Monday, March 1, 2010

Bridal card boxes

So, I am getting married soon and have been bombarded with lots of wedding stuff. Centerpieces, favors, chair-covers, etc. I don't know about anyone else, but being proposed to didn't suddenly give me a love for crystals, white on white, and lace, which if you don't know is called "elegant". I like all those things in small doses, but I'm sick of them. For example, the Bridal card box. I am not trying to criticize or make fun of others design or taste, but I'm bored by stuff like this:



It's fine, it isn't bad, just kind of boring. Aren't weddings supposed to be big celebrations of love and life? I don't know why everything about weddings has to be so white, stark, and usually the same as everything else. There is nothing wrong with traditional, but the tradition of white for weddings, including the dress, really blew up after Victoria married Albert in a white gown in 1840, only 170 years ago, not that long. Before then the bride dressed in any color but black, really just whatever was her nicest dress (which usually wasn't white because if you only have one nice dress you don't want it to get dirty). Marriage has existed at least since Mesopotamia, within thousands of different traditions all of them rich in culture and beauty and meaning. It seems strange that we as Americans have made our own traditions based on the wedding of a foreign queen who wasn't exactly known for being the pinnacle of beauty.

That all being said, I am wearing a white wedding dress, purple shoes and veil though! The white wedding dress has endured as an American tradition. I just hope that we can break the tradition of generic weddings, and a wedding industry that promotes them. Your wedding should be a personal expression of you, the combination of both you and your future husband or wife's aesthetic sense and personal traditions or whatever just defines you! That's what I want for my wedding, thankfully I could do something about making my own card box at least (see below), and I hope that other people will want a more personal, fun, accessory for their wedding too! The amazing works of art that have become wedding cakes in the past few years are so beautiful and individual, it would be nice to see other parts of the wedding industry follow suit, start some new traditions!



Cats like them too:



It's hard to photograph your work with cats around, so darn curious.



I'll be posting this on etsy.com as an example, and I have a few more boxes in the works. This one holds 100 envelopes, and is 100% customizable, for no more cost than one covered in white satin.