Getting The Ball Rolling

I bought a fantastic book, The Paper Bride. It's full of great ideas to make pretty much anything wedding-related out of paper. In its wealth of information, I picked out several ideas that would work perfectly for our wedding - and starting on these paper creations now means I have plenty of time to make them. More importantly, I have plenty of time to make them perfect.

The first idea I picked up was a pop-up map. Through a series of folds, an 81/2x11 sheet of paper folds beautifully into a shape that would tuck neatly into the back of an envelope. Opening the map is like opening a treasure map. Our hope is to have a hand-drawn map of the heart of our little city, showing the location of the church and reception locations as well as some other local favorites (the meat market, the historic family-owned theatre, etc.) Not only would the map be beautiful but it would contain an element of whimsy that I believe is absolutely imperative to our wedding. Our friends consider us "The Old Couple," in that we're very anachronistic and we act like we've been married for years. When I think of old couples that are reluctant to move into modern times, I think of my grandparents, and I would argue that they are the very definition of whimsy.

The second idea we fell in love with was that of a self-mailing Save the Date. I love this idea! It's simple and beautiful, and if done right can be chock full of a vintage and whimsical vibe. We would like to use a little less than half of a regular 81/2x11" sheet of thick brown paper as the backing. On the outside, it would fold in thirds with the top fold being shorter and using a cute address label to seal it. As you open it, the top fold segment would read "Save The Date!" The middle section would be blank brown, but we would lay a piece of ivory paper of similar weight and texture to the outside in the middle area that includes the date and our names - this would be the actual Save-The-Date. Our idea is to affix a magnet to the back so our guests have a convenient way of holding onto the information without having to track down a little piece of paper they got in the mail. This would be attached to the brown layer with a piece of yarn or twine - something easy to detach so the mailer could be disposed of but the magnet could remain. The bottom section of the mailer would probably just say something simple like "...details to follow" or one of those typical lines.

I could have saved a lot of time by sending you here. I made this video of the Save the Date for my mom so she could see how it works without having to read all the bulk I just wrote out (: