Hats Off (or On) to the Groomsmen

The week before the wedding, I was obviously excited about a lot of different things. But I think I was especially looking forward to the rehearsal dinner. We held it at The Claddagh, a really sweet Irish place nearby. I was stoked because of this was the time when Pure Heart and I could celebrate with the very closest of our loved ones in a real informal setting.

To be honest, I was also really excited to give my groomsmen their gifts. I couldn't wait for them to see what we'd come up with. I worked really hard at getting my guys something unique and fun. I also wanted it to be something that 1) just screamed, "Todd's Wedding" and 2) was personalized and 3) was somewhat useful--and not just sit in a drawer.

Early on, I thought the perfect gift would be baseball hats, since I love the game and am often wearing one. I thought that having every guy getting a black hat to match the tuxes would be cool. But, that's not very personalized. So, I then became a boy with an impossible dream: What if I could make a special patch for each hat? However, I asked around and no one had heard of making customized patches.

Online, I only found stores that would make them in big quantities. Most places would only do a minimum of 100. Then I found a company, Stadri Emblems, that actually does a minimum of 12 and for very reasonable prices! Pure Heart and I realized that we would very easily usually use 12. We'd give one to each of the 5 guys: Doug, Marc, Josh, Jeff and Chad. And then, we could use the rest as gifts for our dads, for my super nephew (we put his on a very cute baby John Deere hat) and for the reception emcee. That left three patches: One for each of us and one for a wedding scrapbook.

And so, the dream came true.

First, I searched for every guy's favorite team in a black hat. That's not so easy. Of course, the Sox hats were a piece of cake. But finding black Cubs and Indians hats proved harder. I actually had given up on getting Marc a Cubs hat (mainly on principle, actually) until I found this really sweet black hat with a silver "C". The Indians hat was a nightmare. Since their color is Navy Blue, they just make no black hats. I finally found one on e-Bay.

Then, I started drawing sketches for the patch. I probably drew about a dozen different designs and finally went with an idea of featuring the groomsmen's red vests. Happy with one design, I sent in my order and gave Stadri my pencil sketch. They reviewed it and sent me back an artist's rendering of what I'd submitted:


Seeing it in this form, I really hated it. It wasn't their fault at all. I just didn't like my drawing of the vest. I was going for classy and clean. I got cartoon. Can't you just see Barney Rubble wearing that vest? Anyway, I didn't know how to fix it. I actually broke down and asked Designer Doug for help. He said the arm curves were the problem. They made it look silly. If I went with a straight, angular design, he said, I'd probably be happier. He was right. I looked online at tux vests, fired up my Pagemaker, and drew a more linear vest. I liked the new vest so much, that I made it bigger on the patch. This is the sketch sent back to Stadri:

That's more like it. I was really happy with that. Stadri did their magic, and I got back this:

I was super proud of those patches. The day they came in, I ran around the office showing them to people like a little kid proud of his first drawing. The next step was to iron them onto all the hats.

The ironing went fine until I got to Best Man Doug's hat. Here's what I didn't notice: While most of the hats had cloth adjustment bands, Doug's did not. His was the old plastic variety. So, I am ironing his hat with no cares in the world when I lift the iron up...and it won't move. It seemed to somehow be glued to the ironing board. Weird. That's when I figured it out: I'd melted the plastic strip to the ironing board. The hat was ruined. The iron was full of melted plastic. I panicked.

My first thought was that I needed to salvage this patch since I only had so many. I carefully peeled the hot patch from the hat and laid it aside, hoping I could re-apply it to a new Indians hat for Doug. But there's the rub: How was I going to find a new black Indians hat in less than a week? There was no way. It'd taken me forever--and e-Bay--to find the first one!

So I consulted Pure Heart. I asked her if she thought she could remove the melted strap and sew on another if I were to find a hat with a black adjuster band that I could steal. She inspected it and said it wouldn't be hard at all. And so, I went shopping. It's amazing how few hats have the plastic adjustable band anymore. After trying a few stores, I went to Wal-Mart, home of the cheap trucker hats. I finally found one for $5 that had a perfect band. I thought it's logo was especially fitting:


I ripped the band off the back and Pure Heart sewed it on. I was then able to re-iron--very carefully--the patch onto the rare Indians hat. When I gave it to Best Man Doug, he couldn't even tell that we'd done major surgery on it!

With that near-crisis behind me, I gave the guys their hats, we wore them in style at the reception and they even starred in one of my favorite candid reception shots by our friend Laura: