Skip to main content

Wedding Week: Wedding Books

Image
By
When thinking about ALL the details for the wedding, I added "wedding favors" to the list.  Being the gift-givers that we Kennedys are, I wanted the wedding favors to reflect the interests of Glo and Gordon AND be something that people would actually want to take home with them.  Combining those two interests, I thought of books.  Glo and Gordon's favorite books, our family's favorite books, books that I thought people would like to read.

There were so many great parts to the wedding, but this was a really FUN part of the planning.  Glo and Gordon came up with a list of books that they like, and we went from there.  Of course we initially thought we would only need 40 books, but as the guest list grew, so did the book list.

I started in our own library.  Did we have extra copies of any books?  Sure enough we did (The Help being one of them).  Next, Glo and Gordon went to Pioneer Book in Provo, a most excellent used book store, and found about 20 books there. And while you would think used books would be less expensive than new ones, they aren't really.  Johannah and I finished off the list at our local Barnes and Noble.  And again, John gets the hero award because 50 new books definitely weren't cheap although we used the BOGO offer to the best of our ability.

In the end, the selection was the best of the best in my opinion, and I asked myself the proverbial question, "Why can't I be invited to one of my parties?" because this really was such a beautiful idea.




I also had the idea that we should stamp the books with the event and date.  Glo was all over this idea, designing and ordering her own four-inch stamp which was so tender.







It was funny to see that wedding guests hadn't noticed the stamp, because once they had chosen their books, I would open to the front page, and every single time there was a collective "ahhhh" <3

But even better....

Allison has amazing design and party-planning skills, so I figured she would be the one to come up with a beautiful table at the reception displaying the books for people to choose from.  However, she and Mark came up with the idea for him to make Glo and Gordon a BOOKSHELF.  I seriously never thought Mark would get it made in time, but a week before the wedding, he pulled up in our driveway with a complete bookcase in the back of his car.

The crazy thing? Like Glo, he used his artistic mind and designed the entire thing himself!  When he first brought it in (before Glo was home), we all just oohed and aah over it for a good twenty minutes.  I mean, he poured some serious thought and LOVE into that bookshelf.  Needless to say, Glo and Gordon were floored when he presented it to them two nights before their wedding.


And that's what we used to display the books at the reception.  Because of where it was in the barn, nobody had noticed the sign, telling the guests "Every great love begins with a story. Please take a book as a memory of our day together", but once John made the announcement, people were running to pick a book! And Brother Charles recognized many of the exotic woods Mark used on the bookshelf which, of course, started a whole conversation between the two of them <3

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Like Dominos....

By
It all began with glare.  Simple, obnoxious, I-can't-stand-it-anymore glare. Our 60" rear projection TV in the family room was basically unviewable except after 10 o'clock at night.  The glare from the windows was making it impossible to see anything during my 10 minute lunch break each day, and something had to change. Too, the TV didn't fit in the entertainment center from Germany.  John, wanting bigger and better, hadn't considered that the space is only 40" wide.  For the past five years, I have been nagged by 6" of overhang on both sides of the TV stand. I went to Lowe's to price blinds.  $1,043 for five blinds, and that was at 20% off. I figured a new TV would be cheaper than that.  I was right, even with the state-of-the-art receiver and new HDMI cables that sly salesman told us we needed to have. But where to put the old TV?  It just needed a quiet, dark place to retire. Glo's bedroom.  Her TV was a relic from the paleoneoneand...
3 comments
Read more

The Quest for Birkenstocks

By
One of the main reasons I go to Germany every couple of years is to restock my supply of Birkenstocks.  I started buying them when I lived there, and I basically can't live without them now.  It just about kills me when a pair runs its course and needs to be thrown away.  I think in my lifetime, I've thrown away only three pairs.  One that never was quite right (the straps were plastic and would cut into my skin after a long day), one pair that I wore gardening one too many times (the brown dirt stains wouldn't come out of the white leather), and the pair that I was wearing when I broke my ankle (they were an unfortunate casualty of broken ankle PTSD because those purple and blue paisleys go down as one of my favorite pairs of all time).  I only threw out the garden ones a couple of days before I left for Germany, because I knew I would be getting a new pair. The only store where I have ever bought my Birkenstocks is Hoffmann's in Speicher.  (Well okay, t...
2 comments
Read more

Thinking Beyond Ourselves

By
In our church, most adults hold a “calling”.  What this really means is they have a job, or a specific way to serve within the local congregation.  We believe that this calling is inspired from God—it’s a specific way that he wants us to serve, so that we can either learn and grow ourselves, or so that we can help someone else. I have had more callings in the church than I can count, and with few exceptions, I have loved every one of them.  I have come to love people (adults, teens and kids) who I might never have met.  I have learned much--from how to organize a Christmas music program, to how to make a Sunday School lesson meaningful to apathetic teenagers.  I have served as president of the children’s organization, and I have been the leader of 30 young, single adults. With every calling comes a lot of work.  Of course, the amount of work one puts into a calling is up to an individual.  I choose to put everything into a calling.  I give up ho...
3 comments
Read more