Map It Out: Another Check Off the Labrador DIY List

Bet you've been wondering where I've been lately? In Busytown, that's where. I started my final semester of classes (yay!), landed a second job (wtf was I thinking?!), and worked near full-time last week at my original job; all while continuing to plan this little wedding of ours.

We are *thisclose* to our 2 month mark and I am about to $hit bricks full of anxiety. No, I'm not being dramatic. My stomach churns just thinking about how little time we have left. But at the same time, I'm soooo ready for the day to be here! Conflicted much?

Somehow during a week full of 64 hours at work, 11 hours of class, and a coed wedding shower (pics soon!), I found the time to crank out our DIY wedding maps! I never really considered maps a priority, but after seeing Mrs. Ballet Flat make it look easy as pie, I decided to give it a try and shocked myself with the result. Here's what I came up with in PowerPoint:

Click on map for more detail!

To be completely honest, I'm no stranger to PowerPoint. Mrs. BF's tutorial was definitely thorough and easy to follow, but I'm also not a beginner. While the logistics were easy to me, it was still a tedious task! It took a few hours here and there to complete (mostly because I'm a perfectionist). Newcomers will have a tougher and longer time with it. But don't be too discouraged! If you have time to play around with it, you'll end up learning and getting better. That's how I learned PP: totally self-taught!

I won't repeat Mrs. BF's steps, but here's a run through of my project from start to finish. First up, the Google map of Savannah! "A" is our ceremony site and "B" is our reception site.


Then I traced the main roads and Savannah River. I added icons to represent event locations and lodging. I found all the icons through Google Images. I tinted them pink by double clicking on the icon, then clicking on "picture", then "recolor".


Here's my first attempt at removing the map in the background. As you can tell from the final map, I changed a few things because they didn't look quite right.


After some serious tweaking (what I spent most of my time on), I had my official map! I added the compass rose and map symbols and steam ship to give it an extra special touch. The title font is "Scriptina" free from Dafont.com and matches our save the dates! The font even coordinates with our invites, which I'll reveal very soon now that they're finished being designed and are on their way to be printed up and shipped out! :D

Our maps are more on the "cutesy" side than the super informative side. But our guests will have our wedding website for more thorough directions plus actual Savannah visitor maps in their OOT bags. I'm just hoping they'll use this map as a supplement that provides a visual pinpoint on where all the festivities will go down!


The perfectionist in me isn't quite happy with them yet. I'm stuck on the title of the map:

"The My Last Name - His Last Name Wedding
Events Map"

I think we're keeping the first line, but I'm not sure that I'm feeling the second part (Event Map). Should I keep it or change it to one of the following? [Poll]

• Event Map
• Events Location Map
• Events & Accommodations Map
  
• Just our names in the first line and "Wedding Events Map" in the second line.
  
• Just use "The My Last Name - His Last Name Wedding" title and that's it.
  
• None of the above. I'm leaving a comment with a suggestion!