October is wedding month! At least, in our house it is. So many of our closest friends and family celebrate their marriage this month, it feels like we’ve always got a reason to party, never mind Thanksgiving and Halloween too!
For my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, their October 2009 wedding at Balzac’s Café in Toronto’s historic Distillery district was one of the most fun weddings I’ve ever been to. Also, the smallest! Melanie and Matthew are such a great couple – laid-back, unpretentious, funny, and just so easy to hang out with. So was their wedding!
I often say that it’s the bride and groom that set the tone for their wedding day, but sometimes, the location makes a big difference too. In this case, Balzac’s was the perfect reception venue for them. With only a smattering of café tables, a huge bar to hang out at all night, speeches said on the stairwell, and a karaoke machine providing the entertainment, it was one of the most unpretentious and intimate weddings I’ve ever attended. For their invitations, Melanie and Matthew wanted something really simple and casual – nothing too fancy, just a little quirky.
Melanie had seen an invitation online with “We do” as the dominant theme (appropriate, ya think?), so we modified it to suit them and had fun creating additional components to go with it. Since they were having only a small, intimate reception, not everyone could be invited to the party, which meant separate cards for the ceremony and reception were necessary. This gave them the flexibility to invite certain guests to the ceremony – we do. – and gave us a creative opportunity for a reception card as well – and after…
Curry yellow and charcoal grey is definitely an unusual colour combination for a wedding, but was bang-on appropriate for this urban couple – sophisticated, sharp, and modern. Coincidentally (or maybe not?) yellow was also the colour of their transportation for the day – yep, a big yellow school bus transported the wedding party and more than half their guests across town from church to reception! I wasn’t kidding when I said they are a fun couple.
For RSVP cards, Do you? was the question of the day, and we did two versions: one for their tech-savvy guests to email/phone in their RSVP, the other for the rest of us who prefer Snail Mail. Guests got one or the other in their package, all kept neat and tidy with a simple round paper clip.
A fun project, for an amazing couple. Happy Octobersary!
Tanya Mykytiuk 