A WEDDING IS ON THE WAY

Our youngest daughter is getting married in two weeks and our entire family has been busy with creating a lot of the decorations, food and all the other piles of stuff necessary for a modern wedding.  I've hauled loads of wedding projects up to my classroom.  I decided it would be fun to share some of the artsy things I'm doing.

Our daughter is getting married in a refurbished, old post office in a small town outside of Oklahoma City.  We are using a postal theme.  I designed a vintage postcard which we will launch after the ceremony on helium balloons. (preaddressed, prestamped in hopes finders will send them back to the couple)   I also decided to paint a larger version of the postcard to lay on the aisle runner just beyond the wedding alter.  I painted it on gesso primed canvas.

The giant postcard is almost done and hanging on one of my classroom bulletin boards so I can "eyeball" the details.  I think the kids intend to frame it and display it somewhere in their home.

We are also using reproductions of the envelopes I've saved from my parent's love letters back in the 1930's.  We made little 7-8 envelope stacks of the old envelopes, tied them with ribbon and will have them as centerpieces on the reception tables under glass cloches/bell jars.  My parents were secretly married for a few weeks and went home to live with their respective parents until they got up the nerve and the money to start their home.  During that time, they wrote sweet letters back and forth to one another and my mother saved them all.  Isn't that a cool touch to use at a wedding at an old post office?

In keeping with the vintage feel of the wedding I also designed a Victorian poster looking invitation which I built on the computer, distressed and punched with a doilies like edge.  I also took the kid's engagement photo, gave it a sepia tone, reduced it's transparency and printed it on see-through vellum.  I used the photo to wrap around the finished invitations.

Finally I created the addresses with a fancy, fun font on the computer and aged all the envelopes before we popped them in the mail.

I've bought all sorts of fun new toys to create things for the wedding.

She is also using a lot of skeleton keys in her decorations and flowers.  I found silicon molds on Etsy and used hot glue to mold about 200 skeleton keys of assorted sizes.  We then spray painted them to look metallic, aged them and have them ready to decorate and build into flower arrangements and corsages.

Whew - there's lots more to share but I'll wait and post some photos of the event.  My three daughters and my sister are all Martha Stewart clones so everyone has their fingerprints somewhere on this special day.