I like when an element of the event design can be used in a couple of different ways. I love this modern and simple centerpiece made of painted manzanita and faux birdies.

From the super talented Rebecca Thuss are these adorable favors.

These birdie themed sticks are suppose to be plant labels, but how cute would they be as seating cards?

Gotta love any clutch from Red Ruby Rose!

And a wedding cake also by Rebecca Thuss. Its perfect for a fall or winter wedding.

Images: 1. Tina Rupp 2. & 5. Rebecca Thuss 3. The Modern Gardener 4. Red Ruby Rose via Etsy

Yes, that’s fire! Photo by Vallentyne Photography.

From cake stands, to tissues, to platters, French Bull‘s products are a jolt of color that would be perfect to add to a vintage themed wedding. How freaking cute are the individual tissues?

These shoes are so adorable, I the love the bow on the toe of the shoe. Shoes by Valentino, photo by Katie Moos.

I love the deep jewel tones of peacock feathers. And used in a subtle way, it could be the perfect element to bring your wedding’s design together.

I love how this hair piece uses the peacock feathers with a tiny cluster of crystals at the base.

For bridesmaid’s dresses you could use aqua and deep blue colors from the peacock feather.

For a clutch, this peacock print bag is perfect.

Images: 1. Photo by Arrowood Photography, tabletop design by Camilla Svensson Burns 2. Sweets n Lo 3. Left, Monique Lhuillier, Right Jcrew 4. Red Ruby Rose

I love the tradition of a wedding cake, but I also like to mix it up a bit and offer guests a variety of sweets at a wedding.

How can anyone go wrong with ice cream? Tray passed to the dance floor in traditional sugar cones, your guests won’t be able to say no.

To finish a traditional Italian feast, biscotti and espresso would be the perfect ending.

An individual serving of chocolate mousse? Yes, please.

Decadent cheesecake, creamy and delicious.

Images from: 1. Erin Quon 2. Ian Wallace 3. Feastivites Catering 4. Ben Dearnley

Our final post for photographer’s week comes from Elizabeth Messina:

weddings are such beautiful rituals…..the celebration of life & love with family and close friends….as a photographer I feel so blessed to be included in many of the most intimate moments at a wedding celebration…..

it is an honor and a tremendous responsibility…..i have learned many things over the years…one of the most important is to remember to breath…to look around and feel the moments as the unfold….there is magic all around you…..laughter….

light coming through the trees….your dress….your new husband looking at you…..flowers on tables…the very ones you spent hours deciding on…. all of these things together, little and big, are celebrating the love you have found with another human being….

Our next post comes from Harper of Harper Smith Photography:

Photojournalism is defined as using photography to tell a story and document life. Capturing a moment in time without interfering or changing it’s course. Objective, honest, and above all else…incredibly real.

The root of my photography comes from a strong photojournalism background which lends a unique approach to the weddings I shoot today.  I’m a fly on the wall, an outside observer, moving unnoticed and stepping in at just the right moment to capture just the right shot.

Often these are moments you wouldn’t normally expect because they’re natural and un-posed. The nervous bride having a private moment alone in the limousine after all her bridesmaids have exited before her. These moments – which maybe awkward or embarrassing at the time – often turn out to be the most beautiful, intimate photos in retrospect. That’s why one of the biggest challenges of photographing in this style is earning the trust of the bride and groom so that on their wedding day they do let their guard down and trust that you’re capturing the images they never expected but always dreamed of.

I fully encourage couples to have their photographers arrive 3-4 hours before the wedding for this reason. The unscripted, unrehearsed moments that capture the real, raw emotion of the day often take place during this time.

I also encourage the bride and groom to let go, live the moment, and pretend there isn’t a camera around.

