Last week I shared Catherine & Mark's lovely beach themed invitations with you. Today, I'm going to share some images from their wedding.


As I mentioned, the lunch reception was hosted at the Marine Room in San Diego and this picture above was the amazing view that was right outside the window next to me. In fact, I took this picture while waiting for my first course to be served. It was a mid-January day, but no one would've known it with the 70 degree weather!


Dark red roses and stargazer lilies added a perfect splash of color to the white tables. Mark & Catherine used pictures from their engagement session in their table numbers and also sprinkled sea shells around.


The food was sooooo good. On the left, a crab cake appetizer. On the right, roasted chicken.


Mark & Catherine had a fake cake--only the top tier was real. For dessert, we were served a delicious and hearty slice of ice cream cake.


Photography blog stalkers, can you guess who the two shooters are in this picture? They're Nate and Jaclyn Kaiser of The Image is Found. The bride and groom hired them to document their lovely wedding day.




The couple did an after shoot on the beach with Orange Turtle Photography. Cindy, the principle shooter for Orange Turtle (wearing red in the pic), was one of the bridesmaids, so she couldn't shoot the wedding and did an after shoot instead. The other shooters in the picture are my friends who were guests of the wedding. They're huge photography geeks and they lug their gear everywhere; I thought this pic was amusing and quite fitting. Mr. Eggplant is the one with the Flip video cam, filming the events.

And lastly, because I love me some wedding eye candy, I wanted to share some of the stunning images from Catherine & Mark's shoot on the beaches of San Diego. I'm swooning over these images. Catherine is gorgeous--she looks like a classic Chinese movie star. The pictures make me drool and wish that I could frolic on the beach in my wedding gown too! Seriously, I'm itching to dress Mr. Eggplant in a tux and drag him into the waves with me.

All the photos below property of Orange Turtle Photography:





   



 







 
 

Last month, Mr. Eggplant was the best man for our friends' wedding in San Diego. Coincidentally, one of my bridesmaids was the maid of honor! The wedding was gorgeous. Our friends hosted a lunch reception at the Marine Room, a restaurant with an AMAZING ocean front view. The beach was literally right outside the window. Unbelievable. And the food… Oh. Mah. Gah. It wedding food I’ve ever tasted.

Hubs gave a hilarious Best Man speech where he made fun of the Cal/Stanford rivalry between the couple (Mark, the groom, graduated from Cal and Catherine, the bride, from Stanford). Hubs got some good chuckles from the crowd–he’s such a ham. He also prepared a slideshow for the couple, which was better than the slideshow he prepared for us! Why? Well, Hubs did something super sweet for the bride and groom: he emailed all of their close friends who couldn’t attend the wedding and asked them to record a short video sending well wishes to the newlyweds. Then Hubs added the footage at the end of the slideshow as a surprise! The couple was definitely surprised. How stinkin’ sweet is that? I’m so proud of Hubs. He thought the idea up all by himself.

I had an opportunity to work on the couple's wedding invitations with the talented Emily of Emma and Bear. I'm totally addicted to Emily's blog where she shares her lovely crafts and posts the most adorable photos of her puppy! Emily did a fantastic job designing the ocean themed cards while I came up with the color scheme, monogram, and invitation suite presentation. Catherine picked out cranberry colored BM dresses for the ladies and wanted to keep an ocean feel to her wedding, so I suggested a color scheme of cranberry and sky blue .

Once the design was finalized, I goccoed and assembled the entire project by hand. Yes, 150 invitations with four cards and one envelope per set. I'm going to pat myself on the back here, because--I won't lie--it was a LOT of work. The project took two full weekends, plus several weeknight evenings. In the end, it was all worth it. I think they turned out rather well! Most importantly, the bride and groom were happy with the finished product.

 
Catherine wanted a cover that would act as a pocket fold, but wouldn't cost as much. I came up with the idea of folding a sheet of thick card stock in half and using a ribbon to secure the cards inside. The metallic paper was only $0.30 per sheet from www.paperandmore.com and I was able to cut two folders per sheet. This option was much cheaper than a pocket fold. The entire invitation suite was less than $2.50 per set, including all the paper, envelopes, Gocco screens, ink, and embellishments. Not bad!

On the cover, I used two different sized square punches to cut out the monogram. The unsightly ribbon ends were hidden beneath the square.

Here's the lovely reception card in all of it's Goccoed glory. Emily carried the whimsical wave motif and starfish on all the cards.

 
And above is the RSVP card.

  
Once the project was finished, I packaged the lovely paper goods in ribbon and sent them off to be shipped!

Next up, I'll share some of the dazzling, gorgeous images from Catherine & Mark's beach themed wedding.