custom wedding invitation design

Part of the reason I started writing on my blog again is because I have been designing some wedding invitation suites for a few people, including my own. I have a lot of fun doing it, so I decided to open myself up to some freelance work.

I enjoy creating customized wedding stationary. Here are some examples of suites I have created. If you are interested in a custom designed invitation suite or other stationary, please let me know! The beauty of this is that I can create whatever you want and you print on your own. This can be a huge cost savings versus ordering a suite online.

Some items in the suite include save the date, invite & rsvp card, details card, belly bands, direction cards, rehearsal dinner invite, thank you card, programs, table numbers, etc.

wedding planning- mood board

I wanted to share my mood/inspiration board for our wedding. We really went with the simple, classic style of our venue. I think the simpler, the better. I am also DIYing a lot, so I had to choose details that would be achievable for me on my own. For example, I plan to do my own flowers so I researched what would be inexpensive and available at that time. Of course, I love the look of hydrangeas too!

I LOVE the mint/peach wedding trend, and D loves it too so we decided it would compliment our venue well. We also want to add a touch of kraft paper. For flowers, I chose white hydrangeas and babys breath because they are simple and beautiful. I may also add in some peach roses. I love the gold chalkboard frames, so we will be making a couple of those for the program and seating chart. The bridesmaid dresses will be mint and so will my shoes :) We will probably do mint ties for the guys, but a lot more of those details have been flushed out since I first created this board.

Riedel Farm Estate

I'd like to go in to a little more detail about our venue, Riedel Farm Estate since it's been a bit difficult for me to find details and tips from other brides online. It seems like it's frequently booked for weddings, so I'm surprised more information and pictures of other weddings are posting online.

The Riedel Farm Estate is along the Mississippi river in Fridley, Minnesota and is owned and operated by the Anoka County parks system. Its only about 10 minutes from our apartment and we live in Northeast Minneapolis. We toured the venue and really loved how simple it was. And within our budget for $85 an hour. However, I think it would be so much better if they charged a flat daily rate! At this point, I feel like we are being nickel and dimed. $85 an hour has turned into over $1300 for the day. This includes the rental time (which we chose to rent for 12 hours- hopefully enough time for set up and take down), the park ranger fee, special use permit, beer & wine permit, and tent permit if we so chose to have a tent. They just keep adding things! Not to mention we had to purchase special event insurance with liquor liability. This was required if we chose to have alcohol at our wedding. Knowing D's and my family, there's no way we were having a dry wedding. They only allow beer & wine, and they make you jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. I put D in charge of the insurance, and it was easy for him to get it. $150 for the day including liquor liability. When I sent this to our venue, they said it was't worded correctly. It took us going back a few times through email, and the insurance company contacting our venue to finally appease them. It's a beautiful venue, but if I had to do it over again I might consider looking at other options.

So because we have so many people coming from out of town, we really have no idea how many will be able to make it. This is totally fine with us, we understand it's a lot to ask people to travel from Ohio to Minnesota. But considering our venue only holds 60 people inside, we have to have a plan B if more than 60 people plan to attend our wedding. Our plan was to have the reception set up on the grounds behind the venue. I have seen other people online do this and have a tented reception. I have always wanted to have a tented outdoor reception, but it's a lot of work and hassle to rent, set up and take down and not to mention it isn't cheap. I realized that we don't need a tent, as long as it doesn't rain. I am praying for beautiful weather on our wedding day!

We will have the ceremony in the lovely gazebo that is on the grounds, and the reception on the grounds outside. We will probably have the food and dessert table set up inside the venue. I hope it all comes together as lovely as it is in my head!

I hope this info is helpful for any future brides looking into the venue for your future wedding!

Here are a few pictures of the venue:

Gazebo where we will hold our ceremony

View of the grounds from the deck

View of the grounds from the gazebo

View of the back of the house

target spring collection

I am so excited to share this! My work has recently been featured on Target's style blog A Bullseye View with a behind the scenes look at some Target designers- including me!

I designed on a collection of ceramic canisters, bowls and kitchen accessories for the spring.

You can view the collection here:

http://www.target.com/p/threshold-paint-dipped-ceramic-food-storage-collection/-/A-15009146

http://www.target.com/p/threshold-ceramic-serveware-and-storage-cannister-collection/-/A-15005493


Here's the link to the blog post:

http://www.abullseyeview.com/2014/02/designer-showcase-5-target-home-designers-share-their-creations/

ah, the joys of being engaged

So before I get into the details and fun stuff about our wedding, I will say it was not an easy road to get to where we are now.

