Deborah Nadel Design ~ Wedding Calligraphy Giveaway
We have a pretty sweet giveaway for one of you, today! Deborah Nadel is the calligrapher who worked with Ethan and Janet, featured a few days ago on the LBB Blog {here}. Deborah contacted us and told us this story …
Hand calligraphy is a big part of my business and I recently had the pleasure of working with a couple (Janet and Ethan) on the calligraphy for their wedding. After the invitations went out, Ethan asked me to create a design that he could frame and present to Janet on their wedding day. Pictured below is the artwork that I created for them. It is hand calligraphy in multiple colors of gouache on archival cotton paper. The text is a reading from their wedding and features their names and wedding date at the bottom. It was gratifying to work on such a project and inspired me to offer a giveaway to a Style Me Pretty couple to remember their special day. I’m offering a hand calligraphed design using archival inks and paper of a poem or reading from their wedding (maximum of 12 lines of text, maximum overall size 15″ x15″) featuring their names and wedding date.
That’s such a great thing to do … either for your own home or as a gift to one of your loved ones!
Deborah has lots of examples of her work on her website along with examples of the monograms and logos that she creates.
To enter this contest, please leave a comment below giving us an idea of what reading or poem you will be using in your wedding ceremony. Please remember there are text and size limitations. If you’re not sure what you’ll be using just yet … that’s OK. Just let us know you’re interested!! We will announce the winner on Monday (July 13th) on this same post entry. Good luck!
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MONDAY JULY 13th UPDATE
And the winner of the contest?
Melissa’s July 9th entry was the one that made Deborah’s heart melt …
It’s you I like, It’s not the things you wear, it’s not the way you do your hair– But it’s you I like The way you are right now, the way down deep inside you– Not the things that hide you, not your toys– They’re just beside you. But it’s you I like– Every part of you, your skin, your eyes, your feelings Whether old or new. I hope that you’ll remember, even when you’re feeling blue That it’s you I like, it’s you yourself, it’s you, It’s you I like.
~ a Mr. Roger’s song
Please see the LBB Blog on July 13th for the complete winning announcement. A huge thanks to ALL for entering!!!
I am getting married on the 21st of November in South Africa (that's where I live, this is probably a bit too far to enter this competition but it's worth a try!!!) I love your website and I found so many ideas that I am going to be using on our wedding day. I have to make most of the things myself because we don't have all the suppliers available here! We are having a very vintage-Frank Sinatra inspired wedding (my grandfather was a huge fan and I use to listen to his music with him whenever I went to visit my grandparents). I love anything handmade, from handwritten invites to gifts and would love to win this prize (If I'm not too far away!) Thanks for the great website!!!!
That's such a sweet gift that that groom gave to his new wife! My finace and I are having a Jewish wedding, and we are not sure yet which readings/prayers we will use. But we do want to include, either in the ceremony or the program, a tribute to our late grandparents. We each have a set of grandparents who has passed away who taught us much about true love and family. We have thought of somehow including a love letter that my grandfather wrote to my grandmother in the 1960's.
I just love this writing. We are getting married April 17 2010. During couples counseling, our preacher asked us to come up with a mission statement for our future family. And we did and its the most touching thing I have read in a long time. We will be reading this in our wedding so that all our family and friends will know what our mission is for our future. It would be lovely to have this with calligraphy writing.
Wow, this is an incredible giveaway. I was thinking of having our readings framed for our mothers, who will be doing the two readings. We are having i carry your heart with me, by e. e. cummings, and one is a quote from the book Celebrating Life by jonathon sacks about what is marriage. Would we also be able to choose our vows instead of a reading? My readings may be too long, I'd have to check later, but I love the vows we are saying to each other as well, and am planning on getting those framed anyways.
Ooooh this contest is awesome! My fiance and I share a love of poetry and quotes; he reads poetry books and we have adorned our house with painted quotes and rhymes where ever we can fit them in. Our wedding will actually be heavy on words- we're having friends take turns reading from poems & favorite quotes- and we have picked a single song that I will walk up the aisle to (in it's instrumental form) and we will also have our first dance to. I will also be having the lyrics to the song printed out on edible paper and attached onto the cake, so it would be awesome to have a portion of the lyrics written out beautifully to display in the house!
