Sheila wanted to be surrounded by her favorite things during the wedding.

Which references did you catch?

The Merch Table

The piece de resistance of the wedding, Sheila built, designed, assembled, etc. a merch table full of goodies.

She made a full-size replica of Alex’s Nord keyboard and the keys were cookies.

We love sending postcards when we travel, so we provided a few Austin postcards. Sheila also designed special stickers that are nods to family and friends.

We also had cookies decorated as records and Sheila made a turntable and a miniature Kallax to store them.

Inspired by Slow Cooked’s old merch set up, we used Alex’s old sign and repurposed a tip jar for cards. Ever-prepared, Sheila also made sure to have an emergency kit!

Music posters

You’ll find music posters all over Austin and even a few in our house, so we used them as seating charts.

Sheila was inspired by posters from well-known festivals and each poster is based on a unique factor of the guests at that table. Table 2: Croquet for Alex’s immediate family. Table 3: Water color for Alex’s Uncle Scott who is a talented painter. Table 4: Outside Lands-inspired poster was for Alex’s family from San Francisco but unfortunately they had to cancel. Table 5: Fishing and trading for Sheila’s parents. Table 6: A crawfish playing piano for Sheila’s family friends in Baton Rouge. Table 7: A Filipino ukulele for Sheila’s family friend, Sierra, who plays it. Table 8: Mario Kart items for Sheila’s siblings. Table 9: Purple & Gold and LSU super-fan, Matt, for Sheila’s friends from college. Table 10: ACL Fest gradient and Austin skyline silhouette for the couple’s Austin friends. Table 11: Jazz Fest-inspired poster featuring Alex’s fellow bandmates.

Quotable quotes

Sheila wanted to include a few of her literary favorites. “Welcome to our long-expected party.” is from Lord of the Rings and “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” is from Pride & Prejudice.

It’s bewitched to look like the night sky

It wasn’t possible to have floating candles like in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, but balloons were a great alternative!

Did you know?

On each table were table tents that had facts about us as well as the menu and run of show.

5 things Sheila thinks you should know about Alex

  1. He knew he wanted to be a pianist since high school and went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, not UC Berkeley in California.

  2. At 13, he was awarded “Youth of the Month” by the Optimist Club of Havertown, PA.

  3. His first band was “Killer Tofu” and their big hit was “WBGF: White Boys Gettin’ Funky.”

  4. He can’t wait to go back to his favorite foodie spots: Singapore and Mexico City.

  5. During the lockdown, he learned how to roast coffee, cure bacon, cook Indian food, and craft cocktails — all while renovating our fixer-upper house inside and out!

5 things Sheila thinks you should know about Alex

  1. She plots out her meal and knows precisely what her last bite will be before she even starts eating.

  2. She was once hailed as a “social media rockstar” by Questlove.

  3. Though shy about her talent, she is a closet creative. She designed everything for the wedding (invitations, posters, stickers, etc).

  4. She used to do triathlons, but now she hates being outdoors (except when she’s at a brewery).

  5. In 2018, she achieved her dream of traveling to six continents before she turned 30.

the filipino connection

Sheila looked everywhere for a proper vessel to hold the Arras and she finally found a vendor on Etsy that does Filipiniana-inspired masks. So she asked the vendor to create a pouch with the same lace. Sheila also found golden li xi bags that symbolize prosperity. Traditionally, the Arras coins are 12 silver coins and 1 gold, but we chose coins that reflected our upbringing (Pennsylvania and Louisiana quarters) and our travels (Filipino and Mexican pesos, a Euro, Canadian coins, Japanese yen, etc.)

Nobody tosses a dwarf

Thinking of that iconic scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Sheila designed a special sticker to put on the bags of dried herbs that guests threw at the couple at the end of the ceremony.

Best Day ever

One of Sheila’s favorite movies is Disney’s “Tangled’ and it had an appropriate quote! She also incorporated Tangled’s lanterns in the sunset on one set of nails and Robert Ellis’ rising sun on the other set.

Keepin’ it shibby

Sheila surprised Alex and his brother, Kyle, with socks that had one of their special sayings: Shibious Shalom.

IYKYK

Speaking of shibby, we used that word as the code to get the secret beer: Jester King’s Montmorency vs Balaton , a sour beer made with Montmorency cherries that we asked the brewery to hold in 2019.

No soggy bottoms

Opting for pies instead of cake, we displayed tiny pies and a pie pyramid on cookbooks. And in true Great British Bake Off fashion, Sheila designed a menu poster that’s inspired by the illustrations on the show.

Testing, testing…1,2,3

So many of our guests are talented musicians, so we set up a recording studio as our “guest book.” We plan to put the snippets on a vinyl record and add it to Alex’s collection.

start a tradition

Every time we go to Baton Rouge, we visit Coffee Call to grab beignets and a cafe au lait + hot chocolate mix. We surprised our guests with this late night treat!

A & S News

While eating our beignets at Coffee Call, we’d read the local Coffee News and try to find the Coffee Guy. So Sheila designed an A&S News which had our latest updates, shout-outs to our family and even a scavenger hunt for Ollie!

You can read it here >

 
 

Thank you to our vendors who brought this vision to life!