Partners in Crime

Selecting bridesmaids and groomsmen wasn't as easy as we thought it'd be. I am very close to my family and have many cousins as well as a ton of friends I would consider for bridesmaids. Mr. C has a huge crew of high school and college friends that he's very close to as well. I have two younger brothers and Mr. C has a younger sister. We decided not to include siblings in the wedding party because:

1. They're already in the wedding and participating in a huge way just because they're family
2. It's a lot of pressure. One of my brothers and Mr. C's sister is the same age and they both just graduated college and started their first year of work. It's too much for them right now.
3. I don't think Mr. C wants my bros at his bachelor party. JK! He said that they are welcome to attend and would even encourage it. We'll see...

Since i couldn't decide among my friends and two cousins, I picked all six of them! Here's the lineup

1. Maid of Honor & Best Friend from NYC (codename: MOH)
   
2. Best Friend from high school (codename: BM SF)
   
3. Best Friend from Boston (codename: BM BOS)
   
4. Best Friend from college (codename: BM LA)
   
5. Cousin 1: we've been buddies since we were born. We're only three months apart, but have lived on opposite coasts most of our lives (codename: BM Cuz)
   
6. Cousin 2: we've known of each other for years, but didn't connect until i moved out to Seattle/Olympia, WA for six months last winter. Ever since, we were inseparable, spending every weekend hanging out with each other. (codename: BM SEA)
   

Mr. C originally chose four, but didn't want an uneven number of groomsmen to bridesmaids so he shuffled his around and picked two more. Mr. C is so accommodating. I am very lucky. :)

I wanted a creative way to invite the girls and guys to be a part of our special day. I wanted to do a puzzle of some kind, where they had to figure out the message so I started googling and researching photo puzzle sites. Some were too large and some were just darn expensive. I finally found puzzlematic and created an image to place on 4.5 x 6.25" - 24 piece magnetic puzzle. i didn't want to overwhelm or piss anyone off with a 100 piece puzzle. I thought a collage of things common to both of us and photos would be fun. I started by picking a few of my favorite pictures and scaling them down in Photoshop. Then i found images that related to our relationship and us, such as Boston, New york, and our alma mater, Boston University. i played around with the layout a bit and the final image was this:

They arrived in about 10 days. Since Mr. C and i were on opposite coasts, Mr. C got the puzzles. I went to the Paper Source and the Container Store and purchased little note cards and outer bubble envelopes and addressed them for Mr. C. I wrote out my cards and made labels for Mr C's cards and sent the whole thing off to him in bBoston so he could package them up and mail them out after writing his notes. I didn't get a chance to photograph the notes or final package before we sent them out (I hadn't started blogging yet) but here is what the final puzzle looked like:

the puzzle arrived shrinked-wrapped in craft paper box


puzzle pieces

voila!

I used stardream red envelopes and craft paper brown for the note cards

Our wedding party loved them! I got a ton of emails and text messages about how special everyone felt and how even more excited they were about the wedding. BM LA remarked, "Oh... it's going to be one of those weddings..." Heck yeah! Doing this project rekindled my love for graphic design and craft projects and got me even more excited for more wedding projects.