Oh So Beautiful Paper

Hi everyone! I'm Jen with the haystack needle. I'm so happy to be guest blogging this week here on Oh So Beautiful Paper while Nole moves into her new apartment!  I'm a huge fan of OSBP, and there are few things (besides homemade gelato) that I love more than stationery and pretty paper goodness.  To kick off the week, I thought I'd share some details from my wedding. 

I had so much fun planning and crafting the elements of our wedding — for seven months I was stamping, snipping, and sewing on our living room floor.  Dan and I got married on a farm in Maine (his home state), so I let the natural setting inspire all the details.

I've always loved skeleton keys, and I liked the idea of having guests pick up a key to find their seat. I organized our 60 guests into seating groups by animals (and the butterfly, my favorite).  These key tags also served as an alternative guestbook.  I made a sign telling everyone to sign the back of their tag, and then my friend Sue-Anne picked them all up.  I have a vintage blue mason jar filled with the key tags now on our dresser.  It's fun to read the messages every once in a while.  By the way, the keys I used were actually wooden skeleton keys I found on Etsy.  I couldn't find a lot of skeleton keys for a good price on eBay, and I liked the idea of wooden keys.

The table cards were everyday letterpress cards by Pancake & Franks (who also designed our custom wedding invitations, which I'm sharing tomorrow!).  I brought the cards to a local rubber stamp maker who created custom stamps from the images of the cow, horse, pig, bird, butterfly, and rooster on the cards.  Then I stamped river rocks at each place setting to make the seat groupings
clear, since we were using long communal tables rather than separate
round tables.  I loved Stacy Pancake's horseshoe card, so Dan and I used the good luck horseshoe to mark our seats.

The photo above is of our handmade ceremony programs.  Here's what I used: bakers twine, rubber stamps, faux bois paper, Japanese screw punch, and I printed out the program text on kraft brown paper.

I like to use my ever-growing collection of rubber stamps whenever possible.  So the stamping didn't stop with the paper.  I bought floursack towels from Kmart and dressed them up with a little pattern using stamps and fabric paint, and we used the printed tea towels at each place setting. (Do not try this with a large wedding!)  In hindsight, I should have figured out how to silkscreen the pattern, which would have saved a ton of time.  After the wedding, the tea towels were a sweet way to say thanks to my friends who were a tremendous help pulling everything together with me.  We went with biodegradable bamboo forks, knives, spoons, and plates — I saved a ton of money on rentals and didn't need to hire a dishwasher. 

It was blueberry season in Maine in September when we got married.  Early on, we decided our favor should be a food treat and we fell in love with the idea of blueberry jam.  I sampled a bunch of Maine blueberry jams and found them to be too sweet, too jiggly, too pasty, or just not quite right.  Spoon had just debuted their collection of homemade jams, and after sampling their blueberry jam, I knew it was the one.  And it was sweet that Spoon packages their jams in pretty jars  — even the turquoise blue label coincidentally fit in my wedding color palette.  I made paper butterfly tags to dress up the jars.  I love how the butterflies look like they're about to take flight. 

More details on our wedding tomorrow — including our invitations!  See you soon.  

All photographs by our wedding photographer, Charlotte Jenks Lewis.  She's amazing!

1. Bryn says:

   02/09/2010 at 8:14 AM

   Jen, I love this! You kept it so elegant along with all the craftiness. Love it.
2. Giovanna says:

   02/02/2010 at 11:04 AM

   this is amazing! i have four months left and wish i would have started crafting earlier. really beautiful wedding.
3. Jeanelle says:

   01/28/2010 at 10:02 AM

   love the towels & the bamboo forks & knives, so cute
4. margaret says:

   01/28/2010 at 2:04 AM

   Pancakes and franks was the perfect choice for this! Beautiful invitations and great attention to detail throughout.
5. Jen Jafarzadeh says:

   01/26/2010 at 6:54 PM

   thanks for all the kinds words! it’s so fun to share a bit of the day with everyone. thanks so much to Nole for letting me be a part of OSBP (and ramble on about my love of rubber stamps)! (hope move is going well!)
6. Denise says:

   01/26/2010 at 3:25 PM

   amazing! love all the details
7. Emily & Heather - Invitation Buzz says:

   01/26/2010 at 1:09 PM

   Wedding was stunning!! Of course we are a little biased as we are from the beautiful state of Maine!
8. Jane Flanagan
   Twitter: seenandsaid
   says:

   01/26/2010 at 10:37 AM

   Jen!! This is absolutely amazing. So beautiful!!
9. This Lovely City says:

   01/25/2010 at 11:44 PM

   Your wedding is STUNNING, Jen! From the stamped tea towels, to the skeleton keys, to the blue mason jars and jam… so pretty!
10. Jenn says:

    01/25/2010 at 11:34 PM

    Gorgeous! I love all of the details but I think my favorite might is the skeleton keys.
11. Meghan says:

    01/25/2010 at 7:34 PM

    Jen’s wedding is one of my all-time favorites. I love all the little details- especially the stamped tea towels.
    Good luck with the move, Nole!
12. Jade Sheldon says:

    01/25/2010 at 7:21 PM

    And my sweetheart believes that weddings can’t be beautiful inside barns/at farms… this will certainly prove him wrong!!
13. katy says:

    01/25/2010 at 6:03 PM

    Wow beautiful!
14. youngmi says:

    01/25/2010 at 3:32 PM

    charming! i love the keys and jam
15. Tess@WeddingThemes says:

    01/25/2010 at 3:17 PM

    What wonderful ideas! thanks for sharing!
    Tess
16. mercie ghimire says:

    01/25/2010 at 2:39 PM

    i was looking for tea towels this afternoon and then stumbled upon your homemade ones. i love them, jen! i used rubber stamps for my wedding as well and loved the results. this may be my next project
17. Kathryn
    Twitter: snippetandink
    says:

    01/25/2010 at 11:58 AM

    How lovely – and I love rubber stamps!
18. abby says:

    01/25/2010 at 11:18 AM

    I love all these details!
    Everything looks great.
    Thanks for sharing

Trackbacks

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