summer fever

(this was the best i could find. from the hook)

sorry to be so delinquent on the blogging, i've had a serious case of summer fever the last couple weeks. seem's like the hook was feeling the same way. imagine my delight when i picked up this week's issue, and it turned out to be a guy'd of cville in the summer, aka, what to do in charlottesville over the summer from the male perspective. oh, how i love a good pun. but my favorite part was seeing people i know involved, from friends on the cover and inside to a friend behind the photography of the story, which to me is the fun part of living in a small town.

collections

i happened upon an old vanity fair the other day and read an article about the late, great john hughes. within the article was this picture of a selection of his notebook collection, of which it's thought that he has at least 300, all either full or partially full of notes, sketches and general thoughts on life. i can relate; i have a similar collection. in addition to the notebooks, i looked around and realized that i also collect calendars. at the moment, my tiny little living space boasts four different wall calendars! FOUR! and this doesn't include my trusty planner, which i can't live without. despite my love and affection for the iphone, i just can't commit to the ical. seems too impersonal to me and not nearly as trustworthy as my planner. like hughes' notebooks which we can now look back on as a chronicle of his life, i feel the same way about calendars and planners: they act as storyteller for a certain period of your life. which is something you can't do as easily with the ole ical.

sunny on the inside

it's pretty dreary here in virginia so i've got she & him's volume two on repeat while i work. it's a cheery album that makes me think of sunny california on a day like today.

(image by sam jones via she & him's website)

If so Inklined Calligraphy

i've been working with jen maton of ifsoinklined calligraphy on a recent project, and here's a sample of her handiwork. instead of traditional table numbers, the bride and groom chose song titles for each table representing different stages of their relationship.

congrats jessi and jon! (and god bless america?)

over the weekend, my good friends jessi and jon (or, as we know them, higgy and wags) tied the knot. higgy and wags met and fell in love through a kickball league we all play in. i've been to a few weddingse, and this one was just a ton. of. fun. all of our kickball friends were there, and the event felt like a huge party rather than a huge production. not to mention the weather and the backdrop of the old trail pavilion couldn't have been any more breathtaking. from the time jessi said "yes" to jon's proposal, they really worked to make the day a reflection of them as a couple and incorporated the help of friends and family. they reached out to me to do the invites which was such an honor. and another friend, tom daly, was the photographer for the day. tom really captured the good times of the evening as well as how fun higgy and jessi truly are. here are some shots from both the wedding and the photo booth, which we all had way too much fun in. i also highly checking out tom's website and his work. he just left his full time job to give this a go. that's definitely something i can respect.

ps, that's the groom's mom taking full advantage of the photo booth.

a ceremony shot taken by a friend

the groom, me and kickball commissioner chad day with his wife, tara

the invitation printed by pica press in the couple's colors

keeping your guests in the know

I just finished working with a client whose wedding is in a couple weeks, and we rounded things out with a custom welcome packet. A welcome packet is a good idea if the majority of your guest list doesn't live where you are marrying as it can provide friends and family with a schedule of events for the weekend, directions to those events, as well as miscellaneous local attractions. This packet is amazing, and I would have loved to have been the recipient of something like this. We incorporated the couple's color palette of navy and charcoal with a navy pocketfold and coordinating outer envelope and printing in charcoal. We used the same font here as on the save the dates and invitations creating a sense of consistency, and rounded everything out with a custom wax seal. The pocketfold was then put in a coordinating navy envelope addressed in white ink with a grey return address.

the insides of the welcome packet

(welcome letter, RSVP postcard, schedule of events and directions)

the assembly line

the finished product: stunning.

vacay in LA

there's only one thing that we love more than paper here at good press and that's pop culture and all that goes along with it. we admit it, we're addicted to people and all the other trash magazines, have to watch e! news more than we'd care to admit and wonder what lady gaga actually looks like in person. so, at the urging of a friend offering up a free place to stay, we're packing our bags and heading west for a long weekend before the frenzy that is wedding season officially kicks off. we'll be out of commission until tuesday as celebrity watching is a full-time job. but don't worry, we'll tell the kardashians you say hello.