I knew this prayer right away when I saw the first picture. My fiance and I hope to have it read before we serve dinner during our October 3rd reception in New Hampshire. We are still trying to determine the other readings for our wedding ceremony, so I can't say for certain what we'd like Ms. Nadel to design for us. In looking on her website, it is apparent that whatever she does is beautiful and creative. It would be so nice to have an example of her work and a reminder of our special day hanging in our house for years to come.
When my fiance and I were talking about why we wanted to get married, he quoted a verse from the Bible, Genesis 2:18. It says, "It is not good for the man to be alone." In many ways, this verse defines why we are getting married. Like my mother before me, I am having my grandfather marry me. I found out that he usually does his wedding service around Genesis 2:18 - 22. My parent's wedding featured a reading of these verses, and so will mine. I feel so honored to be able to stand in this tradition, and to know that I'm building a new life on the same foundation that my parents and grandparents have. It would be lovely to have this verse in my home to both represent the things my fiance and I hold dear, and to also represent the traditions from which we come.
This is a wonderful idea for a give-away. I think it would make a perfect gift for my fiance because we both love poetry and we're incorporating it into our wedding in various ways. My favorite poen is one about marriage by Khalil Gibran. I feel like it perfectly describes our ideal relationship.
So this is going to sound really funny, but one of my boyfriend's and my favorite songs is "Wake Me Up before You Go-Go". It's a great tune to dance to, and the words, when written out, are kind of hilarious. "You put the boom-boom into my heart / you send my soul sky-high when your lovin' starts / Jitterbug into my brain / Goes a bang-bang-bang 'til my feet do the same..." You've got to laugh! :) I think it would be an awesome present to give Matt on our wedding day, especially done up in this amazing calligraphy! Thanks for the offer.
Our favorite bible verse is 1 Corinthians 13:4, "Love Is Patient". We have been dating for almost 8 years and finally we are getting married! Throughout the years we have been through many obstacles in our relationship and we just had to put our faith in God and trust in him that when the time was right both financially and emotionally, we would get married. This verse exemplifies truly being patient in all aspects, and waiting until the time is right for love. We are excited to have one of our family members read this at our seaside ceremony! If we won this, it would be a dream come true... we love the look of calligraphy and don't have room in our budget for it.
I have been searching for something meaningful but sort of non-denominational.
here's what i have so far:
To Love is Not to Possess
James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
My heart fluttered a few days ago when I saw Deborah's work on SMP. I love calligraphy but we just could not stretch our budget far enough. I would be honored to have something so beautiful and personal as a reminder of our ceremony and marriage, and it would be a real luxery for us. As to what I would select...my great grandmother loved poetry and actually wrote a number of poems that her children later had published. These poems are so special to my family and many of them were written on the occasion of major events. One was just read at my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary about the day they were married. We haven't selected which poem we would like yet, but not only will this reading be personal to me, but to so much of my immediate and extended family. My grandmother's health is not what is was, and I am really looking forward to seeing her face when we read one of her mother's poems on our wedding day. Deborah's style is so authetic and would be the perfect way to remember our selection. Thank you for considering us SMP readers for this wonderful giveaway!
What a beautiful keepsake idea. We have just finished planning out our ceremony, and one reading that is very special to us is the excerpt from Union by Robert Fulghum. For a couple who has been together for 7 years like us, it really speaks to knowing from the beginning that you would someday get married.
This is such a special gift. We're using I Like You by Sandol Stoddard. One of our favorite parts goes I like you because...When I tell you something special...You know it's special...and you remember it ... a long long time. Another favorite part goes When I say something funny...you laugh...I think I'm funny and...You think I'm funny too. Even before we found this little book, from the very early days of dating, we would tell each other "I like you." Even after we said the "L" word, we'd still tell each other I like you.
My wedding is 2yrs off and planning is in beginning stage so I am not entirely sure where my ceremony text is at... but I would SO love to have this special way to remember our ceremony.
My fiance and I are getting married on 03.26.2010. We haven't yet given thought as to what readings we'll have during our ceremony just yet. Whichever reading we choose, Deborah's elegant calligraphy will add to the special meaning of the wedding ceremony and program.
My fiance and I are getting married on August 1 (so close!) and our only reading is "Love" by Joni Mitchell. I love calligraphy (well, I love nice handwriting, but calligraphy is the best) and it would be such an amazing way to remember our wedding day by being able to display this beautiful Joni Mitchell song written in fantastic calligraphy in our home. Thank you for this chance!
