As of today we’re officially less than three months away and the slow burning nerves and excitement are kind of morphing. It’s now oH MY GOD THERE’S SO MUCH LEFT TO DO AND ZERO TIME. I have a lot I would tell my baby wedding planning self.
But one thing I’ve been particularly looking forward to is designing some stuff for the decor. Things I can specifically do on photoshop/in design because I (sort of) have that skill! I always wanted a monogram, or more like a logo to be around places that could be an easy signifier.
Before we dive in, you might need to catch up!
What the heck is Let’s Cut the Cake?
Why we chose a super long engagement
Here’s the dilema
The hold up with a monogram is that I’m keeping my last name, which is already hyphenated. I scorned my parents every time I ran out of room writing my name on a piece of notebook paper. But now I’ve come to love it because me and my brother are the only people that will have it! And I’m going to honor AJ and our marriage in many different ways, specifically ways that don’t make me lose that part of me!
(P.S not hating on the decision to change your last name in the slightest. I just always feel the need to explain myself on this topic!)
ANYWAY – yes, AJ’s last name is super long as is mine, and technically two letters. And then AJ is an abbreviation too and I don’t want to signify just “A” because he’s AJ! Initials and all of that are just too big of a hassle.
So what do we do??
Last year my SIL told us that saying “Holly and AJ” is too time consuming (she’s not wrong) so she calls us a collective “Hay Jay”. And thus our nickname as born!
I love it because we have been together for so long now, I feel like we are basically a package unit. So now you can say “Are Hay Jay coming?” or “Let’s go to Hay Jay’s house!” or “I’M SO PSYCHED FOR HAY JAY’S WEDDING!” 🙂
See what I mean?
So to make the logo: first you need to decide what you want to do! I knew I wanted something simple and retro. I headed into Photoshop and wrote out a “Hay” and a “Jay”. I made a vector circle around them, added a stroke, subtracted the fill, and had a circle!! Here’s what I created with the fonts I already had.
Good, not great. I needed to find the perfect font! This was both for the logo and for our invitations (more on that later. Short version, I learned the hard way that just because you can DIY doesn’t mean you should.)
Our theme/vibe is retro, vapor wave (mainly in the colors), a mix of 80s/90s, but fun fun fun! So I searched on Pinterest for 80s fonts and found some great ones on Creative Market! I think the one we ended up going with was $16? A steal!
After that it could not have been easier! Swap the font real quick and viola. I just scooched it around til I liked the overlay effect.
You might be thinking, “Cool except I don’t know or even own Photoshop??” To that I would say check out Canva!! They have about a thousand really cool fonts and plenty of templates you could just put your name or nickname into! I know. you can download them as transparent background .PNG file which is exactly what you’d need. So you definitely don’t need Photoshop if you want to make a custom neon sign!
The hard and fun part was playing with the colors for the neon sign. Everywhere else it’ll most likely just be white. I thought maybe one color, two colors, the circle a third color. Maybe similar colors but different shades.
Here’s our finished neon sign mock up!
Ashley, our amazing angel planner from Much Ado Austin, found us this neon site a while back called Brite Lite Tribe! They are super reasonably priced and you can even type things out without having to do the whole custom thing I did!
After I made our logo, I sent them the image and they did the hard work for me! I will say, our custom neon was more pricey than we were expecting, mainly because we wanted it two feet tall and wide. And the circle. They offered it minus the circle and it was a few hundred dollars difference.
They were super fast emailing back and forth and it’s currently in production!! I’m really excited!! It’s going to go over our dessert table (more on that next week!)
Okay dear reader, now I have a question for you!
Did you make or use a monogram or logo in your wedding? Are you planning to? I want to hear how you decided on it in the comments below!
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