Ok, I’ll just put it out there….I LOVE MY INVITATIONS!!!!!! And obviously, am so excited about them! A friend of mine did a stellar job designing them. She is insanely talented. Now, I have friends/family who read these so I don’t want to put everything out there but here is a little sample of the great work that she has done. My vision was that I wanted it to look like it was hand-painted on there. I want lots of flowers and color—and she did exactly that! Here is a sneak peak:

A sneak peak of our invitations! Aren't they pretty?!

We are working on our enclosure cards now. Once those are done, I will be ordering using cardsandpockets.com, one of the best wedding websites out there. Not only are they inexpensive, the quality is high, the samples ship free, and the customer service is excellent. I emailed their print shop a question over the Thanksgiving holiday and she responded that day! I decided to go the semi-DIY route to save some money. Plus, I’m crafty and have crafty bridesmaids so with some help we can put them all together! I’m so excited to be working with them and can’t wait to see how they turn out! I’ll keep you posted!

Oh man, doesn’t it stink when you find a gem and it’s the only one?  Well, I was at my local TJMaxx looking for some thank you cards to send to the gals who came out to my bridal shower/bachelorette.  I looked and looked and at the last minute found the cutest cards from Graphique.  It’s these two birds sitting on a lovely tree branch so it almost looks like two love birds.  But of course, I only found ten of them.  I wish I could use these through out the wedding process because the cards are just too cute.

As you also remember, I was half struggling with the stamp issue.  Do I buy fancy pants stamps or just get the forever stamp?  So I went to the post office and told the postman that I am looking for ten stamps, I’ll take anything he’s got, it can even be ten random ones.  To my luck, there are forever stamps that look like this:

Boy am I excited!  I may even go out and buy a bunch for the invites!  In case you are wondering, these are called, “The garden of love!”

One of the first things my friends and family would say to me (after congratulations, of course) after Olive Dude and I got engaged was something along the lines of “OMG! I can’t wait to see your Save The Dates/Invites/insert any other printed product or DIY project here.” While this is extremely flattering and I know it was meant as complimentary…it stressed me out. Being a professional graphic designer who has designed collateral for a bunch of friend’s weddings has put me in the spotlight and, therefore, made me nervous that some people might be overly critical of the things I design for my own wedding. Can I admit that ALL of the above might be in my own head? Absolutely. BUT – my Save The Dates are done and I couldn’t be happier with them so I wanted to share my process.

I started by getting inspired. I searched etsy.com’s invites and save the dates and marked down what I liked and didn’t like about each. I picked out 5 “favorites” and sent them over to Olive Dude. In a miraculous moment (lol), we both agreed that we liked the same layout for our magnets. So, my design inspiration was (mostly) found here.

So – I started designing. I always find that the hardest part of ANY design project I’m working on is picking the right font. A font speaks to whether a project is fun, cutesy, girly, uber-professional, etc. I have about 300 fonts saved on my computer. How the heck was I supposed to pick my favorite? I started by going to my favorite site www.dafont.com and entered in the following (using our names, of course) “OLIVE olive DUDE dude AND and &” (Side note – dafont’s fonts are free and I highly recommend trying them out before you embark on making your own save the dates or invites. Even if you aren’t making them yourself – it’s a good basis to get a feel of what you want and most places like etsy or any print shop will download a specific font if you ask them to).

I did this because I figured our names were the focal point of the Save The Date – and once I had those figured out, the rest would fall into place. It’s important to note that when looking at fonts you should look at all uppercase, sentence case, and lowercase. Sometimes things just look better a certain way!

Now, this probably isn’t the norm, but definitely speaks to me being a designer. There are NINE total fonts in our save the dates!

our actual wedding website was in there

Before I sent them off to be printed – I did send to a few friends as well as our parents to get some feedback. They all pretty much the same thing “I love it! It’s totally you!” So – was I stressed about about nothing? Yes. Did it push me to make the best Save The Date I could? Yes. But, at the end of the day, as I am seeing with all things wedding… as long as you stay true to yourself (and your Dude) and don’t worry TOO much … everything will turn out beautiful and exactly how it’s supposed to!

The stamp seems to feel like the finishing touch to any good invitation.  However, I find myself in a predicament.  Whenever I have received invites in the past I think one of two things when I look at the stamp.