My fiance and I are getting married next June. We know we will have two readers and are not sure what they will be reading yet but I'm pretty sure I'd love for one of the reading's to be a poem. My fiance and I were just talking the other day of a way to remember his brother (who passed away 4 years ago in a car accidnet). I would love to have a poem/reading some type of tribute to be put in the program about him! Then we could frame it and give it to his parents as a gift! Deborah your calligraphy is stunning!! I'd think this would be such a wonderful way to not only remember our ceremony but to remember his brother who wouldn't be with us.
Wow...this would be the most beautiful gift! The calligraphy is exquisite. We are getting married next May and although we haven't picked out any specific readings, there are many poems and song lyrics that we have in mind. My favourites are e.e. cummings 'I Carry Your Heart With Me,' Jack Johnson's 'Better Together,' and 'Lullaby' by the Dixie Chicks.
They didn't have you where I come from
Never knew the best was yet to come
Life began when I saw your face
And I hear your laugh like a serenade
How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough, is forever enough
How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough
Cause I'm never, never giving you up
(from Lullaby)
oh wow this would be wonderful to display! We will be using a poem, need to narrow it down though!!
My fiance and I are getting married October 17. Picking the reading for our ceremony was one of the most difficult aspects of our planning. I wanted a reading that was meaningful and represented who we are and who we will strive to be as a couple. I finally found the perfect reading in a selection from The Irrational Season by Madeline L'Engle (one of my favorite authors growing up). Part of the passage reads "If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation."
I would love to see those words written out in Deborah's beautiful hand calligraphy!
My fiance and I are getting married next July so we have several months of planning yet to go and haven't gotten around yet to figuring out our readings, but this would be a wonderful keepsake to remind us of our day!
I'm the Janet from the 'Janet and Ethan', and we just fell in love with Deborah. When we first got our invitations back from her, I didn't even want to mail them out. They were just so beautiful. I looked through them in admiration for a very, very long time. Her calligraphy truly is a work of art! I kept telling Ethan that I wanted her to write more for us, something we can keep, but he kept blowing me off. Little did I know, he already had a plan in mind and was already talking to Deborah on his own. This is such a great give-away Deborah is offering, but regardless if you win, you really should use her for your wedding anyway. She set the tone for our wedding by beautifully addressing the invitations and we also had her do our escort cards. Good luck!
I would love nothing more than to have "HOW DO I LOVE THEE By Elizabeth Barrett Browning" for our wedding ceremony in calligraphy by Deborah Nadel. My fiance and I are counting down to our wedding which is less than 100 days away! We are looking for creative details from the wedding that we can keep as momentos forever and this would be one of them.
I just started a new job and a new co-worker has been raving about her calligrapher - well turns out it is Janet of this very same post! I can truly see why she is so excited of your work - it is BEAUTIFUL! We are planning the wedding in a relatively short period of time, and haven't had time to incorporate a lot of personal touches yet. However, I think that these elements are what really makes the wedding meaningful and intimate and are likely the things that will last in our memories the longest - and truly so if I could hang a daily reminder in our home. With 7 weeks left, I am searching for ideas that I can create and will really be personal to us - that I can realistically get done. My fiancee is Jewish and so we are having a jewish ceremony which doesn't traditionally incorporate readings which I will miss. I have been toying with the idea of having something read at the reception which would be beautiful with a calligraphed version to be read from!!
This is such a beautiful idea. I thought of doing something similar with our vows as a wedding present to my future husband. We haven't written our vows yet... but the one thing I know will be a part of it is the saying "You are my everything" - because he is my everything and we tell eachother often that we are everything to one another. I can't imagine marrying anyone else because he's my best friend and my favorite person in the world.
This is such a great idea! We are having part of the Little Prince read during our ceremony, part of his conversation with the fox about how you are responsible forever for the things you tame. I think it's beautiful, like your calligraphy!
I just got engaged very recently so I have no idea what readings we'll use, but I love her calligraphy just the same!
