DIY Project #1: Save the Date

The nice thing about planning for a small wedding is that we can afford to do a couple of things D.I.Y. Not only would it be cheap (well sometimes not really since suppliers can leverage on economy of scales), but it's also fun and more personalized. Plus more bonding moments (minsan arguments din) pa for me and Yeng! Cool!

First off our DIY list is the "Save the Date". Though most of our friends already know when and where our wedding will be, we thought that sending out Save the Dates would still be appropriate for a destination wedding like ours.

Thinking back to our theme of sunsets, we played around with the idea of whites, blues and oranges. Yeng was really good in playing around with CS4 and once she discovered how to play around with brushes, designing the save the date just took off! We went through a couple of iterations playing around with the colors, fonts, even having flowers at one point. I had to find a "sun" that was acceptable to Yeng as she initially thought it would look weird. We even managed to come up with a little rhyme that we thought added a little bit of fun to the save the date.

We eventually chose this design.


The black iteration that we did.


Some test prints we did. The black was actually gorgeous too but we just didn't want to complicate our colors. Besides gastos din sa ink. Hehe.

Mood Boards and Sunsets

One of the earliest decision that has to be made in preparing for a wedding is the theme. It helps the couple choose the motif, the design of the dresses, the lay out of the wedding reception, the food, etc etc.

Yeng and I initially thought of having a white beach wedding. White always looks so simple yet beautiful, and its understated elegance is just stunning. But alas, Juday and Ryan beat us to using the theme, and pursuing so would just add to the similarities. Well yung church lang naman ang parehas, but I'd like to keep it that way as much as possible. Oh of course there's one more, Ryan and I are both good looking bespectacled gentlemen. Woot woot.

So Yeng and I decided to look for something else that was at the same time beautiful and simple. Eventually we decided on something that we both liked and thought would be an apt theme for our wedding.

Sunsets are beautiful if one but pauses to appreciate them. Just like how a wedding announces the journey of two people that have decided to navigate life together as one, the sunset is also a short and beautiful event that starts the journey of the moon and the stars through the landscape of night.

I once read this poem by David Harris...

...Just beyond the sunset
Someone waits for me
Just beyond the sunset
Lies my destiny...

...There I'll find the treasure
Of love eternally

On January 8, 2011, the sunset brings me to my destiny.

(Then we can start making those cute little baby stars...)

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As we didn't want to be overwhelmed by bright hues of orange and blue (remember the undertstated part?), we chose a particular sunset that we thought would be nice for a beach wedding. We wanted a theme where elements of white provide a nice clean palette for the strong colors of blue and orange. And where else in the world would you see white, blue and orange mixed seamlessly? Santorini and Mykonos of course!

Over the weekend we tried to cram in one A3 size sheet all the ideas, colors and elements we thought represented what we wanted during our special day. And here is how it turns out:



Now that I'm armed with a mood board, I think I'm a little bit more comfortable facing suppliers and their thousand and one questions. With a mood board, I don't have to talk that much. You know what they say, a picture paints a thousand words and having 24 images in one A3 sheet should say a lot.