Southern Weddings

I have been so excited to post about the fabulous Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo for several weeks now. Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo (ABCD) is the founder and creator of ABCD Designs P A P E R C U P P. While planning her own wedding, she just couldn’t find the right paper designs for her high-style fete. So, the brave and creative bride decided to use her design background and create her own!  The end result was a breathtaking wedding suite that had all the guests talking (and asking her to design their “stationery wardrobes” for upcoming special events!). Thank you so much to my lovely friend, Amy, for sharing her own wedding with us today. I am so in love with every detail!

From Amy: Photography by Brian Dorsey Studios (one of our celebration photos won Celebration Photo of the Year in PDN magazine!); Dress Monique Lhuillier from The Bridal Atelier (Mark Ingram); Shoes red satin Jimmy Choo‘s with hand laid rhinestones ; Cake Sylvia Weinstock; Band Hank Lane Orchestra (heavily laden with Motown sounds for my Detroit guests!) We had a soloist during the ceremony, a trio during cocktails singing Gershwin tunes, and a full 10 person band during dinner and the celebration; Entertainment As a surprise for my husband, magician J.B. Benn was entertainment during cocktail hour. He was thrilling! Everyone loved this touch; Flowers Cory Davenport did the floral work for me – I could not face doing it myself… way too stressful, so I put it in the hands of my teacher from Parsons! Venue – St. Regis Hotel; Make-Up Lysette Drumgold was responsible for my red-lip look inspired by the 1940’s screen sirens; Hair Ted Gibson Salon (Eugene).

About Amy: I am trained in fine art. For the last several years I have been working for myself in floral and interior design as well as a stylist for shelter magazines, department/store windows, and (of course) private homes. I had designed my calling/business card in 2003 only to have every person that I gave it to say “Do you do graphic design as well? Love this card!” So, I knew I had it in me.
Why I designed our invitation suite: When it came time for the wedding, I went to all the major designers in town and it was clear to me that I was not going to get exactly what we wanted or the care and thought for our wedding suite that I would put into it if I did it myself. We are not a matchy-matchy couple. I was completely frustrated when designers were like “What is your theme?” “What is your color scheme?” I did not want to be married to a strict theme. I treated the invitations as a separate thing from the wedding. In the end it all went together beautifully because it was a reflection of us. Brown, gold, red, orange, I did them all! I designed on all the paper goods sent throughout the engagement and wedding … the accolades came rolling in on our suite of wedding stationery. ABCD Designs Papercupp (homage to my maiden name of Cupp) was born from word of mouth. I love to help other brides set the tone for their wedding day celebration with bespoke stationery fitted especially for them.
Our wedding stationery wardrobe: The wedding was held at the St. Regis Hotel in Midtown. The venue called for Old New York style – our personality, as a couple was far less stodgy. As a result I wanted to convey in the invitations that ours would be a party full of joy and celebration. What is better than a burst of color and the joy of a wedding celebration to bring up spirits in the darkest gray stretch of winter? Not only that, I wanted our guests to learn our story and feel like they knew us as a couple before the wedding day. I added elements from our courtship to enhance that.

1. We had a destination wedding of sorts as almost all of our guests came in from different places. I started our wedding suite with a save the date invitation to NYC with Lady Liberty on it. *For anyone who knows me, they know that I have collected bronze lady liberty statues for years.* Not to mention most of our wedding guests have never been to NYC, so it was a fitting introduction. I used brown ink on textured ivory paper for the wedding invitation for an Old New York or antique feel – I added pops of yellow (inspired as mentioned above by the forsythia branches that bloom in February).
2. The espresso cup with a heart in it actually happened to us just after Scott and I started dating. He and I were at my 30th birthday dinner. I told him that if he were an old Turkish Lady he could read my fortune from the grinds. He swirled the cup around and a heart appeared! I used this image for the rehearsal dinner invite.
3. I caught the bouquet in my best girlfriend’s wedding just days before Scott asked me to marry him, I utilized those photos from her wedding in the bridal shower invitation that my Aunt and Cousins threw at my mother’s house.
4. For the engagement party invitation, I used another photo from when we got engaged on the beach. For the thank you notes for that party – I used the yellow colored envelopes (drawing again on the forsythia) with orange through red color ink (hinting about the shoes and floral designs at the wedding) and introduced the square shape that would be used for our invitations.
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   In memory of my Scottish grandmother I interpreted the Luckenbooth symbol and created a logo for us to use throughout our wedding day (and long after!) It is two hearts entwined and represents Love, Loyalty, and Luck. Usually, the symbol has the Royal Crown where the two hearts meet, but I changed it to the crown of Lady Liberty. I added our initials as a married couple, and two fat and happy birds … as my grandmother was an avid bird watcher and care taker when she was alive.

Inspiration and Decoration Details: Inspired by the first signs of spring my inspiration started with bright yellow flowers of the forsythia branch. Orange and all shades into red became accent colors. Hurricane containers lined the aisle and a floral arch of forsythia was at the alter. We are big travelers. During our year and a half of courtship we traveled to twenty-six different locations by plane. So for that reason, the tables were all named after places Scott and I had traveled to in the time we were dating. Our sweetheart table was named Antigua after the island where we were engaged. The floral designs were in glass containers that had sliced oranges lemons kumquats and cran-apples floating in them. We also took Polaroid photos of our guests as they came in to the party. We had them sign in on individual sheets with their well wishes. Now we have a beautiful fabric box full of their kind words (that looks great on the cocktail table) as a memento!

Today, ABCD Designs P A P E R C U P P makes couture one-of-a-kind wedding, new baby and announcement stationary. The designs are handcrafted to meet the sender’s needs with unique touches. Be sure to check out ABCD Design P A P E R C U P P’s website. In addition to the website, Amy keeps two fabulous blogs up-to-date every week. The first {BLOG}, is a tribute to all things design relevant and specifically, weddings. The second {BLOG} is a showcase of all Amy’s finished projects.

Want Amy to design something fabulous for your wedding? Check back shortly for Part II of our ABCD feature…