My finance and I are using the phrase, My wife, my world, my o&o and My Husband, my world, my o&o in our wedding vows. "O & O" became a catch phrase after one of my graduate school professors told me his wife was suffering from an extremely rare and devestatingly fast case of dimensia. He said to me, "Sydney, she is my one and only" in such a sad voice it brought tears to my eyes. I told my finance the story and he was also moved by it. We adopted the phrase 'o&o' to stand for one and only and use it in text messages, emails, and little quips when we talk to each other. We've been through a lot together and hearing the words "one and only" from each other is a constant reminder of our upcoming wedding vows and the meaning behind marriage!
I'm a graduate student in classics, and my fiance and I met in Latin class in college. We're planning to read a Latin love poem (in Latin and English, of course!), so it would be so wonderful to have that framed in our new home together!
Oh, I couldn't believe it when I opened Style Me Pretty (which I do several times a day) and saw this giveaway. My husband and I got married on May 23rd of this year, and we read "I Promise" by Dorothy R. Colgan as our vows to each other, each taking turns "promising" each other with her lovely words. I was too nervous to memorzie them, so I had a cheat sheet printed off the computer, but my husband surpised me by memorizing them! I still have the crumpled sheets of paper I held in my my hands, and I am touched by how often my husband and I revisit them to remind ourselves of the promises made for each other. The prospect of having them so beautifully and lovingly displayed is so exciting! I can guarantee that Deborah Nadel's design will be prominently displayed in our house, and read again and again.
Even though I was married over two years ago I witness the joy of marriage and new beginnings with my clients monthly! When my husband and I were married we incorporated E.E. Cummings poem- i carry your heart with me. I loved the words and the simplicity of his writing mixed with the drama of his punctuation and grammar. To this day when I read this poem I am reminded of the commitment we made that day in may. We are slowly decorating our home and it would be beautiful to have Deborah design this infamous poem for us to frame and have remind us daily that we carry each others hearts.
Love this idea! My fiance is a literature fanatic, and we are having a great time finding our favorite passages about love within the pages of our favorite stories, poem collections and children's books. Right now I'm leaning towards a Hemingway piece or Jane Austin, while my fiance is a huge Whitman fan. We certainly don't have anything set in stone yet, but when we do, it would be so lovely to capture those words to hang in our home!
Oh, what wonderful work....it is beautiful! My fiance and I are still putting the final touches on our vows for the wedding, but we hold a Bible passage very dear to our hearts and our relationship. When Cary first told me that he loved me, he took me to a park and found a quiet bench on which to recite 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. It is such an inspiring passage and we have tried to live our lives and relationship according to it...love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. When my fiance proposed a couple months ago, he again took me back to that very bench and recited the Bible passage from memory. When he finished and with tears in my eyes, he asked me to marry him. These words are so meaningful to us that I would love to have them preserved and displayed in such a beautiful way. Thanks so much for your generosity and opportunity to win this prize!
While I was reading this post I knew exactly what I would like to submit. One night while my now fiancé and I were in the early stages of dating I asked him what he would like to see in, or how he would describe a strong relationship to which he replied, "do you know the footprints story?". I chuckled and was a little thrown off and to make sure we were on the same page I asked him, "the story about Jesus?". And he said "Yes, that one. For me, I see a strong relationship represented by that person becoming a third set of footprints". Faith is quite important to both of us and anyone that has read Footprints knows that the story tells the tale of a man walking along side Jesus on a beach creating two sets of footprints and to know that for him, creating a strong relationship meant adding another person to walk along side him literally left me speechless (which is quite hard to do as I'm such a chatter box, lol). So an excerpt from that poem would be an amazing gift to have on our wedding day, May 15th, 2010, as that day will be the beginning of our three sets of footprints.
This would be so wonderful to win, I am reading a quote from Roy Croft as part of our vows to eachother. I would love to have a piece like this in memory of our commitment.
This would be such a wonderful addition to our future home. We will be getting married October 3rd and saving up for our first house, and I would love to have a prayer or reading from our wedding framed for our bedroom or entryway to remind us of that very special day :)
This is exactly what I've been looking for! My future mother-in-law wrote us a marriage prayer and read it at one of my showers. It was so special to us that we're going to have it read at the wedding and would love for it to be framed in our new home. How exciting! Not too many days left until 8/22/09 :)
When I met my soon-to-be-husband, he was my TA in a college course about technology. We started flirting through email, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to start a relationship. I had just been through a break up and the death of my grandfather, which was confusing me n every aspect of my life.
