Fun Ideas for Save The Dates

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Your Save-The-Date is what’s going to make a first impression with your guests. It’s the first thing they’ll receive that sets the tone and personality of your wedding.

Is your wedding going to be fun and quirky?  Traditional and romantic?  Energetic and whimsical?

How about some fun ideas like these?

• A box of match sticks would “Let the Sparks Fly”

• Everybody has a sweet tooth. In a small box, send a packaged sugar cookie with your date written in icing. Include a card/note with it, in case someone eats your Save-The-Date!

• Send a CD to your guests and call it “Songs That We Fell In Love To.” On the cover of the CD, include your Save-The-Date message. It’s flat, personal, easy to mail, and is something your guests will keep.

• Send a pencil through the mail. Use a piece of card stock with your wedding date information and tape a pencil to it (or use a hole punch to slide a pencil through) with the phrase “Please Pencil Us In!” 

• Calendar (add a photo if you want)

 

Renee Halgerson  •   renee@copperinkdesign.com

Another Beautiful Wedding

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I had the honor of designing Angella & Kristian's wedding invitations for their special day on August 6.

They turned out beautifully, just like their wedding.  :)  Congrats, A&K.

 

Click here to see their entire gallery of wedding invitation photos.

Wedding Invitations, Sioux Falls, SD

 

Click the photo to see more of Angela & Kristian's wedding invitations

 Renee Halgerson  •   renee@copperinkdesign.com

Newly Engaged?!

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Are you newly engaged?! Congrats. The most stressful part of planning a wedding is knowing where to search for the perfect photographer, cake, invites, floral arrangements, limos, and DJ in your area. 

Located in Sioux Falls, SD, Renee Halgerson and Copper Ink Wedding Design can help you get started.

Generally, people in the Midwest have a do-it-yourself mentality. They are very resourceful and appreciate a good deal when they find one. Copper Ink Wedding Design understands that completely. That's why:

 

• We already have lists of the latest options for cakes, photographers, florists, DJs, limos, and more. We provide you the list, then highlight the low, medium, and high price-range options. Then let you choose. We are just here to provide you the options so you spend less time searching and more time enjoying the process.

• Your wedding brings friends and family together for one special day. We want you to enjoy each and every minute of it! That means instead of your aunt, cousin, or personal attendant decorating the church, setting up the reception, lighting candles and tearing everything down at the end of the night, you can count on Copper Ink Wedding Design to do that for you. Let us take care of everything while you enjoy your friends and family.

• We will coordinate the rentals, returns, set-up and tear down of everything you may need. That's the last thing you or your mother need on your minds. We're glad to help! And we're very affordable.

• And when it comes to the wedding invitation design, we specialize in unique, contemporary designs. After all, your invitations and save-the-dates become the first impression your guests receive of your wedding day. Do you want a feeling of romance and sweetness? Fun and excitement? Chic and couture? Punk and pretty? We do it all.

Like what you're hearing? Fill out this order form to get the process started.

 

We bring together a creative mix of everything you have in mind, all while building a personal relationship. It's like planning the perfect party with a good friend.

"You Can't Handle the Truth"

Our favorite movie lines. And most of them misquoted!

Here are the Top Ten Misquoted Famous Movie Lines:
 

1.    “Luke, I am your father” – Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)  (17%)

2.    “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) (15%)

3.    “Do you feel lucky, punk?” - Dirty Harry (1971) (13%)

4.    “Play it again, Sam” – Casablanca (1942) (12%)

5.    “Hello, Clarice” – Silence of the Lambs (1991) (10%)

6.    “Beam me up, Scotty!” – Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) (9%)

7.    “Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn” – Gone with the Wind (1939) (7%)

8.    “If you build it, they will come” – Field of Dreams (1989) (6%)

9.    “I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto” – The Wizard of Oz (1939) (5%)

10.  “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” – The Graduate (1967) (4%)

 

Do you know what the correct movie quote is? Read the article and find out.

Being ridiculed

Oscar Wilde was right.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

So was Scott Ginsberg. Click here to read his whole blog post.

 

"First, consider it an honor to be criticized.

Second, you’re nobody until somebody hates you.

Third, anything worth doing is worth being attacked for.

Fourth, if your dream isn’t being attacked, it isn’t big enough.

Fifth, if everybody loves your work, you’re doing something wrong.

Sixth, if nobody hates your work, you’re not being honest enough."

 

Remember: People who attack your work are terrified of attending to their own misery. So keep your head up and keep doing what you love.

