Year One – Paper
Kev and I have been in the thick of home shopping the last couple of months and decided to take a break with a trip up the central coast. Our first wedding anniversary last month was the perfect excuse for a little food and wine adventure in Paso Robles and Santa Barbara. It was a great little extended weekend getaway to just reflect on what we’ve accomplished together and as individuals in the last year, and also reminisce a bit on our wedding day. With the traditional “first year” gift being paper, we both agreed to just get each other cards since we were doing the trip and buying a home. This reminded me to share some of the paper elements from our big day, beyond the stuff we created with the watercolor suite.
We had the traditional Japanese 1000 origami cranes as one of our motifs. I didn’t start folding until about six months before the wedding. I did 800, and several friends helped fold 400. Yes, I was 200 over. While I’d like to chalk that up to being an overachiever, I think in my frantic need-to-get-things-done mentality and balancing a very busy season at work, I somehow lost count and ended up making a lot more than I needed to. Oops!
For my non-Japanese friends, here is a little description of the significance of the cranes that we had on the back of our menus at each place setting during the reception:
Being fifth generation Japanese, I wasn’t planning on folding them but one of my distant aunts basically guilted me into doing it with a “You’re not Japanese if you don’t have the cranes. If you don’t do it, I’ll fold them all myself with my old lady hands.” In the end, I think we were able to find a way to subtly include them and without having to end up with a crane-themed wedding.
We used the cranes as aisle markers, on each place card, and scattered them throughout the venue.
Another of my favorite paper elements was the perfect wedding day card that I found for my groom.
In lieu of a guestbook, we printed small cards using the “print suite” we had for people to write words of advice, date night ideas, etc. I made a small bunting to decorate the vintage breadbox we used for people to drop the idea cards into after. The font is the same font we used on our wedding invites, but a bit bolder, and the triangles were cut from a piece of gold glitter scrapbook cardstock weight paper.
I found a free watercolor image online and tweaked the color slightly to align closer to the blush we were using, and used that as a backdrop for several of the signs we created, including the reserved signage for our parents, bar menu, the 1000 cranes memo above, photobooth signage and the hashtag sign. The gold ribbon was leftover from our invitations. (PS – florals by the amazing Jamie!)
I think that about wraps it up for the paper elements of our wedding. As I was looking through our photos for the paper crafts, I realized I have one more DIY project to share soon!
PS – Did I mention that all of these photos were taken by the AMAZING and highly recommended Rodney Ty Photography??
Happy First Anniversary, Kevin. You’re done with year one of your life sentence. I love you.