One day I blew him off for the second or third time in a row, and he called me on it. He sent me an email that simply stated this famous quote from Alice in Wonderland:
"Who are you? ” said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
This stirred something in me that opened my eyes, helped me finish an art piece in my grandfather's memory that I had been struggling over, and made me fall in love with him. These words will be embroidered on his pocket square for the wedding, and is a nice reminder to me of the beginning of our relationship.
I was married one month ago and would love to have a reminder done in such beautiful calligraphy of a song we used as part of our theme. The song is from Ben Folds and it is called "The Luckiest". We used part of the lyrics during our ceremony and that was our first dance. I would love to have a special keepsake reminder of this for our home as we start our lives together.
I love hand calligraphy. It adds a personal, thoughtful touch (even if I can't do it). My younger sister (and MOH) will be writing a poem for our ceremony. She is a wonderful poet and a gifted artist. Having this art work would beautifully meld together visual art with her poetry. After the wedding we will be moving across the country (away from my sister and family) so having this would mean worlds to me, my finance, and my sister. Thanks!
Hand calligraphy is a wonderful touch to any wedding. My fiancee and I are not quite sure what reading we will be chosing yet but it will most likley be a poem as I was an english major in college and we are more spiritual than religious.
This is an amazing giveaway!! My fiance and I are getting married in his church that his dad is the pastor of. Normally we would have his fathe marry us in his church with all our family and his congregation there but his father can be emotional and he doesn't think he could make it through the ceremony without breaking down and crying! And if our minister starts crying we will start sobbing. So what we are doing is getting another minister that is a family friend to marry us and we are giving free reign to my future father in law to select a reading that he wants to read.A calligraphy print of his reading (or at least part of it) would be perfect! It would mean sooo much to my fiances father because he is a little sad that he won't be marrying us. But I know that the reading he selects will be perfect, heartfelt, and meaningful. (He has been working really hard on coming up with the perfect thing.)
This is a beautiful idea and I love the idea of a calligraphed keepsake to frame for the home. My fiance and I were fortunate enough to have a friend of his mother's calligraph our outer envelopes as a wedding gift. I loved the calligraphy so much that I wanted to keep the invitations instead of mailing them! The postal clerk thought I was confused about proper postage because I was just standing in front of the mail slot and staring at the envelopes.
My fiance and I chose our ceremony readings carefully; we both love writing and literature (I'm a journalist and he writes fiction). We chose two Bible passages and a poem, "A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti. I'd like to have the Rossetti poem calligraphed and framed. I won't copy the whole poem here for space reasons, but it's the last two lines that speak to me: "...the birthday of my life/Is come, my love is come to me." A wedding is about new beginnings and the start of a fresh adventure, putting away childish things (a reference to 1 Corinithians 13, which is one of the Bible passages we'll be reading) and embracing adulthood as a new unit.
What a lovely giveaway and a fantastic keepsake for the couple who wins it. My fiance and I are getting married in November and choosing readings and poems for the ceremony has been a little bit daunting but there is one cute little reading we are definitely including and I think is really special (it makes me tear up a little bit too!)- it is called the Eskimo Love Song (by an unknown writer):
You are my husband (wife)
My feet shall run because of you
My feet shall dance because of you
My heart shall beat because of you
My eyes see because of you
My mind thinks because of you
And I shall love because of you.
I would love to have this hand calligraphed to give to my gorgeous fiance our wedding day.
thanks!
My wedding is not until April 17th, 2010 so our vows and readings have not been picked yet but I would love to have a keepsake such as this in my home to honor the foundation of our relationship and to remind us of our wedding day. By time we get married my fiance and I will have been dating for 10 years. I love calligraphy and even practiced it myself when I was younger so it would also be as beautiful as a piece of art in our home with much more meaning. Thank you again for a great give away opportunity.
What a great idea!!!
We will be using a small part of the Song of Songs .. an oldie but a goody ;)
This is such a lovely way to create a beautiful memento from your wedding, because it looks lovely, it is personal and sentimental, and it uses words that you specifically chose to summarize your feelings on your own wedding day. We have two readings - one is from 1 Corinthians, and the other is an excerpt from Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres that we both really love, which I'll share here because I think some others may be equally taken by it:
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
This is beautiful! Such an awesome idea! Oh man, I would so love to win this!
