My Love of Indian Weddings

For years now I've been in love with Indian weddings. This love turned to obsessions after visiting India a few months ago. This is probably evident in half of the new invite designs I came up with for 2008. Wednesday, we finished up work on a letterpress order in our "Jaipur" style and it inspired me to post some of the amazing images of weddings I've had sitting in my computer for months.

India is all about color. From the bead and sequin markets to the brightly painted trucks on the streets, it's absolutely everywhere you look. Actually, it's pure sensory overload in the best way possible. This is surely reflected in all aspects of a wedding.

all images courtesy of Nirali Magazine

I also recently stumbled upon a wedding photographer I couldn't resist sharing with you. Her name is Dina Douglass and her company is Andrena Photography. Her photos of Hindu ceremonies are vivid, emotional and by far some of the best I've ever seen. Here are a few to feast your eyes on:

How about some of these detail shots from her blog...

Our New Website is Launched

Whew... one side project has finally been completed. When we began offering books of our letterpress invitations to stationery stores, we also had to begin work on a website which showcased just our letterpress line. I was lucky enough to stumble upon bludomain.com which offers flash based website templates at super affordable prices. They work mainly with photographers who need a place to post event photos online, but the templates they had seemed perfect for what we wanted to do. I signed up, registered our new domain name, and in the matter of a few afternoons had a brand new site.

http://www.whiteaisleletterpress.com/

The site will allow us to post proofs online which are password protected, streamline our invite ordering system and showcase new invite styles. We're really excited about this!!!

New Silk Flower Colors

There are few things that excite me more than receiving our monthly shipments of silk goods from Cambodia. The young women we've been working with at the sewing center in Phnom Penh have outdone themselves with these amazing colored roses. Currently they're all scattered across my couch, but I figured I'd take a few photos before packaging them up.

These flowers are each handmade by one of the many young women trying to move their lives forward after being victims of sex trafficking. 100% of the profit for this item goes back to the local day center we work with. It will pay the salaries of these girls, and expand the facility to include full time housing so that they no longer have to go back to the brothels in the evenings. This program not only provides them with income, but also a new skill and a feeling of empowerment. It's a first step out of what is an unimaginable life for most of us.

The Times They Are A Changing...

I took this afternoon off to start packing up our house for the upcoming move. I decided to begin by dealing with items we won't need to use for the next couple of months. This brought me to start going through all of my photo albums and stacks of unorganized sentimental stuff. I don't know about you, but once I open up a photo album I haven't looked through in a couple of years I could be there for hours. Not much packing going on actually....

When I got married, my Mother gave me an incredible gift. She had worked for who knows how long on a three ring binder filled with info on my family. It was like a gigantic family history scrapbook. It had an ancestry tree, family recipes from great-grandparents kitchens, photos and I think most importantly interview type portions for a lot of my relatives. They each told stories about growing up, important people and events in their lives, memories of their neighborhoods, and of course getting married! It brought me to start thinking about how weddings have changed so much over the years. Are they better now? Somehow looking through these photos of my grandparents and parents weddings it makes me think maybe not.

Since blogs are really public journals in a way, I thought I'd write a couple of posts about different generations of weddings based on my own family.

First Up: My Mom and Dad (cue the cheers and applause) : May 7, 1967

My parents (Wayne and Christine) got engaged on Christmas Eve, 1966 after dating for about 10 months. They had originally planned to get married in the Autumn of 1967, however this was during Vietnam. My father was in school part-time and was not eligible for a deferment from the draft. By April of 1967 it looked pretty certain that he was going to be shipped off to Asia. Their choices were, put off the wedding or speed up the timeline. They chose to move the date up. After just one month of planning they were married at St. Mildred's Church in Dundalk, Baltimore.

My mother wore a dress that my grandmother had bought for her at a local department store sample sale for about $50. It was a size 8 and had to be taken down to about a size 1. Their wedding party included a Maid of Honor, Best Man, one bridesmaid and an usher.

My mother met with a local florist who was very "traditional." She told my mom that a brides bouquet couldn't contain any color. My grandfather had to step in and say, "If she wants daisies, she's going to have daisies!" She got her bouquet of daisies, roses and stephanotis.

Due to the rush of getting the wedding together, there were no invitations. My grandparents called people. No RSVP cards or direction inserts ... just a phone call. Their reception was at "some hall" that neither can remember the name of, but it was nice considering the short notice. Their honeymoon was a short roadtrip away in nearby Virginia.

The bottom line.... they've been married for 40 years. The wedding was planned in 30 days and didn't have all of the bells, whistles and big budgets of many of today's events, but I still love looking at the photos and knowing what they mean to me. Oh, and for all of the bride's out there using all the wonderful shades of yellow that have come out this season, my Mom had it first (ha ha!) You gotta love the bridesmaids dresses!

Here is a board I came up with inspired by my parents:

top row: www.brides.com, www.neimanmarcus.com, www.ephemera-press.com
middle row: www.brides.com
bottom row: www.brides.com , www.hellolucky.com

I Love Free Press

A giant thanks to Monica Varner, owner of Elan Event Studio in Tampa! I just checked my mailbox and there was a crisp new copy of Bride's Florida in it. Monica gave an interview listing her favorite go-to contacts and we were happy to find that we'd made the cut. Thanks again Monica!

A Kid in a Candy Store

This morning I was lucky enough to find Ritzy Bee Blog and what followed was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. She provided a link to a post on Martha Stewart's blog showing what the prop room looks like for their television show and photo shoots. So you say you need a cake stand...

How about candle sticks?

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