We’re back, we were taking a small break from the blog to catch up on some orders that have been mounting but I’m glad to say we’re back, and will be full force again. We have a new monthly special for May and all sorts of goodies to share. See you tomorrow.
Only one week left! April 22, 2008
April is almost over, so for any last minute invite order we just wanted to remind you of our April special.
Free envelope design or free envelope liners, plus 10% off all orders.
No minimum orders or trickery. It will automatically be deducted from your invoice. Happy shopping!
Aisle Runners 101 (the outdoor edition) April 19, 2008
Outdoor weddings don’t mean you have to forgo an aisle runner. There are a multitude of options to help hold that sucker down, and you do need to hold it down. Even the lightest breeze can send your custom aisle runner soaring like a sailboat’s sail.
Here are the basics:
Select a length that works for your venue. You need to go and measure. Trust me when I say you don’t want 100 foot runner if you only have a 75 foot aisle. And vice versa, 75 foot runner on a 100 foot aisle would probably not be noticeable, but it’s still a good idea to measure first.
White or ivory? I would always recommend white, regardless of your dress color. Ivory can look dingy.
Custom painted? I had a custom painted runner and it was fabulous. However, my coordinator and/or venue decided I didn’t want to keep it and tossed it. It was quite sad, as it was truly the only wedding item I planned to save. That’s the way the cookie crumbles I guess. I digress…
Having a custom piece made for your wedding is a great touch if you can afford the extra fee. If you need suggestions, please post a comment and I’ll email you some sources for custom runners.
What about the wind? There is a fabulous duct tape that is two sided, and comes in white. I would recommend you line each side of your runner with this tape, or something similar to avoid having the fabric get blown in the breeze. You can get this tape anywhere (your florist may have something better or similar as well). One source is: White Duct Tape
Happy Aisle-ing!
Invitation Wording 101 April 15, 2008
There are a few basics when it comes to invitation wording. The best place to start is: who is hosting your event, and is it in a church or an alternate location.
Hosting:
One set of parents are hosting, and it’s the bride’s parents: Easy enough, they are listed at the top and traditionally, the last name of the bride is left off. There are some cases where it would need to be listed, but this is the 101 version of wording:
Mr. and Mrs. John A. Smith
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Jane Ann
to
Chris John Doe
Both sets of parents hosting? The bride’s parents would be listed first, followed by the groom’s, and the groom’s last name would still be listed. You would also change “daughter” to “children”:
Mr. and Mrs. John A. Smith
Mr. and Mrs. Jack A. Doe
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their children
Jane Ann
to
Chris John Doe
The couple is hosting:There are a zillion options. Just make sure you use “Together with their families” or “together with their parents” in the mix somewhere. I don’t personally like to do:
The honor of your presence
is requested at the marriage of
Jane Ann Smith
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Smith
and
Mr. Chris John Doe
son of Mr. and Mrs. Jack A. Doe
I don’t think the names of the bride/groom should be seperated by parents. I prefer:
Together with their families
The honor of your presence
is requested at the marriage of
Jane Ann Smith
and or to
Mr. Chris John Doe
Church or not?
Your ceremony will/will not be within a church, or other religious venue?
“Pleasure of your company” should be used for any ceremony that is not within the walls of a truly religious building. “Honor of your presence” should only be used for ceremonies that are within a church, synagogue, temple, mosque, house of worship etc.
If you are having a full Catholic mass, but it’s outside at a 5-star resort, you should techincally still use “pleasure of your company”.
Now of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and every single event will have different circumstances. These are just basic guidelines to get your started. Now, there are no invitation police, no one will hunt you down if you don’t follow traditional wording rules I promise.
It can’t be done, can it? April 4, 2008
Colors are everywhere this year. I feel like it’s half of what we post about. We recently got a request for a 5-color letterpress invitation. While almost unheard of (and typically extremely expensive) we got to to work and came up with a more reasonable alternative using some swatches, some photoshop, a little magic and a lot of help from printer friends .
Moroccan Tile – full color
We opted for full color offset printing, followed by black letterpress for the text and crosshair type bars around each tiles. We were a little unsure of how the two would work together, but the bride was completely excited, so we want ahead. The result is an almost stained glass effect! It’s truly stunning. Each colored tile looks like a little piece of glass, surrounded by the recessed areas around the tiles, it truly make each color pop off the paper.
Names/Locations/Even fonts have been changed to protect the innocent.
Candy Buffet 101 : Part Deux April 4, 2008
Ok, my fault. I’ve already gotten two emails about where to get scoops. I can’t remember exactly where I got mine, but I did some google hunting and found these from Acemart.com:
you can click the picture to visit their site. They are $1.98 for the 5 oz size. I mentioned earlier that we got 4oz scoops, I think they were indeed 5oz. Another great google search is for “Restaurant supply” stores. That is where I ordered my scoops, I believe they were like $1.49 plus shipping. But even at $1.98 from AceMart, it’s much cheaper that Bed Bath and Beyond, Target or other retail stores.
One more Martha April 4, 2008
Last one I promise, I think this is my favorite of all the new Martha Stewart meets 1800flowers. I simply LOVE tulips, and these purple and white parrot tulips are gorgeous. It’s funny that they call them “white” when they clearly are green/white beauties instead.
