When guests travel a long way to come to your wedding, it means a lot if you’ve put the time and care into greeting them with a little welcome package. Most welcome bags include some information about the wedding festivities, a water bottle and maybe a few generic snacks bought in bulk. But imagine getting a welcome bag that felt like it was thoughtfully assembled with interesting items that are one-of-a-kind and specific to where the wedding is – wouldn’t it be lovely?

For today’s post I’ve put together my idea of a fun welcome bag for a New York wedding. I like the idea of having the edible treats be from small shops and bakeries that are one-of-a-kind to the locale of the wedding along with some other fun or useful things. If you’re on a budget, you could easily pick just one or two items (like your favorite cookie or treat from a local bakery) to welcome your guests along with a printed note about the weekend’s festivities.

1. Yes, it’s super touristy, but if your guests have never been to New York, chances are they’ll secretly get a kick out of receiving this classic t-shirt (plus, you can buy them in bulk on the street for cheap!).
2. Martin’s Pretzels aren’t made in NY, but they are a fun snack that you can always find at the Union Square Greenmarket.
3. A classic New York black-and-white cookie. Get some at William and Greenberg.
4. A postcard that you can fold into a taxicab or other NYC icons.
5. Handmade candies from one of my favorite shops, Papabubble. They sell small bags or jars of hard candies with a New York theme (each candy has a different borough written on it, with a corresponding flavor).
6.  An issue of New York magazine, because they have the best list of events and restaurants for a weekend of exploring.
7. A cheap bag of honey-roasted nuts from a sidewalk vendor.
8. A mix CD of classic New York jazz songs.* (You could also include a printed list of the best jazz clubs in the city).
9. A 3-day MetroCard for the subway with a free subway map.**
10. An assortment of unusual Asian gummies and candies from my favorite Chinatown candy shop, Aji Ichiban.
11. Guests with children? Include a small Statue of Liberty stamp, a small notepad and ink pad.
12. Better looking than a subway map.
13. A gourmet treat – a compost cookie from Chef David Chang’s Milk Bar.
14. An apple straight from the Union Square farmers’ market.
15. Mast Brothers chocolate bar, made in Brooklyn.
16. I love these magnets from the MTA subway shop.
17. A black cotton tote to hold all the goodies.

* Here’s my ideal playlist of New York-themed jazz songs. Purchase the songs, download and burn them onto a CD to include it in your welcome bag.

1. Central Park West – John Coltrane
2. Manhattan – Ella Fitzgerald
3. There’s a Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York – Miles Davis
4. Autumn in New York – Billie Holiday
5. Broadway – Dexter Gordon
6. Lullaby of Birdland – Sarah Vaughan
7. Take the ‘A’ Train – Clifford Brown and Max Roach
8. Harlem Air Shaft – Duke Ellington
9. U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group) – Joe Henderson
10. 52nd Street Theme – Bud Powell
11. Skating in Central Park – Bill Evans

** You can find free subway maps at any MTA subway station. One fun idea is to take some neon stickers and mark the important wedding locations, or your favorite eateries or activities on the map. You could also print your text onto labels and attach them to the map.

Hope my ideas here will inspire you to come up with your own creative welcome bags. Please leave a comment and share your ideas for what would make a fun welcome bag for your city!

xo, Erin

When I got married, I enjoyed giving a lot of thought to what I could give my husband on our wedding day. I wanted it to be something personal, something different, and something handmade. We aren’t very traditional, so a watch, money clip, cufflinks or your standard fancy present wasn’t for him. What I made for him was this screen-printed shirt, and four years later, he’s still wearing it!

The shirt has little bits of handwritten text and some small drawings (places and things that have held a lot of memories and special meaning for us)

If you want to make something similar, what you need is an 8.5×11” sheet of white paper, a black ink pen and a scanner. On the sheet of paper, you can write or draw anything you’d like. Consider the layout of the things you draw and write and think about what part of the shirt you’d want the image printed on. Scan your sheet of paper at a high resolution (at 100%, at 300 dpi) and save it as a JPG file.

Then you need to find a local printer who can either screenprint or transfer your design onto a shirt. Screenprinting will be more expensive for a single shirt since there is a fee to create a screen for each color you print with. Transfers are more affordable and the turnaround is faster, but I think the quality of screenprinting is much nicer if you can afford it and find a printer who is willing to do a single t-shirt print for you. The printer I used was a place in Seattle called B-BAM! (link: www.b-bam.com) (They used to do screenprinting for single shirts, but their website currently says that for short runs, only transfers will be used for the shirts.)

