I am so excited to share all the details of our wedding. Committing our lives to each other in front of our families, friends, and God was the most amazing feeling. People keep asking if I "feel different" and the answer is yes. You can feel a tangible bond that is just different. It feels like....forever. We made it our mission to make every single detail of our engagement, planning, rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, and entire wedding weekend personal and intentional. I wanted everything to represent something or someone that was special to us and part of our love story.
The first thing I want to share is the meaning behind our save the dates. I knew I wanted something custom. Minted, Wedding Paper Divas, Etsy, etc all have lovely choices, but I am not a template kind of bride. Again, I wanted something with specific meaning. Let me back up a little here....
Mike and I met because he was visiting NYC for a Dead + Company concert and randomly won tickets to their show at Madison Square Garden through Amex. He was living in Indiana and I was living in NYC. We are both avid concert goers and music lovers that share a long love affair with the music of The Grateful Dead. We were absolutely born in the wrong era! Music is how we connected and was our first common thread. This is another reason we LOVE Nashville. People often think Nashville is only country music, but that is so incorrect. It is where a lot of the most talented song writers in the world live and where all types of sounds are born. It is also full of history, fashion, and good eats. It's about halfway between Indiana ( Mike's home) and Georgia ( my home). We wanted a location that both of our families could easily access and that would be a fun destination for our friends that live all over the US. We have spent a lot of time there separately and together and it is just a really special city to us for many reasons. Once we decided on Nashville I knew it was time to start creating the save the date. After chatting with Mike and my friend Heidi of Haven Paperie it hit us - a vintage concert poster! We have collected so many over the years and I knew it would scream f-u-n! I also knew I wanted our invitation suite to be more on the traditional side so I really wanted the save the date to be a bit more playful. Hatch Show Print was immediately our inspiration. They have long been one of my absolute favorite brands/collections. Not familiar? A bit about Hatch in their words:
"It started, naturally enough, with the Hatch family in 1879. From their very first print job—a handbill announcing the appearance of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe)—the Hatch brothers got the look right. Here was the simplicity, the effortless balance between type size and style, typeset full-justification—left to right and top to bottom. Here, too, was Southern culture and entertainment, and the beginnings of American history.The golden age of Hatch Show Print was from the mid-1920s through the 1950s. During this time Hatch Show Print captured the magic of country music. William Hatch turned his talent as a master woodblock carver to "chiseling and gouging" (as someone once put it) some of the most indelible images of country music performers ever created. To further secure the historic link, the shop's home from 1925 to 1992 was directly behind the Ryman Auditorium, where in addition to creating posters for country artists, the shop captured the glory of the great African-American jazz and blues entertainers of the day, with posters for artists such as Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong."
Hatch Print is still creating posters for The Ryman today and now operates out of the Country Music Hall of Fame. You can stop in their workshop and see all of the letterpress machines at work. If you love print + design like I do then it is a MUST SEE.
It felt so special to think of all the amazing concerts they created art for over past decades and I love that they keep not only print alive, but the art of letterpress. This concept combined our love of the south, design, and music all in one. Heidi put her own creative spin on it and our perfect save the date was born! I had the idea to add a ticket stub as our little info card and they also turned out super cute. We used a Hatch Show Print coffee table book as our guest book to tie it all together. Our guests wrote sweet messages alongside the art + music that has filled Nashville through the years and I just love everything about it!
I am so grateful I had such a dear friend create it for us. Heidi does not typically do custom work, but very generously did this as a gift for us. Heidi designs creative greeting cards that say the things we all want to say and in the prettiest of ways. She even has a monthly subscription box that makes the most amazing gift or #treatyoself swag! I would love for you to stop by a take a look at her work here and here.
Our colors were deep forest greens, light grey, white, touches of navy, and brass details. I knew I wanted to be able to look back at our wedding years down the road and still love every color and detail. These colors feel timeless and southern and inspired by the magnolia. It turns out the perfect grey envelopes with a euro flap ( always, always go with a euro flap - it takes the sophistication up a notch!) are hard to find, but I finally found them here. I snagged the vine stamps off Zazzle and hand-lettered the envelopes myself with green ink. I searched for weeks for the perfect return address stamp. I wanted a real stamp, not self-inking. I like original things - records, books, newspapers, magazine. My mom always says your save the date/invitation is the first glimpse into your event and I wanted our guests to know how much time and love we put into every single detail. And let me tell ya - I printed, cut, addressed, stamped, and sealed every single one with my own two hands. All 224! Read my blog post about Of Note, the gals that made our vintage postal style return address stamp here. I adore their mission + their products. They even sent us a handwritten thank you note with purchase and 6 months later - a handwritten Christmas card!