{Editor’s note}

Harper actually shot my wedding and I had to share one of my favorite images she captured of me that day. My mom had brought some champagne for me to sip on while I was getting ready and Julie Morgan, the thoughtful makeup artist that she is, brought straws with her so I could drink without messing up my lipstick. This is the un-posed, all natural, photo Harper got of me:

Our next post is from Tim Halberg of Halberg Photographers:

Read the wedding magazines and they will give you check lists of things to ask your photographer: do you shoot digital or film, who will actually photograph my wedding, do you offer the digital negatives…

What the magazines don’t tell you to ask is how your digital negatives will compare to the photos you saw on your photographer’s website, the photos which drew you to their work in the first place. You need to know what the difference is between a print you will receive from the digital negatives when you upload them to your local lab vs. a finished print you will receive when ordering directly from your photographer.

Photographers prepare files for several different uses: marketing ie: their website and ads, proofing for brides/grooms to first view their images, album images and finished prints are among the most common.

Photos used for finished prints, albums and marketing have usually been processed through Photoshop to ensure the images look their VERY best. Depending on the photographer this may include adjustments that can take anywhere from a minute to an hour.

Usually printed proofs and online proofs have simply been adjusted in a digital workflow program such as Adobe Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture. Most photographers utilize this software to adjust brightness/exposure as well as color balance. The process is much more involved than this – but to go into detail would require an entirely separate and fairly technical article, but the end result is a photo which is close to correct for exposure and color.

With all of this in mind, there are some additional questions you may want to ask your photographer before hiring them:
*Can I see a complete wedding as delivered to a previous client for proofing (ask for more than one) – this will give you an idea of what to expect in your proof images vs. what you see on the photographer’s website.
*What does a final print look like when delivered from the photographer? – hopefully this will look very similar to what you have seen on the photographer’s website.
*What type of retouching is included in the cost of a print, and what does additional retouching cost?
*What type of adjustments/retouching will be included with the images delivered as digital negatives?
*Why should I order prints from you vs. using the digital negatives to have prints made down the street?

Your digital negatives will usually be a match to your proof images. This means if you order prints from your digital negatives from a lab down the street such as Walgreens/Walmart/Snapfish/Costco/Kodak.com your prints will not come close to the quality of what the photographer would deliver as a final print if you were to order from them (that is if the photographer does retouching when you order your prints).

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I’m so excited, Katie Moos just sent me photos from a wedding I planned and did event design for, and now I can share them with you!

First up, the lovely couple have been together for 22 years, and with the recent ruling legalizing gay marriage in California it was full steam ahead for these two. With only six weeks to plan we had to pull together our team of vendors, the time line, and the event design very, very fast.

The knew that they wanted a beach themed wedding and they knew that they wanted dark and light pink, so I ran with it. They also wanted to make sure that the children (all 18 of them) would be entertained and so we brought in a bounce house. I added pink and white beach balls for them to play with and put them in pink bins with a sign saying “Have a ball!”

For this wedding, since our time frame was so short I made the centerpieces using what was suppose to be for the bottom of a plant container. They were made of plastic and cost a whopping $4 each. I hot glued sea shells onto the rim and filled them with white rocks, pink beach glass, pink cymbidium orchids, tons of sea shells, and oh yes, starfish.

I also tucked in pink LED lights underneath the seashells so at night, the centerpieces glowed.

For the ceremony, they didn’t want a traditional aisle and processional. Instead, they walked towards each other to the center where the officiant married them. I decorated the aisle with sea shell wreaths hung from shepherd’s hooks.

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From Wendy, our guest blogger:

My mom and I figured out that we could take a bus from the airport to Milan, and then take a train to Bergamo.  Unfortunately, our bus ride was an hour longer than expected, was stuffy, and by the time we got to the bus depot, we were nearly out of oxygen. Furthermore, I was starting to dwindle on little sleep and airplane food.  My mom found a food stand and offered to get me something to eat.  NO ONE SPOKE ENGLISH.  I think she said that we were Americans, so they ended up giving us americanos instead of food. Nevertheless, the caffeine was temporarily good, and we figured out how to get ourselves on the correct train at Stazione Centrale, the beautiful, industrial, Mussolini-looking train station in Milan.