Here is what I would want printed, if I won (an excerpt from our wedding program):
In our next life,
we will be birds flying wing to wing in the sky,
or sturdy branches entangled with each other on the earth.
– Bai Ju-yi
That would look so beautiful hanging on my wall!!!
Thanks so much for the chance to win!
This is beautiful! I'd love to have this done with a reading from our wedding. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the reading will be yet and it's keeping me up at night!
Hi
I absolutely LOVE this!
My wedding is this December, and my fiance and I blessed to be together. Our mass theme will be surrounded around this Scottish Wedding Prayer;
"Lord help us to remember when we first met and the strong love that grew between us.
To work that love into practical things so that nothing can divide us.
We ask for words both kind and loving and hearts always ready to ask forgiveness as well as to forgive. Dear Lord, we put our marriage into your hands."
I love calligraphy and this is beautiful! My fiance and I have written a marriage covenant, and I would love to have it written in calligraphy to be framed in our new home together.
Thank you for this giveaway opportunity! I LOVE calligraphy. My fiance and I have each written our own vows, and would love to have this beautiful keepsake of our vows to adorn our wall. It would be a daily reminder of the love that we share and the promises we have made to each other.
First of all, thank you Deborah Nadel and LBB for putting on this special giveaway! I would like to enter. (Of course! It's gorgeous!) It is also really nice to look through the comments and see some of the stories of other couples on this site.
My fiance and I would be interested in a portion of the poem "Gate C22" by Ellen Bass. It centers on a sublime kiss shared by a couple in an airport. As the poem goes along, you discover that they are not young, but that their love and passion is not diminished. This piece really works for us as we have had a long distance engagement - I am in Scotland, and he is based in California and New York. Accordingly, there is a lot of travel involved, and a lot of impassioned kisses in airports! But the poem also demonstrates the quintessential hope of a wedding - that this journey we are embarking on together will bring us closer as we grow older.
Thank you again,
Rachel
[...] Wedding Calligraphy By Deborah Nadel Design ~ Giveaway | Style Me … By Eddye Ooooh this contest is awesome! My fiance and I share a love of poetry and quotes; he reads poetry books and we have adorned our house with painted quotes and rhymes where ever we can fit them in. Our wedding will actually be heavy on … Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate… – http://www.stylemepretty.com/ [...]
Your work is lovely! We have not planned the layout and specifics for our ceremony yet. Thanks for the chance to enter!
My husband to be is a music fanatic!! For our first Christmas, when we just started dating, I gave him tickets to future concert in San Diego for his favorite band--hoping it would prolong the relationship. Sneaky!! Fast forward a year and a half later and we happily engaged and planning our destination wedding in ...San Diego. He has literally brought more music into my life. I am hoping to have a special song as a reading at our wedding (as if it was a poem). I would love to have those beautiful words written in such a beautiful way to commemorate the beginning of our relationship and the beginning of our marriage. Pick me and you get to know the song :).
I love all things paper related - typography, cotton paper and calligraphy!! Now that I am newly engaged I cannot wait to incorporate all of these beautiful details in my very own wedding. I would love the opportunity to have Deborah Nadel's amazing work to be a part of our big day.
Thank you for this amazing giveaway! My fiance and I have been together for six years and I've saved every letter that he has given me. We've been there for each other through the good times and the bad, and whenever we hit a bump on the road, I'd take out these notes and read them to remind myself of why I love him so much. If I had the opportunity to have something calligraphied, it would be a part of the most heart-warming card he gave me, which always brings a tear to my eye. And to end the piece, I'd ask for the following quote to be written: "Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control." :)
I got a Paloma's Nest ringbearer bowl. I had Caroline put a verse from Song of Solomon "I am my beloved, my beloved is me." I'm not particularly religious, but I felt that this spoke volumes on why my fiance & I are getting married. It's because "it just goes."
this is such a great giveaway from a talented calligrapher and i'd love to have something like this on our wedding. my fiance and i watched Miss Saigon on our first date 9 years ago in manila. we broke up 4 years later. last year, while i was on a fellowship in san francisco, we got back together and ended up watching Phantom of the Opera on the 4th anniversary of that day we broke up. now we're getting married and for our reading we'd like to quote from the finale of "Les Miserables", my fiance's favorite show. it would be so great if Deborah could do this. it goes:
Take my hand and lead me to salvation
Take my love for love is everlasting
And remember the truth that once was spoken
To love another person is to see the face of God
Deborah is so talented! I've taken multiple courses in calligraphy and have resigned myself to the fact that it's an innate skill--you either have it or you don't (I don't!). Beautiful work. My partner is a musician and I'm a creative writing/poetry teacher so our vows are going to be saturated with poetry/lyrics instead of religious passages. I'd love for "somewhere i have never traveled' by poet ee cummings to be calligraphed, as that will be part of our vows or, if that's too long, the poem 'After Work' by Gary Snyder, which caused my partner to fall in love with poetry. Thanks!
