Wedding Blog
Mr. Taffy comes from a very artistic family. He’s a painter and a product designer, and both of his brothers are talented graphic designers. We were thrilled when Mr. T’s older brother (and our best man) offered to design our save the dates and invitations.
But our good luck didn’t stop there!
He also offered to hand-print our save the dates and invitations, using the ever popular Gocco. As an artist and a Weddingbee reader, I know what a huge undertaking this is. I feel like we are getting good karma for all of the sewing that I have lovingly done for my friends’ weddings.
I started gathering inspiration for our save the date cards right away. I didn’t have too much planning going on, but these were three things we had decided on:
1. Our colors were going to be a shade of blue (which shade, I wasn’t quite sure), with black accents.
2. Our cake design- this was the first thing that Mr. T and I saw and fell in love with.
3. I was hoping to find bridesmaid dresses with a black sash or bow around the waist.
I also drew heavy inspiration from this cute (Mr. Taffy thinks it’s creepy) knick-knack that I bought at a thrift store a few years ago. It is a plastic hand in a vertical position that holds up the index finger. Around the index finger is a cute string tied in a bow, and it reads, “don’t forget” in script. You can clip little notes onto the finger.
Here are some other images with the same idea:
We decided that we wanted the string around the finger motif to be the main inspiration for Mr. T’s brother, and thought it was a great way to bring the black sash and dress bow accent into place. 
Now we had one main source of inspiration for our save the dates to give Mr. Taffy’s brother, but we wanted to give him another source, and our cake graphic seemed to be the natural choice.
How we found the inspiration for our cake:
Right after we got engaged, Mr. T and I went to Barnes & Noble to look at wedding magazines. We both saw this cake from InStyle weddings, and immediately fell in love. It is so simple, and the graphic is so fun and cute! We knew that this would be the cake for us, even before we found a venue. I didn’t expect to find a lot of ideas straight out of the magazines, but this cake is a perfect fit for our style and color scheme!
Image scanned from In Style Weddings Spring issue, 2008
I couldn’t believe the resemblance that this cake had to a hand painted ring holder I had five years ago! I guess it was meant to be!
I emailed Mr. T’s brother images of our inspiration. He knew that we were shooting for a blue, black, and white color scheme.
A few weeks later, he sent us some files with his ideas.
We love it!!!
We are so incredibly grateful that he offered to design and print these for us. This summer we took a road trip to Minneapolis to see Mr. T’s brother, and while we were there we did some Taffy wedding stationary research. We took a trip to Paper Source to choose paper, and an art supply store to choose the Gocco ink he would use with the actual prints.
Did you have a hand in designing your save the dates?
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Share this post: Our Save the Dates!
those are super cute! Is he going to gocco white and black ink on blue paper or start with white paper and go from there? We are gocco’ing ours too and I love seeing how other people do theirs!
Adorable! How great! I saw something similar on Martha Stewart just the other day! The string around the womans finger was actually tied onto the card. It was too cute.
You two should go into business.
And, I have to say, I LOVED that cake when I saw it too!
Oh those are SOOOO cute! How original and sweet! I love them. Your future bro-in-law is super talented! Yay
Great design choice! I love how it ties all of your elements together! What impresses me even more, however, is that Ms. T looked at wedding mags with you at B&N! What a guy:)
They are absolutely adorable! We will probably go the standard route with our STDs (I’m in love with a design from minted.com) but may get creative with the invitations if budget allows.
How awesome! It integrates your 3 inspirations perfectly! 
I love it! So creative. And thanks for posting the evolution of an idea.
okay you said you are looking for a blue bridesmaid dress with a black ribbon try this one http://www.morilee.com/DressDetail.aspx?C=10&D=735&P=1
thye have a variety of blue colors and you can also chose to have a black slash with it.
I have that same cake picture saved. For awhile I was hoping to do anemones, but probably won’t now, since I have no black accent…maybe you can narrow in on the color blue by looking through flowers? There aren’t that many blue ones to work with…
Those are super cute. I like the slightly retro feel, too. And what a classy color palette. I think it’s neat that your hair even matches.
Becca and I are enjoying this peek into your planning!
@Heather: Thanks! We picked out cards from paper source in eco white, so he will only be printing the blue & black.
@LeighAnn: An actual string or ribbon would be so cute! Hmm, I haven’t mailed them yet… 
@ErinMarieMack: Yes, Mr. T is super awesome! I think he found the wedding magazines to be very informative. By the end of our visit he had found all the pages on men’s watches.
@Amanda11709: Thanks for the link, those dresses are really cute! I did find a dress recently, and will be posting about it very soon.
@cannotwait: I think the cake would look really nice with other color schemes, especially white on white. If you like the design, maybe you can incorporate your new colors! Thanks for the flower tip, that is very helpful.
@Valerie: Yay, I’m glad you like them! Hopefully they will be in the mail next week.
So adorable! There is another blogger out in blog land that used the string around the finger motif as well. Or was that you? I read so many blogs I can’t remember anymore. What I am trying to say is that it rocks.
I also appreciate that you showed the evolution of the design. Your FBIL did a great job on the STDs. I’m with your FH, that finger knick knack is creepy.
omg! that’s my cake! i’m using that cake design for my wedding in less than 2 weeks. love your stds!
@amanda j.: yay! I hope your wedding & cake are spectacular!
[...] having a specific font in mind. I knew that I wanted something feminine, with a vintage touch. Our Save the Date font, Helvetica, while lovely, just wasn’t going to do it for [...]
[...] Let’s rewind a little and take a look at our wedding cake inspiration: (I gave you a sneak peek with our save the dates!) [...]
[...] in September, I showed you the design file for the awesome save the dates that Mr. Taffy’s brother designed for us. Today I would like to show you the final, printed [...]
[...] our invitations, I’m ready to get into the details. Since our invites were closely related to our save the dates, let’s do a really quick inspiration rewind. Our main inspiration was the string tied around the [...]
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Mrs. Taffy, Ann Arbor
Age and Occupation: 28, Color and Materials Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Automotive Designer
Engagement Date: May 9, 2008
Wedding Date: May 2009
Blogging Since: September 14, 2008
Venue: University of Michigan Union
About Me: I’m a girl who is crazy about Mr. Taffy, sewing, dancing, almost all types of sweets, and our cute pet canaries. I dislike touching fuzzy fabric of any kind, eating somewhat squishy food, and Michigan winters. Mr. Taffy and I are having a blast planning our Ann Arbor wedding, and cannot wait to share our day with friends and family.
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