In addition to B-BAM! here are some other custom-printing places that might be in your area:

Hello Fretto, Florida

Fresh Pressed, Los Angeles

The T-Shirt Deli, Chicago

Blue Collar Press, Eudora, KS

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some ideas for sweet, thoughtful gifts you can give to those who are a part of your wedding. I think preparing gifts for bridesmaids, and all those people who are so helpful on your day is a wonderful opportunity to express your appreciation and love. Gifts need not be extravagant and expensive – sometimes it is much nicer to have a small, well-considered gift that is personal and maybe even handmade.

Here is a very simple idea for a bridesmaid gift – a vintage locket with a hidden personal note for your friend folded up inside.

You will need an assortment of vintage gold or brass lockets (one for each bridesmaid, maybe even an assortment of different shaped lockets based on what you think each girl might like). I purchased this vintage bubble locket from etsy.com; you can find all kinds of affordable lockets (I saw many between about $15 to $45). I like how unadorned it looks, and I requested that the seller extend the chain to about 25” for a more attractive length.

You will need patterned decorative paper; one side should be plain white. Use an X-Acto knife or paper cutter to produce straight thin strips. The height of the paper should be less than the diameter of the locket’s interior. The length of the paper will depend on what you write on the backside.

Write a personal note, anything you want, on the back of the paper strip. It can be a meaningful quote, a funny inside joke, an important memory you shared or just simple words about how much you’ve cherished her friendship all these years.

Fold up the paper accordion-style (again, make sure the width of your folds are not more than the diameter of the inside of the locket). Place the folded-up paper inside the locket and close. When your friend opens up her locket, the little note will pop out.

Voila! Hope this inspires you to make something sweet for your best gals.

xo, Erin

I work as an art director at a magazine but on the side I design custom wedding invitations. I specialize in creating one-of-a-kind invitations that are tailored for the couples I work with.

What makes a great custom wedding invitation are the details. Through the format, shape, color, wording and illustrations on an invitation you can convey a lot about yourself and your wedding. I always want to find that one special detail or memorable nugget about a couple or their wedding that could inspire the entire look of their invitations.

The inspiration for this invitation came from an amazing pair of Vivienne Westwood heart-adorned heels that the bride wore on her wedding day. The reception venue was a red velvet room in a restaurant, and that shaped the color palette too.

For this invitation suite, the couple mentioned their love for vintage ephemera and passing secret notes and letters to each other, and that was the inspiration for folding up a small invitation inside the mini envelope.

Sometimes the venue can really inspire the look of the invitation. The outside of this invitation was inspired by the exterior design work on the old chapel where the ceremony was held. The inside featured illustrations of specific vintage chandeliers that hung in their reception space.

Other times, a couple’s story inspires the imagery on an invitation. This couple met as colleagues in a science lab. She baked cupcakes and would bring them to work; he fell in love, and they got married!

More than anything, I love when a couple has put a lot of consideration into the wording and content for their invitation. It makes the act of reading it that much more fun and personal. This couple decided to have a map of Manhattan annotated with their favorite spots. They let guests know that “food, drinks, dancing and ridiculous amounts of joy” would follow the ceremony, and they selected three untraditional, evocative quotes about love and New York for the backside of the invitation.

Hopefully these examples will inspire you to consider what kinds of lovely details you can share with your guests on your wedding invitations.

xo, Erin

Today, our DIY centerpiece comes from the simplest of materials: particle board and peg board. Personally I’ve always loved the graphic pattern of particle board. My grandfather used to outline all of his tools in sharpie marker on the particle board in his garage. I’ve had a crush on this unassuming material ever since.

To create the peg board flower box you’ll need floral tubes, a sheet of peg board, particle board, a box of galvanized roofing nails, and a penchant for power tools (or, in my case, that handy mister again). Cut out 2 pieces of particle board sized 7×11” and two pieces 7×6” (if you ask nicely someone at your local hardware store may just cut these pieces for you). Form the four pieces into a box and hammer the galvanized nails into the seams. You can use as little or as many nails as you’d like. Then take four nails and hammer them horizontally into the about ¼” below the top. This creates the ledge for your peg board top to rest. Next cut a 6×10” piece of peg board for the top.

Let’s beautify this thing. I found the most stunning peonies at the market this morning. Cut your largest bloom leaving about a 4” stem. Insert the stem into one of the peg board holes and then insert the stem into a floral tube. Repeat these steps with as many blooms as you’d like. We used two large blooms and a bud here – but you can fill the box as much as you’d like.

Place the flower filled peg board atop the box and viola you’ve got a stunningly simple and terribly beautiful centerpiece.

Thanks, Kelly, for all your thoughtful floral arrangement ideas! To continue to be fueled with inspiration be sure to check out Kelly’s blog Yes, Please or better yet book her for your next event.