This is so kind of you to offer your beautiful work in a contest. I would be so greatful to have the words of our wedding song made into a lasting reminder of the song that tumbles over and over again in my head. The song is called "The Road That Never Ends" and it really speaks to my future husband and I and our families which are coming together.
This is fantastic work and adds a amazing touch to any wedding.
Thank you for the chance to enter. We are still planning the details of our ceremony but have settled on one sweet reading: a Mr. Roger's song called "It's You I Like". I would love to commemorate the start of our lives together with a work of Deborah's calligraphy.
It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair--
But it's you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you--
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys--
They're just beside you.
But it's you I like--
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
Even when you're feeling blue
That it's you I like,
It's you yourself,
It's you, it's you I like.
Calligraphy is my favorite thing in the whole world. We plan on doing our invitations in calligraphy! We are doing the same reading my great-great grandfather had at his, which is an old Gaelic verse. I won't begin to try and type it here....what a great idea and fabulous giveaway, thank you for the opportunity!!
It really is the little details that make all the difference! We would love to have lyrics from "our" song done Wild Horses-The Rolling Stones
Graceless lady you know who I am
You know I cant let you slide through my hands
Wild horses couldn't drag me away
I love calligraphy! I would like to have one of our readings done in Deborah Nadel's beautiful handwriting. I think our New Testament reading, 1 Corinthians 12:31 - 13:8 would be lovely.
This is so lovely it takes my breath away. I'd love to have our vows, which I'll be writing, done. I haven't written them yet, but they will reflect our gratitude and our wonder.
I would love to have a quotation from Homer: "There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as husband and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends." We are getting married in a Catholic church, so we are limited in the readings we are able to use, but perhaps I can work it into the programs somehow. For some reason, this quote struck a chord with us and we are very excited to be married and confound and delight. What a great contest! : )
What a great contest!! Deborah's calligraphy is just breathtaking. I think I'd choose the words to our first dance - 'Keeper of the Stars' by Tracy Byrd. My husband-to-be just loves the words to this song, and chose it as our first dance long before he proposed. This would be a truly special gift to present to him before our October wedding :)
My fiance and I aren't really very religious, so we won't be doing a traditional wedding with readings, etc. However, we met dancing, and we both love music, so our first song will definitely be a BIG moment! We're not sure what song we'll be dancing to yet, but I'd love to have some of the lyrics to that song done in this beautiful calligraphy! Deborah - your work is amazing!
Wow, this is such a wonderful and beautiful idea! My FI and I are writing our own ceremony to make it just us and this would be such a wonderful way to remember the ceremony we put together. Thanks!
This is a wonderful idea. My fiance and I decided to compromise on our wedding readings and do two of them, because he is Christian and I am not. Thus, we are doing one Bible reading and one reading that really speaks to us both, because it is about two individuals becoming one, and we feel that is a concept that transcends religion. It is an excerpt from the author Louis de Bernières.
"Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two."
What a wonderful idea! Thanks for being so generous! I would like to have a song "The Book of Love" Peter Gabriel's version--some lines from it in calligraphy...It has so many sweet wonderful verses...but my fiancee' thinks it's a little slow for our first dance. This would be truly special to me!
Suddenly, quietly, you realize that - from this moment forth - you will no longer walk through this life alone. Like a new sun this awareness arises within you, freeing you from fear, opening your life. It is the beginning of love, and the end of all that came before. - Robert Frost
Hi! My fiance and I are getting married on 09.12.09. Two months from today! We will have one reading from the book of Colossians chapter 3 verses 12-17. I understand that this may exceed 12 lines but I would love to have your beautiful handwriting in our bedroom. These verses go as follows..."Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with on another and , if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And about all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." If we could have any part of this done, that would be great! We hope to live this out in our marriage. Thanks!