Book Review: The Four Agreements

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It's 138 pages of great advice. "The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book" has four strong lessons. Written by Don Miguel Ruiz, it's a quick read that could make you want to make changes in your life, or at least re-think the way you choose to take things personally.

The Four Agreements:

1. Be Impeccable with Your Word

The word is so powerful that one word can change a life or destroy the lives of millions of people.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. People can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up. If you tell me something insulting, it is only because you're having a bad day, and you're dealing with your own issues and shortcomings. I was only the excuse for you to be cruel.

"If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn't walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don't need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices."

Remember, you are never responsible for the choices of others. You are only responsible for you.

3.  Don't Make Assumptions

When we make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.

4. Always Do Your Best

Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, no reward.

5. The Hidden Fifth Agreement that Renee thinks is also important: Don't lie to yourself when you're in love (for all of us that have been through past relationships that didn't go so well):

"Often when you go into a relationship with someone you like, you have to justify why you like that person. You only see what you want to see and you deny there are things you don't like about the person. You lie to yourself just to make yourself right. Then you make assumptions, and one of the assumptions is "My love will change this person." But this is not true. Your love will not change anybody. If others change, it's because they want to change, not because you change them. Then something happens between the two of you, and you get hurt. Suddenly you see what you didn't want to see before, only now it is amplified by your emotional pain. Now you have to justify your emotional pain and blame for your choices."

p.s. I love you, babe.

 

There are also two great prayers at the end of the book. It's a great way to re-consider the things that really get us upset and are truly important in life. 

It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone.

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? 

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.  

A quote by Marianne Williamson from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles

This is to be my Symphony

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"To live content with small means;
  to seek elegance rather than luxury
  and refinement rather than fasion;
  to be worthy, respectable and wealth, not rich;
  to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
  to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages with open heart;
  to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occassions, hurry never.
  In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious
  grow up through the common.
  This is to be my symphony."

~William Henry Channing 

What Would Yours Say?

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If you chose any quote to put on your desk, what would it be?

Here are the top 10 from Paul Thornton in his article:

1.)    It can be done!

2.)    No whining.

3.)    The buck starts here.

4.)    Be Brief. Be Brilliant. Be Gone.

5.)    Start talking and get to work.

6.)    A designer know he had achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

7.)    Be Realistic. Demand the impossible.

8.)    Strive for excellence.

9.)    A desk is a dangerous place to view the world.

10.) Leaders should be able to stand alone, take the heat, tell the truth and do what’s right.

 

Click here to read the entire list.

I think mine might be “The one who says it cannot be done shouldn’t interrupt the one doing it.”

Or maybe "Don't sit on the sidelines and complain. Get in the game and make a change."

The More You Give, The More You Have

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I’m not sure what it is about this time of year. Maybe it’s feeling humble and blessed when I see 199 people attend the Banquet in Sioux Falls for a warm meal, including 17 children. Maybe it’s walking into my Junior Achievement classroom full of first graders who show me their excitement and humorous honesty each time I visit. Maybe its packing backpacks full of food for children who might otherwise go hungry for the weekend.

I can’t always give the money it takes to make a difference in someone’s life, but I can give my time. I can give a smile. I can give conversation and camaraderie. There are so many ways to volunteer—and it feels good to give back.

 

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being.”
Goethe

“How can we expect our children to know and experience the joy of giving unless we teach them that the greater pleasure in life lies in the art of giving rather than receiving.”
James Cash Penny

“Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
Booker T. Washington

“A volunteer is a person who can see what others cannot see; who can feel what most do not feel. Often, such gifted persons do not think of themselves as volunteers, but as citizens - citizens in the fullest sense; partners in civilization.”
George H. W. Bush

“We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill

Need Some Creative Inspiration? These 10 Sites Might Help.

Not sure where to start? Can’t think of that word? These 10 sites always offer me a creative spark.

 

Portfolios: Here are How’s Top 10 Websites for Designers

Websites: Renee’s Link Lounge

Music: Build a playlist. It’s like iTunes + Pandora, but better. 

Humor: Funny T-Shirts to make you laugh

Blogs: Veer’s “The Skinny” and “The Fat” 

Design: The Best of Invitation Designs

Logo Design: LogoPond has some great inspiration

Movies: America’s 10 Greatest Films in 10 Classic Genres 

Photography: Browse iStockphoto for images as a solution to your brainstorming 

Words: The thesaurus and dictionary are actually very interesting—especially The Hot Word.