Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Gocco Napkins

Yesterday evening I decided that I would spend some time Gocco'ing our navy beverage napkins we ordered a few weeks ago. I had a much more pleasant experience with the Gocco and I'm now completely obsessed with it. :) I burned two screens with numerous designs on them to get the most out of each one. I did a one of our monogram, one with our names in script, one with the letter G and another with the chandelier design I fell in love with on the last post. It took around 5 hours to complete all 500 napkins including burning the screens and re-inking 4 designs. The pictures look like dark gray napkins with orange ink but they're really navy with copper and gold ink.








I'll be making 200 more just to make sure we have plenty and these will be by the food stations and handed out at the bar with mixed drinks. I'm also making 100 red ones for the rehearsal dinner and those will say "Rehearsal Dinner" in gold metallic ink. Pictures of those to come later!

I'm so excited about this project because I thought it would take much longer to accomplish and it ended up being very simple, relatively quick project. And no worries; the ink doesn't rub off on your face when you use them. :)

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

More Inspiration

Weddingbee.com is my wedding best friend. There are literally thousands of members, all trying to create a unique and special wedding of their own and all sharing countless inspiration ideas and photos. It was Weddingbee who helped me find Gocco and I am forever grateful as a result. :) I have found so many wonderful inspiration photos and ideas that we will use for our own wedding and so I'm sharing a few here. :)

During cocktail hour, all passed drinks and champagne will feature drink tags that have our monogram and wedding date on it. Also, a champagne flute will be at each place setting with a drink tag that says "Toast to the new Mr. & Mrs.!"



I ordered 5000 navy beverage napkins that I will Gocco our monogram and names on for the reception and bar. I plan on using 4 different "logos" for the napkins using Navy and Gold ink. I haven't decided 100% on the design I'll be doing but here are a few pictures of Gocco'd napkins that I think are beautiful!

These are so pretty and they tie in the chandeliers at the ballroom!


Love the idea of making coasters as well!






Because photograpy is so important to us, we welcome all photos of our wedding! These will go in thank you cards and will be at the reception for guests to take home with them.



We're doing a rose petal sendoff so we'll need petal cones!



There are so many unique and fun ideas for weddings now that the hardest part is simply making a decision on what you want, haha. And so, that is my current dilemma.

Gocco Goodness

After weeks of being afraid to open my new favorite toy, I finally assembled and decided I would start Gocco'ing! What on earth is a Gocco you ask? It is a Japanese screen printing machine that allows you to create a design, burn it to one of their screens, then ink it for printing. After falling in love with Stardream Opal paper at Paper Source, I realized that you can only use a laser printer to print on it since it absorbs inkjet ink too much. Enter the Gocco! I was able to print using a gorgeous metallic gold ink and a navy ink to create a beautiful Save the Date that I'm very excited to send out. I love that the Gocco allows you to create your own design and then burn it to their screens. The possibilities are endless!
Here's a sneak peak after the embossing step:



The envelopes will have guests information the front by hand calligraphy and the return address on the back will be created using a custom address embosser we ordered. I may end up Gocco'ing a design on the envelopes and creating liners for the envelopes as well but I'm not sure yet. I can't decide if I want to use all of my new DIY tricks up front on the Save the Dates or wait unitl the invite. :) You will be wow'd!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Wedding Weekend!

My mom and ma came into town last weekend and we got two big things knocked off the wedding checklist. Yah! My wedding dress is paid for (THANK YOU MOM!!!) so now I just have to pick it up this week. I love love love my wedding dress and I cannot wait to wear it on wedding day! (and doing dishes the week after and to a party the week after that....j/k!) I have been waiting for my wedding day since I was a little girl and I truly feel like a princess in this gown.
After the dress shop, we headed out to Grapevine for our first cake tasting. I had anticpated to shop around a bit for wedding cakes but after meeting Jenny Murdoch with The Jenny Layne Bakery, I knew we had found our baker. She's so vibrant and talented. The cake was delicious and we chose some really great flavors. We'll have extra cake so that will go on our dessert bar for people to take home and enjoy in the days after our reception. More on the dessert bar to come in later posts. The cake will be four tiers, a pearlized ivory color with navy ribbon around each tier. The front will feature 4 small bows where the ribbon meets and a small crystal broach in the middle of each bow. Then, because I love a dramatic detail on anything, the back of the cake will mimic the crystal buttons down the back of my dress by featuring crystals from top to bottom. I think it's a fun detail that will be unexpected!
It was a wonderful weekend with family and wedding details! I am so looking forward to wedding day! 8 months to go!!!