It’s been about two months since the wedding and John and I are loving life. We are so excited to be back to a normal routine and to regain a little bit of anonymity. Planning a wedding was a lot harder than I expected, but I’m so thankful that we went through the process and came away with a gorgeous event (and a great collection of memories) that we can be proud of.
But even though the event is over, there are actually a few last-minute wedding projects that I didn’t get the chance to chat about here on the blog – Today’s topic being one of them.
I knew I wanted to do something really unique for our guest book – Something new, different, outside-of-the-box and “us.” After the image below caught my eye on Pinterest, I knew I was on to something…
Source: The Bride’s Cafe
I liked the idea of an old suitcase and I ADORED the idea of getting handwritten notes from our guests – It seemed very personal and I knew looking back on the notes after the wedding would be hugely touching. But I also wanted to make this idea truly ours with a little something unique. I gave it a few weeks of thought and then randomly stumbled upon this bag in one of my desk drawers.
This crinkled, unassuming bag is actually full of a pretty special collection of mine. For years, I have made a habit of purchasing a couple of art postcards each time I visit a museum. I tend to go for postcards with paintings or drawings of pieces that I remember seeing during my trek through the museum space – I didn’t want just random images, but art that I wanted to remember being moved by.
I had amassed quite a collection by this point, but didn’t really have a plan for their use. Until now anyway.
I have a little bit of a competing taste in art. I have always been really into French Impressionism, but adore Abstract Expressionist art too. Pretty different eras, but I love each for their own special reasons. Here are a few of my favorites:
Just noticed that I doubled up on that Georgia O’Keeffe painting…Oh well, it’s one of my favorites.
My vision was to have guests choose a postcard, write us a little message on the back and toss it into an open vintage suitcase. I even had my mom (who has GORGEOUS handwriting) create a little chalkboard sign with instructions for our friends and family. The “as they begin their journey” phrase was our way of tying the entire vignette of suitcase and postcards together.
Photographing the look in my studio doesn’t do it nearly enough justice…But these lovely images below, taken by our wedding photographer Katie Stoops, shows how the project was a lovely and personal addition to our favor and gift table. I think it was a hit with our guests (at least I HOPE so), and we really enjoyed going through the personal messages written on our postcards after we returned home from the honeymoon.
Now I need help! Do you all have any thoughts for how we can display our collection of postcard messages? Maybe a photo album, or a pretty frame? I’d love to find a way to display them in a photo album so that you can see both the front and the back of the cards, but I’m not sure how to do that. I could possibly make a photocopy of the back and paste it beside or below the postcard front inside a scrapbook.
These are the thoughts I’ve brainstormed so far, but I am looking for suggestions – You all are so creative, so please share your ideas in the comments section!