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Thank you so much Kelly for giving me my first ever guest blogging opportunity during your couture paper goods series.  I’m Laura Hooper of Laura Hooper Calligraphy and I spend most of my days hand-lettering envelopes from clients around the world as well as creating other pieces of art using calligraphy.

When it comes time to place your invitation order that is when you should consider booking a calligrapher if you choose to use one.  If you have the money in your budget I recommend choosing someone who is a professional calligrapher, because you are more likely to appreciate the end product.  Thanks to the Internet, you don’t have to be restricted to finding someone in your area, especially if there happens to be a shortage of calligraphers where you live.

The type of calligraphy I practice is called “pointed-pen” calligraphy. It is one of the most time-consuming ways of lettering and can be the messiest if you are not careful! This form of writing involves dipping a calligraphy pen numerous times in an ink well in order to form each word. It can be quite difficult to develop an affinity to how to hold your pen and how much pressure to apply. Every person is different and there are hundreds of different pen tips available for that reason.

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Hi, I’m Christine and I’m an invitation designer from .cevd. {custom invitation studio}. First off, I would like to thank Kelly for inviting me to contribute to her blog.  It is so much fun for me to be a part of this series as I kinda live for paper products and I am hoping to show you a bit of what goes on during the design process.

My work is a bit different than some other invitation studios around, so my process is in turn a bit different as well.  I work on a strictly custom basis, which allows for absolute control and creative freedom for the client. I am just there to get their ideas out on to paper. And it typically starts like this:

The number one most important thing to know going into the design process is your budget.  Once you have that figured out, everything will be so much easier. As Becky said in the previous post, there is a significant cost in the set-up of letterpress printing, and this is the same with flat printing and engraving alike, though with flat printing the overall cost isn’t as high. It is good to know this going in so you might be able to weigh your priorities money and design wise. It isn’t a fun conversation to have, but it is always the first one I have with my clients.

After the business side of things has been hashed out, I like to proceed to colors. This is one of my favorite parts as I get to pull out all of my paper samples. I might actually have gone into this business just for the little rectangles of colorful paper; I can’t get enough of them.

After paper comes ink color, and the possibilities are endless. I recently had a client come to me with an old envelope addressed to her grandmother in a dark brown ink that she wanted to use for her invites.  It took us about 10 minutes to decide between about 5 browns that were so close to one and other I kept getting them mixed up. Her invites are currently being printed and I am so excited to see them.

Now comes the absolute most fun part of my job. Sitting down and grinding out all of the details of my clients’ lives. I grill them about everything they do and love, and then i ask them the theme of their event. It always helps to know where they are coming from before I start brainstorming graphic elements. Then, along with the clients, I go through numerous samples and revisions until everything is just right.  During this process my walls are plastered with quick print outs, so I can be absolutely sure of scale and balance.

Finally, the joy of the final approval and the sending off to print. I am typically giddy at this point as I can hardly wait to see everything. It takes about 3-5 weeks for me to get letterpress and engraved invites back, and that timing is cut a bit shorter with flat printing. During this time, I hang the final proofs together so I can keep track of what is out of my office.

After I have looked over every piece of paper that is included in the invite, I package them up and send them out. It is so wonderful to be a part of a complete process and have a gorgeous finished product in my hands in the end.

Good luck with your invitations; it can be one of the most fun parts of the planning process, so enjoy it. I always hear brides say that seeing their actual invitations all of a sudden makes their wedding real. It is the first of a long list of exciting things that take place during the planning of your wedding and you should love them all!

Thanks so much Kelly for allowing me to guest blog on letterpress printing!  I’m Becky from Sugar Plum Invitations and we are so happy to have done printing for Kelly Oshiro Events.

Letterpress printing is a classic form of direct printing that dates back to 1400’s and the Gutenberg press.  It’s very labor intensive, but the end product is unmatched in texture, crispness of the typography, look and feel!  Here’s a little behind the scenes look at this vintage art.

Since these presses are for the most part no longer manufactured, finding one can be tough, especially since they are a bit rarer on the west coast.  Our presses are about 50 and 90 years old, we also have a small tabletop version that is over 100 years old!

