In Loving Memory

Mr. Olive and I have been looking for unique ways to remember the people that will not be able to celebrate the wedding with us. We have chosen three ways to honor those who cannot be attend.

I particularly wanted to honor my grandmothers (one passed away in 2005 and the other is too sick to travel to the wedding) and my uncle who passed away last summer. In their honor I will be adding photo charms to my wedding bouquet. This way they will be with me all day and then I will be able to save the charms as a keepsake (as I do not plan to save the bouquet). I talked to my florist and she thought this was a wonderful idea and doesn’t believe she will have any trouble incorporating them into the bouquet. I will use a photo of each of them from the day of their wedding.

This is an idea of what I am planning:

Flickr


Source

And this beautiful photo (I can't seem to upload it...): http://www.flickr.com/photos/mijita/2401836349/

The florist suggested looking for photo charm frames at a craft store but then I found a wonderful seller on Etsy, DesignsbyTami, who makes and sells two sided charms. She was selling a bracelet of three charms for $25 so I asked her if she would be willing to sell me three single charms for $20. She responded quickly and was happy to do this for me. She will be making me three, soldered glass charms for $20 + $2 shipping. I am happy to be able to support an independent vendor and to have a quality keepsake.

Here is the bracelet and what the charms will look like:

Charm Braclet by DesignsbyTami

I will gather the pictures when I go to Minnesota this weekend for my bridal shower. Once she has the pictures the turn around should be very fast! I will post additional pictures when they arrive!

Another way that we are planning to remember the important people in our lives is by placing framed family and wedding photos on our cake table. We will not be having a traditional large wedding cake (more on that later) but we will be doing a small, 9” round cake to use for the tradition of cutting the cake. The cake table at our venue is very large so we needed to add something to fill it up since our cake is so small. We will be placing our parents and grandparents wedding photos as well as other sentimental family photos. The photos will be placed in frames we already own or in frames bought from second-hand stores. It will look something like this (with a much smaller cake):

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Finally, in lieu of favors, we will be making a donation to the National MS Society in memory of Mr. Olive’s cousin who recently passed away due to complications related to Multiple Sclerosis (I will blog more about this soon).

How did/are you remembering loves ones on your special day?