RSVP cards to be postcards. Then we came up with the idea of having our guest book be a collection of postcards we’d collected throughout college and our relationship. So when the light bulb went off to write our guests a letter, we couldn’t pass the irresistible opportunity to use airmail envelopes!
Thus, once we knew the what and the packaging, we began our DIY process of producing our own wedding programs:
Step 1 – Picking the stationary
Like I said, we’ve done a lot of letter writing and have thus collected a lot of different airmail envelopes (I mean, c’mon, they are sooo cool). But what I didn’t realize until I’d emptied our stationary stashes was that airmail envelopes come in A LOT of different sizes. Depending on the matching stationary, depending on what country, depending on the random printer, so on and so forth. And what turned out to be the case was that we couldn’t actually use ANY of the envelopes we already had because none of them fit A4 paper (UK standard letter paper size)! So off to the stationers I went in search (and hopes) of finding bunches of A4 size airmail envelopes. With a big sigh of relief, they sold them in packs of 25! Score! (I must admit, I was tempted by green envelopes to match our wedding invite envelopes, but the airmail theme was brewing too much…)
With envelopes in hand, I then decided on the paper. Alex and I had talked about having the letters look like they were set on faux hotel stationary–so off white paper it had to be (to at least attempt to look ‘aged’) and I went with a slightly thicker stock with a lovely horizontal texture (it actually reminded me of the texture of the silk on my wedding dress–not that anyone knew that but me, of course!).
Step 2 - Writing the letter
The basic premise of our letter was that the front page was a letter to the guests to welcome them and let them know about the ceremony while the back page had the schedule, music details, and our thank yous. The letter began (in good old Courier New):
Dear loved one,
Welcome. You are here today as a family member, a friend and a witness to the Civil Partnership of Alexandra Crisp & Erica Gillingham as they exchange vows & rings–legally & lovingly! We are grateful that you are here and very much look forward to celebrating with you throughout all of today’s festivities.
Many parts of today’s ceremony & revelry echo Alex & Erica’s relationship–in California, trans-atlantically, and in England…
From there we told them about the poems they would be hearing during the ceremony and what to expect directly following. Flipping the page over, we gave them the full run down of the Order of the Day, Music, Best Men, and thanks to our parents before signing it off Alexandra & Erica with a flourish (in print, not by hand)!
Step 3 - Setting the faux letterhead
While we had seen some of the hotel’s old stationary on a visit there, we didn’t have any with us to use for our programs. But we figured heck, we can make a faux letterhead…A few hours later, we had finally decided on the right shade of purple for a vintage-but-not-gaudy-look as well as the right size, font, etc. Oh, the minute changes with each test printing (on used paper, of course)…
In the end, the letterhead simply said: The Fowey Hotel, The Esplanade, Fowey Cornwall–but in Edwardian Script IT, font size 26 & color RGB 52, 22, 45. (Yes, we got that technical, so I thought I’d share since it doesn’t photograph well).
Step 4 – Print trials & Colors
All I can say about this is print test pages til the cows come home and you’re totally satisfied (or exhausted, whichever happens first). It is so worth the small changes in sizing or color or spacing to be happy with the program before you start printing on the good stuff. (And then print a few on the good stuff as a test just to be sure too!).
Step 5 – Stamps, Envelopes & ‘The Ampersand’
Really, the airmail envelopes are pretty kick-ass in and of themselves, but we wanted a little something to not only signify that this was more than just your average envelope, but also had some decoration to represent us and our ceremony. And what better to signify our impending union than the symbol for the conjunction ‘and:’ the ampersand!?
So, I set out to find an ampersand stamp, hoping for some creative script take on the gorgeous & … but alas, could not find one anywhere! Then I tried to find an anchor–I love anchors for their significance of groundness and faith (literally and figuratively), Alex is a sailor, and it’s part of our relationship (“she’s my anchor and I’m her compass”)–but the anchors were just plain and…not us.
It was actually when we were just wrapping up the printing of the letters that it dawned on me that we could print directly onto the envelopes. Already in love with the ampersand in Edwardian Script IT we’d used in letterhead and our signature, I gave it a test go on an envelope in black. The contrast was too sharp though, and Alex suggested matching the blue in the envelope’s border. With another test print, the concept seemed to come alive on the page! We both totally fell in love with it, and really like the (very small) detail that while the ampersand was used in place of every ‘and’ throughout the letter, the first place that exact ampersand in script would appear in the letter was in our final signature. Oh, the little things!
Step 6 – Fold, Stuff & Display
Each letter was folded in thirds so that ‘Dear loved one’ was on top when the guests pulled out their letter (I know there’s a technical term for that fold, I just don’t know it!). Then we stuffed the 60-odd letters into their even more gorgeous envelopes and DID NOT SEAL THEM. No reason to mess about trying to open the envelope on the wedding day. Finally, we picked the fruit bowl my dad had made us to display the programs in at the ceremony, for three reasons:
- My dad didn’t make to the ceremony and we wanted to include pieces of him into the ceremony (his bowls were used for the programs, postcard guest book, ring warming bowl, & head table decorations).
- I laugh every time I look at it: my dad’s rationale was to make a ‘fruit bowl for the fruits.’ So classic.
- The bowl is made from a redwood tree; the redwood forest being where we went to college and the latin name for redwood meaning, ever living.
What other creative ways have you come up with for your programs?
e Esplanade | Fowey Cornwall