Two titans merge April 4, 2008
Many of you have probably heard about the grand merge between 1-800-Flowers and Ms. Martha Steawart. Well it turns out that they are actually gorgeous, and relatively well priced arrangements. And pssssst, I happen to know that if you use code MarthaShow you’ll get 10% off until the end of April I think. I will add, my biggest complaint about 1-800-flowers or FTD is that it seems like whenever I order something, I get a cheap clear vase instead of the cool one that is shown in the picture (and half of the reason why I made that selection…grrr). So hopefully Martha won’t allow that to happen. Check out some of these beauties.
Weddings 101 April 4, 2008
We’ve started a new category here on Farfalla Wedding, it’s the Wedding 101 category. We want to cover the basics of wedding basics. Farfalla is full of researchers and we are all self-proclaimed google experts. If it exists, we can find it (we’ve been tested). So we’ll pick different topics and lay out what we believe to be a mini guide to flowers, music, favors etc. Hopefully it will be helpful or remind you of something you’ve overlooked. Stay tuned for more entries to the Wedding 101.
Bamboo Favors April 4, 2008
Wedding favors don’t have to be edible, although they seem to be the most popular, and I would highly recommend them. That being said, there are great alternative to calorie heavy cookies and candy (yes, I know I just posted about Candy Buffets).
What about bamboo, Eastern Leaf has adorable and relatively inexpensive bamboo favors that would be really sweet for some wedding. There are endless options, from the # os stalks, color or lack or rocks/marbles, personalized messages. I give them two thumbs up if you’re in a bamboo favor mood.
All of these can be found online at: Eastern Leaf
Candy Buffet 101 April 4, 2008
This is definitely not a new trend by any means, in fact, I had one at my own wedding. But it seems like people always have a hard time finding the actual containers and advice on how to make it happen. So I thought I’d help.
A great example of a Candy Buffet/Bar
First things first
How many guests are we talking about?
Let’s say an even 100 guests.
How much candy will you need:
Most people say 1/4-1/2 pound PER GUEST. People get greedy when it’s a candy free for all!
So we’re looking at 40-50 pounds of candy to be safe. Yes, I’m serious.
Second
How many type of candy should you buy?
This is really up to you, but I would say somewhere between 8-12 types. Too many varieties and you won’t have enough of anything. Too few varieties, and you’ll likely run out of the “top choices”.
What type of candy should you buy?
Again, this is completely up to you. But to provide some tips: Get candy that is individually wrapped, or has a hard coating (like M&Ms). Gummi items can get
hard if they sit out too long, licorice is too sticky for guests to pull on all night. The most successful candies will be wrapped or hard.
Lastly
Sounds expensive?
Candy Buffets are! I think people don’t take into consideration that it’s going to be a huge expensive before they decide to do one. We had 70 guests, and 10 types of candy. That meant 10 containers, and enough candy to fill them all. Honestly, I don’t know what the weight of all our confections were, but it was alot.
Where do you buy the containers?
There are a ton of great stores, you will need to put on your best shopping shoes because it will take awhile to find everything. I would suggest the following stores as great places to start:
-
Home Goods
-
Hobby Lobby
-
TJ Maxx
-
Old Time Pottery
- Marshalls
Where do you buy the scoops?
Online is the single best place to find them. I got mine for under $2/each. We opted for the 4 ounce size as it was large enough to scoop with, but wasn’t too big that people who decided to take a full scoop would wipe out our buffet. UPDATE: I included a link to a supply store for the scoops in the Candy Buffet #2 post, go to our Weddings 101 category on the right and it should pop up in there.
Good luck, it’s definitely a task to get it accomplished. I don’t know how many times I had everything laid out on our kitchen table, or how many extra trips to target I had to make because we didn’t have enough Hershey’s Kisses. But the end result was much appreciated by our guests.
Unique color combos April 3, 2008
Be adventurous! There are no rules when it comes to your wedding colors, and choosing wedding colors. If you like purple and your spouse-to-be loves orange… do it. I promise that not one single guest will balk at your selections. Be wild, be a little crazy…. there can only be so many weddings in the world that are aqua, peach, blush or other pastel.
or 
Botanical in Lavendar Botanical in Lavendar and Tangerine
Your invitations are a great way to incorporate all your colors into one medium. Test colors, play with them, see how they look together. You just might find that you like orange and fuchsia together.
Botanical in Fuchsia and Tangerine
Raspberry and Lemon April 3, 2008
The color of the season seems to be raspberry! We’ve been printing and designing nearly 50% of our current orders in the not quite pink, not quite blush, not quite purple color. Maybe we should call is raspberry sherbet instead. Here is a mini inspiration board from The Knot.
another popular color lately has been yellow, all shades of it. From sunshine and mustard yellows to a soft almost creamy shade with just a hint of yellow.
April’s Monthly Special April 1, 2008
We were a little undecided on what to do for our new monthly special. So after some deliberating last week, we decided to dedicate April to:
Free envelope design or free envelope liners, plus 10% off all orders.
Envelope designs are a fun way to include graphics on our outer and/or RSVP envelopes. Here is an example:
Envelope liners are a great way to add a punch of color, and a super way to save $$. You can print your pieces in a single color, and use the liner to tie in another color for your event. Here is an example where we custom printed the graphic and then lined the inner envelopes for an invitation ensemble.