D popped the big question on New Year's day 2013. It caught me so off guard and it was a wonderful surprise! We had previously talked about getting married throughout our relationship so we were ready. What I was not ready for was all that followed. We knew that we would be paying for the wedding ourselves, so the budget was a big concern for us. We had just moved to Minneapolis the July before, so we were stuck trying to decide where to have the wedding. Minneapolis or Ohio? This seemed like an easy decision for us. Most of our family was in Ohio, so we would do it there. We started looking in the Cincinnati area since that is where we met (in college) and it was sort of a middle point for our families.

It was so tough to find a decent venue for around $1000 or less. We set our budget at about $10,000 so we knew we couldn't spend much more on the venue itself. This was going to be a DIY wedding all the way. I really liked the barn wedding trend at the time, and we finally found a nice renovated barn venue that was in our budget. The Muhlhauser barn is in West Chester Ohio, about 30 minutes outside of Cincinnati. We went home to visit D's family the following spring and toured it before sending in our deposit. It was great! Really nice and simple. We could bring in our own caterer and they had everything we needed- tables, chairs and a pretty gazebo by a pond for us to have our ceremony. The most difficult part was done. We set our date for September 2014 because my older sister was also engaged and planned to get married June 2014, so I didn't want to have mine before hers.

Picture of Muhlhauser Barn:

The logistics of wedding planning stressed me out. How will we get all the decorations there? We will have to drive them (14 hour drive). Where are we going to keep them? D's parents live about 2 hours away from our venue. What are we going to do with our 2 cats? Bring them with us? We need to find a photographer in the area. We will have to go back to Ohio and meet with our vendors and have our engagement pictures taken. These issues kept popping up, and kept me up at night.

On a bike ride during that summer, D and I were thinking "what if we just had a really small wedding? Just close family and friends? What if we did a backyard wedding here? What if we bought a house and had a backyard wedding?!" The idea delighted us. Soon we were on Zillow looking at houses that had pretty backyards for us to have our wedding. I asked D "does it seem backwards that we are looking for a house to have our wedding at?" Yes, it was. We knew that we both liked the idea of having a wedding here in MN with our close family and friends.

Luckily, we could get our deposit back from the Muhlhauser barn if we cancelled within 3 months or so of our wedding date. We began looking at venues in the area that were within our budget. On another bike ride (biking is big here in Minneapolis) we passed by a big beautiful white house near the Mississippi river. It looked like someone was holding an event there. I went home and quickly looked it up online. That is how we found the Riedel Farm Estate. And at $85 an hour rental rate, it was a dream come true.

Riedel farm Estate:

We decided that we were going to do it, let's have the wedding here! It may be more inconvenient for our family, but it would be so much easier for us. And if they really wanted to come, they would. Plus, Minneapolis in the summer is a great place to vacation! Not everyone was happy about our decision, but ultimately most people told us it was our wedding, so we should do what we want. And although that has been a very difficult part about planning our wedding, that is what we strive to do- what WE want.

Things got much more fun from there :)

website design & rebranding

I wanted to share a project I did for a non-profit organization called Center for Girls' Leadership. They needed to update their logo and website to appeal more to high school age girls. I began by asking what they wanted their brand to represent. We decided on a clean navy and teal look to reflect the fresh, strong perspective of these talented young women. Take a look at the before and after and visit their website:
http://www.cglmn.org

Before:

After:

blog refresh

I decided today that I should refresh my blog. I have had this blog since my 2nd year of college, but I decided to go through and hide all of my old posts. It's amazing how much your tastes can change over the course of a few years & life experiences. I have decided I want this blog to be a personal one, lifestyle, wedding, design, and whatever else I feel like writing about. My wedding is pretty much consuming 95% of my brain right now, so I will be writing a lot about that. It's good to get it out.

It has been a long time since I have updated this blog, and a lot has happened! I graduated from college with a degree in industrial design, got a job at Target headquarters and moved to Minneapolis! I also got a new cat, Charlie and got engaged to the love of my life!

I've been working on a ton of products for Target, and I'd love to post some of them here once they hit stores.

I have also been super busy working on details from my wedding. There's so much involved in a wedding, especially when you are working within a tight budget. I am planning to DIY a lot of my wedding, so I will be sure to include some of those posts here.

Because of my own wedding projects, I have been working on some graphic design for a few of my friend's weddings. It's been a lot of fun! I hope to make it my little side project :)


I will update as soon as I can on some wedding details!