🎄Holidays and Wedding Cranes 💍

A quick update from yours truly!

Hey Gigglers!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah! (Fun fact: Christmas and Hanukkah have fallen on the same day this year! These holidays typically converge an average of five times every century. How cool is that?)

Lately, I’ve been dedicating all my free time to making origami cranes for our wedding. There’s a beautiful Japanese tradition where the bride folds 1,000 origami cranes to display at the wedding—either strung up as a backdrop, arranged at the altar, or framed as a stunning keepsake. Here are some examples of other people’s crane displays to give you an idea of what I mean:

These cranes symbolize good fortune, blessings, health, prosperity, and all the wonderful things you’d want in life and marriage. I love the idea of creating a framed design that represents our relationship and the effort we’ve both put into it.

To make it even more meaningful, we invited our guests (siblings and parents) to take part in this tradition. When we sent out invitations, we included origami paper and encouraged everyone to contribute cranes if they wanted. It’s heartwarming to think that when we look at our thousand red, gold, and silver cranes, each one will have a little piece of our loved ones’ wishes folded into it.

Although the wedding isn’t until May, we hired an artist to create a custom display with the cranes, and they’re due to her in January—cue the mild panic! Until recently, I’d been folding cranes at a leisurely pace. Over the past 11 months, I’d made just 400 cranes. Then I realized I only had two months to fold the remaining 600, so I kicked things into high gear.

Now, I’m folding cranes everywhere—during phone calls at work, first thing in the morning, and all evening after I get home. I take my bag of cranes to family gatherings and even the neighborhood clubhouse. (Everyone there knows about my crane project by now, and they’re very supportive, lol.) Over the past two months, I’ve managed to fold 500 cranes! I’m down to the last 100, and I can’t wait to see the cranes our guests are sending us this week. Here’s my collection of 907 completed cranes at this point:

I’m going a little crazy!

Technically, the cranes aren’t fully folded yet. For the artist’s design, they need to stay in their flattened diamond shape so they can be arranged properly. Once it’s finished, the display is going to be shiny, intricate, and absolutely stunning. I can’t wait to share it with everyone at the reception!

I hope you all have a joyful holiday season filled with love, laughter, and quality time with your families. Thank you for spending another year with me here at The Giggler.

Much love,

Alexa (AKA The Giggler)