Love at The Ranch: Reception Signage

A while back, I asked all of you for help with our reception signs. You offered up your best rhymes but nothing clicked until I got home and looked at my stamp collection. I'd bought an adorable stamp from Hobby Lobby with the word "Love" on it, which I used on our out-of-town bags. I decided I'd make the signs cohesive by incorporating the stamp into each sign somehow.

I sent the stamped stationary off to Pretty Pen Jen in Texas and here's what I got back. I used samples of Crane's Lettra letterpress paper for this signage. Yay for free paper!

Photo by Amanda Wilson

Pie Bar Sign:

"Love is sweet

Try as many flavors as you like"

Escort Card Sign:

"For the Love of horses

Find your name

Your tag matches the image at your table"

Birdcage Guest Book Sign:

"Leave well wishes for the Love birds

Drop your postcard in the cage"

Photo Booth Sign:

"Love the camera

Press the button

You have 10 seconds to strike a pose"

And here are a few more pieces Pretty Pen Jen wrote out for us:

How did we get here?

Mr. CB and I road-tripped it to Colorado.

I spent a peaceful morning with my girls.
Followed by a rowdy bachelorette party.
Two days before the wedding, we fought.
Then, we made up.

On Saturday, Mr. CB recuperated while I hiked with friends.

We celebrated our rehearsal dinner.

Sunday Morning: The girls got ready.

And the guys got ready.

Mr. CB and I had our First Look.

Budget Breakdown: Bouquets and Bouts.

Potraits of the bride and groom.

Our wedding party braved the cold for photos.

We all lined up for the ceremony.

The wedding party walked (and performed hand shakes).

Papa CB walked Ms (soon to be Mrs.) CB down the aisle.

Our ceremony began with a song from Grandma Cowboy Boot.

And ended with a kiss.

We hugged and took some family portraits.

Then our guests to to see The Details.

I broke down our centerpiece budget.

Then showed you our photo booth!

After toasts, we fed each other pie.
Pie bar, anyone?

**All images above by the ridiculously talented and awesome Tec Petaja, unless otherwise noted. Head to his blog for some serious eye candy.**

Hello Two-Month Mark.

I'm pleased to meet you, two-month mark. Do you know what you mean? Eight weeks. Literally. That's right, we're eight weeks out and to be honest, I'm feeling pretty good about our to-do list. It's dwindling down to the tiniest of details like finishing up a few DIY projects, making sure the stragglers get taken care of (Mr. CB's ring? Just a tiny detail), and booking our honeymoon.

One of these details might seem like minutia but I can't seem to decide and I need your help. Calligraphy. Oh, it's many swirls and whirls.

You've seen our seating cards. These will either be hanging from a clothesline on gold organza ribbon or tied to a bunch of horseshoes on a table (once I get the courage to open my bucket of used horseshoes). I may end up using the clothesline for fun pictures of Mr. CB and I with our guests throughout the years which is why I'd opt to go the horseshoe route.

Either way, our guests' names have to be scrawled on these escort cards for them to even be useful. And since the etsy seller we're buying the cards from isn't doing it, I've enlisted Pretty Pen Jen to, well, pen these for us.

She has many, many styles of lettering and my favorites are the really script-y ones. Which, of the four below do you prefer? From top to bottom they are: Jenny, Ruth, Mary and Rachel.

This penmanship will be adorning these adorable tags.

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Please give me your vote!

Jenny
Ruth
Mary
Rachel

Escorting the Escort Cards

Now that I've given you the basic idea of our escort cards or place cards (whichever you prefer to call them), I'm still struggling to figure out how to display them. I'm pretty stuck on two options, but please, expand my horizons.

Tied to horseshoes? Believe it or not, a woman in my office donated a bucket of horseshoes to me, knowing I wanted to use them in my decor somehow. She has horses and, unfortunately, this bucket is full of used horseshoes so I'll be doing some hosing off.

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I'm completely ga-ga for all three ways, below (in a wagon with grass, in an antique shade, or strung from a clothesline)...

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Our guests will be snagging their escort cards as they head into the barn from its deck (where our cocktail hour will be). If we wanted to do the clothesline thing, I'm not sure how we would hang it (given there are no trees on the deck).

We do have a pretty adorable, rustic, wagon-like table but do I really want to drive it six hours? It's tempting.

What did you do to display your escort cards? Or what are you planning on? Any ideas for me?

Good Bridesmaid!

A couple of days ago, Bridesmaid AC was skimming through etsy.com while at work (like a good bridesmaid) when she came across something she thought I might like. Boy, was she right! I clicked on the link she sent over and, bingo, there were our escort cards.

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I'd gone back and forth between doing horse breeds as our table names versus the traditional number scheme. I even dreamt of Mr. CB slaving away at drawings of each breed similar to the horse he drew for our save-the-date. Unfortunately, Mr. CB didn't feel the same way and off I went, in search of something to suffice.

Enter etsy seller: seasonaldelights. I contacted her and let her in on my plan. I thought maybe she could make us table cards that matched her adorable gift cards and people could match up the image on their respective tags. We'll most likely have ten tables. She happened to have nine horse images on hand. The tenth? Mr. CB's, which will definitely be our table!

The seller said can replace the string with ribbon and make the matching table cards at any size we want. I'm considering having the escort cards sent to a calligrapher so people's names can be added--I definitely should not write them.

Seasonaldelights has some other gorgeous cards and tags! Check them out these images from her site, below:

Should we do ten tables of horses (that are a little bit similar and might get confusing) or should we intersperse some other farm animals? Would it be weird if we did five horse tables and sprinkled in the others?