Personalized Wedding Gift: Picture Frames

Last summer when we visited Chicago, I fell in love with this photo collage in Emily and Ryan's guest room.  

I even went to the boutique and looked through all the letters but couldn't settle on anything I loved enough to have it spelled out. B also pointed out that it would be fun to take our own pictures if we were to do this. Genius - I love a good D.I.Y. project!

Inspired by their Chicago collage and a photo idea I saw earlier this year, I suggested to B that we personalize their wedding gift. My idea was take photos of pretty, artistic numbers of their wedding date (10-16-10). I also wanted to somehow incorporate a picture of Hyde (their last name) street in San Francisco. We ended up taking a bunch of different pictures and settled on these as our favorites:

OCT from a concert venue sign in Chico
16th Street in Sacramento
2010 address in Sacramento
the corner of Hyde and Francisco in San Francisco

I searched their registry and picked two frames from Pottery Barn, which happened to also be on sale! Using Picassa, I made several versions of each picture with different tones and filters. I'm happy I printed multiple versions, because on the computer I loved the black and white (like their Chicago collage), but in the frames the Sepia tone looked the best. 

And here is the final product wrapped up, tied with ribbon and ready to be carried on planes, trains and taxi cabs! 

We included a note with the frames explaining our inspiration for the gift, the extra copies of the photos (in case they prefer the B&W) and also a disclaimer that we won't be offended if they use their new frames for say, their gorgeous professional wedding photos. We had fun taking the pictures and have no doubt they'll appreciate the thoughtful gesture. 

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Imagine my delight when I saw this awesome wordle collage at their rehearsal dinner. One of the bridesmaids made it as a wedding gift. It includes words and dates from the first day they met (at CareerBuilder, Ryan was on the panel that interviewed Emily!) up to their wedding day, 10-16-10. Another great gift idea!