Wedding Chapel Three. Maryland

The third 'chapel' happens to be an attempt to replicate the actual building, in a vineyard, where the reception was held. It is a beautiful old stone farm building, with a loft space for parties and weddings and such.

This invitation was handmade by the couple, with loads of patience, creativity, and joy, it seems. They used small strips of colorful illustrations from magazines and other sources to create obi-wrapped bundles of paper. The colors they selected evoked the Tuscany-like place they had their ceremony; and were a great contrast with the naive austerity of the printed invitation.

Great imagination to meet a tight budget, and perfect materials for a tinybuilding.

c. 2007

Wedding Chapel Two. San Francisco

This is one of the *gift* chapels for family friends. This invitation is so beautiful-with yummy colors, patterns and textures. I wanted to use the embossed portion as the roof, so the main building turned out sorta large. I added the tiny, tiny outrigger building to soften the scale of the larger 'airplane hanger'; and to add a little tension into the equation.

Nice, huh?!

c. 2006

Wedding Chapel One. San Francisco

This year, a new sub-tradition of the Christmas tinybuildings came into being. My son and his wife asked me to make tinychapels from the wedding invitations of a couple of their friends-as surprise gifts.

They turned out so nice, and it was such a good idea that I backtracked and made them a wedding 'complex' from their invitation. [I should have thought of this myself, right after their 2005 wedding.]

This 'complex' of tinybuildings came about because I wanted to include all the salient facts about their wedding day- the names, date, location- and to attempt to capture the warm feelings and aesthetic tone of the day.

I think the beautiful blue bird on the invitation inspired a tinybuildings 'first'- the arched roofs. Aren't they beautiful?!!!

A nice result from the multiple-buildings format is that they occasionally rearrange the buildings in their place on a living room bookshelf. I hope when they are doing that, it causes them to re-imagine that happy and beautiful day in their lives...