All our ink is hand mixed, and we prefer heavyweight 100% rag cotton paper.

Once the press is oiled, and prepped we ink the plate at the top.  You can only run one color at a time, so therefore most letterpress printed work is either 1 or 2 colors.

Once the ink is nicely disbursed we attach the custom plate (we use photopolymer, it is a raised type).  The rollers ink the plate and then the plate is pressed into the paper allowing the depression and transfer of ink (thus “direct printing”).  Each piece of paper is hand fed, and there are countless ways to mess up.  (Let me tell you, we’ve done them all.)

For each color ink you use, you have to clean the whole press and re-set it up to print the next color. It really is a labor of love, but there is something kind of magical when it all comes together and works!

For more information on printing check out Briar Press or Letterpress Print Society.  It’s so exciting to see this art form seeing a revival.

A few tips for brides: Because of the cost of a custom plate, setting up and running the press, higher quantity or single color projects will be less expensive.  If you are a designer, often printers will give you a discount if you are supplying all the artwork.  Our print calendar fills up, so it’s always a good idea to plan ahead for your invitations.  You can letterpress print on envelopes, coasters, postcards, menus, place cards, napkins etc.  If you are concerned about ink colors matching, ask your printer for an ink sample or have them order a specific Pantone numbered ink.  Always ask to see samples of their work.

As Martha Stewart says on her website, “While large printing plants have almost all converted to offset print and computerized typesetting, small print shops using letterpress printing can still be found and can be the source of exquisite stationery.”  Well put.  Thanks so much for allowing me to share Kelly!

Hello there! My name is Megan van den Bergh of Nutmeg Press, and I love to make paper!

For this post I’ll be explaining the Western style of handmade papermaking. There are quite a few different fibers to choose from and they are all very good for different reasons, depending on the purpose your paper will serve (invitations, business cards, etc.). The paper you’ll see me making in the following photos is made of 1/3 hemp and 2/3 cotton (tree-free!). It should be noted that although I chose not to pigment this paper, many colors are possible. Please also note that all the water I use for this process goes through a special filtration system that is pH balanced, making the paper acid-free and archival.

This is a picture of one pound of raw hemp and two pounds of cotton that comes to us in these sheets called linters.

First, I have to cook the hemp in boiling water and rinse it a few times to soften it up.  This process also gets rid of nasty toxins that would make the paper darker and less archival. While the hemp cooks, I let the cotton soak in water.

Once the hemp has cooked and the cotton has soaked, I place each fiber in a Hollander beater by hand.

The beater sends the fiber around in a circle and through a device that looks like a water wheel, chopping and pounding the fiber up into small, tiny bits. This creates a fluffy slurry of material called pulp.

The pulp is drained from the beater and put into a large tub, or vat (if I’m making colored sheets, this is the time where I would add ground up pigments to the mix). Now it’s time to form some sheets!

I use wooden frames covered in mesh to make sheets. The mesh allows water to drain out, while keeping the pulp on top. All it takes is one big dip through the water and you have a sheet!

Next, I wait for the water to drain out the bottom (you’d be surprised how heavy this actually is — this is where you need some serious muscle)….

… and then I place the frame with your sheet attached on top of a soaking wet piece of felt. It’s important to press really hard so the sheet doesn’t have air bubbles or stick to the frame.

Yay! Look at that! A sheet of real, handmade paper. Beautiful, right?

To dry the paper, I first put it in a screw press overnight to let most of the water drip out. The final step is to put each sheet between a series of blotter papers and under the pressure of a hydraulic jack to ensure the paper dries flat.

While the process looks fairly simple, it’s extremely laborious; it takes 5 days to make one batch of paper (about 30 sheets). Handmade paper is truly unique and gorgeous, and absolutely worth all this work, though! Not to mention that it’s totally fun and exciting to make.

I would love to make custom paper for you, so please email me, at megan[at]nutmegpress[dot]com with any questions about sizes, colors, thicknesses, prices — anything, really!

Thanks so much, Kelly!