Invitations

I finally got a half-decent picture of the invitation. I posted the extra invites on Nov. 17, but here's the wedding invitation I made:

And in the invitation envelopes were the hotel cards:

and the RSVP card, which we decided to do as a postcard just to be a bit different:

Here's the back with the info:

I think the butterfly/dragonfly cutouts held the theme together pretty well. The blue card stock I printed the hotel info on tied in the wedding's color, too.

If you'd like help making your wedding invitations, information will soon be up on FramesByDana.com, but you can always email me to see what I can do for you.

Thank you! (Finally!)

I was waiting for inspiration to hit. Then I was waiting to feel better. Now we're not waiting. All but 3 of our thank you notes have been sent. Here's what they look like:

and the inside:

Our Wedding Podcast Network podcast

Take a listen to our podcast. It's got pictures if you choose the enhanced version. Thanks Holli and Robert!

A Thanksgiving tour of devastated New Orleans

We're in New Orleans for Thanksgiving and yesterday took a tour of the devastated 9th District and areas east of town near the levees. I'm like many Americans, I suppose, in that I had largely put the plight of New Orleans residents of out my mind two years after Hurricane Katrina. However, the extent of the damage here snapped me back to reality. Thousands of homes have been destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Even those that did survive are so badly riddled with mold that it's unlikely they can be repaired. Our hosts told us that hundreds of thousands of people have left the area, most never to return. Many of these people are lifetime residents who never conceived of having to flee and put down roots somewhere else.

There are signs of hope. Rebuilding is going on all over the city and some of the wealthier neighborhoods near the breached levees look almost back to normal. The highlight of our visit was stopping by Musicians' Village, a complex of 70 homes being erected by Habitat for Humanity with the help of musicians Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. About 20 homes have been built and residents are moving in.

We ran into drummer Bob French, leader of the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band and a local legend of sorts. We rapped with him for nearly an hour on the porch of his new home in Musicians' Village. He told us about the resilience of the New Orleans musician community and the many local jazz legends who are now his neighbors. He gave us an armload of his CDs and invited us to come hear his band as his guest next time we're in New Orleans. You can bet we will.

Here are a few photos I took on our tour. You can see more on my Flickr album. For background on the story, see this excellent flash video by the Times-Picayune newspaper. Happy Thanksgiving.

The ASPCA scoured the territory, marking homes where live animals were found so the pets could be fed and sheltered.

This boat came to a rest in a tire store parking lot two years ago and hasn't been moved since.

Many people are living in trailers outside their devastated homes.

One family that returned to its shattered home scrawled a message of hope on the door.

The high-water line was still visible on the inside of this shattered home; it was about a foot over my head.

Signs of hope: some of the brightly colored new homes built by Habitat for Humanity.

Extra invitations -- pix and wording

I see a good amount of people searching for wording for the invitations that go along with some "weekend-long" weddings and I wanted to post the images of our invitations, thinking it may help to see what someone else included on theirs.

First up is the Spa Day invite -- for the moms and the bridal party. We went out to lunch before the "treatments," but that was just communicated personally.


Second was the rehearsal dinner. People involved with the wedding (wedding party and helpers) were included, as were their spouses. I addressed the envelopes to the couple, hoping that would get the point across that both were invited. If I did it again, I would have made "significant others welcome!" more explicit on the actual invitation, as there was a bit of confusion the day of.


Third is the bridal brunch, which was held the morning after the wedding (some bridal brunches are the morning of the wedding). I wanted to include everyone who was invited to the rehearsal dinner as well as all out-of-towners (those who were staying at the Sheraton as part of our room block the night of the wedding).


Fourth and last was the gift-opening party, which was held immediately after the bridal brunch and included just immediate family. We invited only those people that we could feel like we could kick out at a certain time because we had a Jimmy Buffett concert to get to that evening.

Our Halloween pumpkins

Paul makes great Jack-o-lanterns. The Red Sox one is free-hand.


P does the carving and I do the painting... We both decided to celebrate the Red Sox World Series championship in our respective pumpkins this Halloween.


In honor of our star pitcher from Japan this year... (He doesn't frown like this, I just needed the red lines for the baseball!)


And what's Halloween without some silly faces on pumpkins? (Not nearly as good as last year's creation complete with earrings and hair and bandanas done by my parents!)


Our house is horribly situated for trick-or-treaters (we got none last year), but we did get four visits last night. Then a wonderful surprise visit from Maggie and Joseph, who dropped off a bag of goodies for us.

Those were some Amazing Butterflies

So, the word is clearly out (an old friend of Paul's contacted him through Facebook today and heard that we had released butterflies at our wedding. Here's Glenn's comment: "I'm still great friends with Rich and he told me about the butterflies at your wedding. I thought, 'that's the coolest wedding thing I've ever heard.' I want to read about the guy who runs that business."

So thanks to Amazing Butterflies for their 9 dozen monarchs, each individually wrapped and specially packed with cooler packs so that the butterflies stayed cool. They arrived the day before our wedding, as they should have, and the release happened just after Paul and I kissed for the first time as a married couple.

Thanks to Amy, our butterfly attendant, who carefully placed a box under each seat so the little critters would be awake and ready to fly when the ceremony ended.

The butterfly release was probably the most talked-about moment of the wedding to us so far. Sam Whitmore even blogged about it right after the wedding. Everyone seemed to just love it. I'm glad I found Amazing Butterflies (about 2 years prior to the wedding, BTW) and they did an amazing job for us.