Almost six months have passed since our wedding day.
The meringues are only sweet memories, the masses of once fresh roses have been pressed and the dress returned from the dry cleaners (a bit bruised, but still lovely). Life keeps moving along as if it never stood still, at least for a moment, on that special day.
But I simply have to open my lovely wooden box filled with wedding memories to feel all the joy of our Groot Partytjie (Big Party) of 28 November 2009 flooding back.
Right at the top of the box the purposefully left over wedding stationary, designed and made by Elsje Designs, lies wrapped in tissue paper. I page through these almost every week. I can't help it! It's simply too beautiful to keep hidden in a box (I've framed some too and have others stuck to the fridge!).
Apart from the photographs, this is one of the few tangible memories of the day and the months leading up to it. What better way to remember the planning, excitement and nerves than these precious paper keepsakes?
We never met Annemie, Linnett or any of the other Elsje Design-team members in person, but we might as well have! They understood each and every request. Captured the nuances of our personalities without laying eyes on us once and ensured that the spirit of our wedding day was captured in beautiful vintage-style postcards months before the actual event.
The anticipation of receiving the colourful, lovely designs for the invitations, ceremony programmes and thank you hearts for the reception, was one of the most thrilling parts of planning our wedding.
Thank you to the fabulous ladies of Elsje Designs for being excited, happy and creative with us and for creating memories that I'm sure my children and theirs, will be able to take from the wedding box, unwrap from the tissue paper and use as a launching pad for lovely, romantic dreams.
- Riëtte van der Wat (& my husband, Izak)
(Flowers and bride's bouquet: Designed and arranged by my mom Iolanthe Grobler and an army of aunts and friends)
(Photographs: Travis McNeill and Maike Backeberg from welovepictures, http://www.welovepictures.co.za/)
The meringues are only sweet memories, the masses of once fresh roses have been pressed and the dress returned from the dry cleaners (a bit bruised, but still lovely). Life keeps moving along as if it never stood still, at least for a moment, on that special day.
But I simply have to open my lovely wooden box filled with wedding memories to feel all the joy of our Groot Partytjie (Big Party) of 28 November 2009 flooding back.
Right at the top of the box the purposefully left over wedding stationary, designed and made by Elsje Designs, lies wrapped in tissue paper. I page through these almost every week. I can't help it! It's simply too beautiful to keep hidden in a box (I've framed some too and have others stuck to the fridge!).
Apart from the photographs, this is one of the few tangible memories of the day and the months leading up to it. What better way to remember the planning, excitement and nerves than these precious paper keepsakes?
We never met Annemie, Linnett or any of the other Elsje Design-team members in person, but we might as well have! They understood each and every request. Captured the nuances of our personalities without laying eyes on us once and ensured that the spirit of our wedding day was captured in beautiful vintage-style postcards months before the actual event.
The anticipation of receiving the colourful, lovely designs for the invitations, ceremony programmes and thank you hearts for the reception, was one of the most thrilling parts of planning our wedding.
Thank you to the fabulous ladies of Elsje Designs for being excited, happy and creative with us and for creating memories that I'm sure my children and theirs, will be able to take from the wedding box, unwrap from the tissue paper and use as a launching pad for lovely, romantic dreams.
- Riëtte van der Wat (& my husband, Izak)
(Flowers and bride's bouquet: Designed and arranged by my mom Iolanthe Grobler and an army of aunts and friends)
(Photographs: Travis McNeill and Maike Backeberg from welovepictures, http://www.welovepictures.co.za/)
A few tips, from this bride's experience:
• For fabulous free inspiration for everything from stationary to table decorations visit wedding blogs like Snippet&Ink, StyleMePretty and of course the Elsje Designs blog.
• Hold on to your dreams and ideas for the day, even if they are a bit off beat.
• We personalised our stationary with a quirky poem, not everyone's taste, but it captured "us". • We also added a personal reference - when we were still dating, we never talked about our "wedding" but of our "Groot Partytjie". This became the theme of the day, captured by the invitations.
• Stationary can be used as great decorations. The Elsje Designs thank you hearts added an extra splash of pink to our wedding tent and made the pretty brown chairs, pretty awesome!
We recycled our wedding day stationary as background to our hand written thank you notes. This saved money and added an extra layer of special!
• Stationary can be used as great decorations. The Elsje Designs thank you hearts added an extra splash of pink to our wedding tent and made the pretty brown chairs, pretty awesome!
We recycled our wedding day stationary as background to our hand written thank you notes. This saved money and added an extra layer of special!
1 comment:
nice post, thanks for sharing
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