I had so much fun working with my younger brother and his fiancé on the items for their bicycle-themed wedding. Both Patrick and Melissa are avid athletes, running marathons, triathlons, sprint races, you name it. And they love long bike rides and races, so it was perfectly fitting to have their bicycles throughout their June wedding.
In the beginning of wedding planning, Patrick was very set, he didn't want to use graphics of a tandem bicycle (which are very popular in wedding decor). "We each have our own bikes!" he said. So I created the graphic with two separate bicycles and things took off from there.
Many, many thanks to Jessica Kay Photography for her stunning images. I don't always get professional images of the work I do since not very many photographers take pictures of the printed details unless the bride or groom specifically asks. But Jessica knew I'd want photos to share and she happily obliged. If you're ever in need of a photographer for weddings, newborn, maternity and family photos in northern California, give her a call!
Their save-the-date introduced guests to the vintage, bicycle theme and included images from their travels together:
Their invitation was a blast to come up with and the folks at FolgerGraphics in Hayward, CA were fantastic with helping us print. More than one custom print shop I contacted said they wouldn't be able to print the bicycles on the gatefold card like I mocked up, but FolgerGraphics was happy to do it for me. And they even scored and folded them all!
We used paper bag colored card stock and envelopes from Paper Source.
They opted for a two-sided, postcard rsvp and we had fun with the wording.
Don't freak out, I changed their address!
We also included a map to the wedding venue plus information about parking and their wedding website URL:
I created a custom return address stamp with Hello World Stamps. I've worked with Kelly on a few stamps for a few different clients and she's been fantastic! I highly recommend her shop.
I changed their address here too, no worries!
Escort tags were printed small and clipped to the spokes of a bicycle wheel that Patrick mounted inside a planter. I LOVE how this turned out!
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
Each table was named after favorite bike rides throughout California with the sweetheart table named after a bike ride Melissa and Patrick planned to ride in Italy on their honeymoon.
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
In lieu of a traditional guest book, they did a "thumbprint tree." I created a bare tree (with bicycles too!) and guests were asked to leave their thumbprint on the tree. It really turned out cute!
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
Patrick and Melissa made all of the desserts for their wedding (yes, you read that right, they even made the small cake!). We created signs to identify each dessert plus a bigger sign for the table. Plain white takeout boxes were adorned with a custom sticker to allow guests to take some treats home.
Image by Jessica Kay Photography
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
We created a custom wine label to go with the Zinfandel that our uncle bottled specially for their wedding along with a fun sign that sat at the bar. The label says "cycling happily ever after" at the top.
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
I tried my hand at creating a couple of custom chalkboard signs too. I used the method Mary Ellen used in this tutorial and I created these two signs. The big one served as their wedding program. It was quite a bit less expensive than printing one for each guest.
Old fashioned bicycle bells were the wedding favor. We added a simple sticker and these came out towards the end of the evening. No one wanted to deal with kids ringing these during the ceremony!
This wedding was truly a blast to work on. And I'd like to give some extra special thanks to my husband for his patience as I got the last minute items finished, especially those chalkboards. Oh and I was eight weeks postpartum when this wedding happened, so there's that! We even managed to get a decent family photo!
Images by Jessica Kay Photography