1. Geeze, did they really go out and look for these fancy stamps?  What a waste of time.

2. Couldn’t they find a better stamp than the regular forever stamp?

So here I am.  Getting ready to send out my first thank you notes and begin working on sending out our invitations.  What should I do?  Personally, I’ll probably just see what looks kind of neat at the post office, maybe even do a Christmas stamp since by the time the invites go out it will be the season for giving.  It would be neat if there were some beachy stamps just for fun, since our wedding will be on the beach but then I think…is this really something I need to think at all about?  What are your…44…cents?

A friend of mine introduced me to www.agiftfulheart.com and I’ve been in love ever since! From the beginning, Apricot Dude and I knew we wanted to do save the date magnets and as soon as I came across this website, I knew where we would order them from! Personally, I’ve found that they are the most affordable that I’ve seen. They run just $105 for 100 of them, which isn’t bad at all. As an added bonus- this price includes envelopes! Oh, and as another added bonus, they are running a special right now to upgrade your basic white or cream envelopes they come with to color, shimmer envelopes for FREE! (The upgrade is normally $.15 each.) Check out the coral envelopes I’m going to get:

Pretty coral envelopes from agiftfulheart.com

Not only are these a good deal, you can literally customize everything about them. They have a ton of designs to choose from. Once you pick your design, then you can customize the background color, text, font, text color, arrangement of pictures and more. They even have heart shaped magnets too!

Check out samples on their website!

Thought I would share this great website that seems so simple for those looking for some inexpensive magnet save the dates. Let me know if you know of anybody else who has used this site and how they turned out!

I had heard of this site from a friend and thought I would share it! You have the chance to design your very own postage stamp! You can make it match your wedding colors- have the theme of you wedding reflected or just have it monogrammed! You can also pick from many of the great pre-made stamps. They are having a 15% off sale right now as well! www.perfectpostage.com

I think it’s a great idea- but I found these stamps at my local postal office and love them!

You can also make your own stamps at USPS online as well! What do you think about personalized postage? I was not a big fan of them saying “Zazzle.com”. What do you all think?

As a disclaimer: I’m not a HUGE DIY’er but I do try! Like the bridesmaid wine bottles…that was fun! So I came across an idea I just might have to try for my second wedding DIY project. I’m not 100% sure I’m going to do it but it’s too cute to pass up!

We have recently met with a few people about invitations (see upcoming post for details about this). Bottom line is I want our invites to be colorful with lots of flowers on them, just like our reception place will be. I found this idea and thought it would be super cute to try.

Floral invite accent (Photo Courtsey of etsy.com)

It can’t be too expensive. Just need to buy some little silk flowers, rhinestones, hot glue gun and some extra invitations to do some test runs. I’ll let you know if I end up trying it. Just might have to!

What do you think?

Designing my own wedding invites was something that I always planned on doing. And I truly enjoyed doing it! I sort of new what I was looking for before I ever started, which in some ways made it easier (like choosing fonts) but in others more difficult (like finding the perfect decorative element). Here’s the finished product…

After doing the invitations I was on a roll, so I continued with the theme of western fonts and the same decorative element and created a whole wedding stationery including response cards, direction/accommodation cards, wrap around address labels,  thank you notes, rehearsal invites, reserved tables…the list goes on! (Ceremony programs are still to come)

When it came time to print everything I decided to do my research. At the local print shop I asked them about my paper choices – they could special order the type of paper I wanted (recycled brown kraft paper) and envelopes and do the the printing for $$$. I also asked for a quote if they just did the printing and it came out to $$.  I had already looked and priced paper online and knew it was much cheaper that the paper the printer was proposing we use. So being the frugal bride that I am I went ahead and ordered the paper and envelopes online and dropped them off at the printer’s when they arrived. By doing this I saved $200 and got exactly what I was looking for!

I’d love to hear from the Garden…did you DIY your invitations? Are you pleased with the results?

After I got my Epics DVD in the mail, I instantly started working away at my Save the Date’s! We are using the website MagnetStreet.com to design and order our Save the Dates, they had a design that I really liked (they have a TON of options). The template was so incredibly easy to use and it all came together in about an hour, most of that was trying to decide on which photo’s to use!

The next hurdle was trying to decide on Magnets vs. Postcards – I loved the idea of the Magnet and giving our invited a guests a little keepsake to place on their fridge, filing cabinets, etc. But Mr. Honey was against it from the start, so after much deliberation, I gave in and agreed to the postcards! I think they will be a hit, I am just afraid someone is going to receive it jumbled up in their mail mess and think it is junk mail and accidentally throw it away!

All along, I wanted something bright with our wedding colors (Turquoise and Key Lime Green) with lots of pictures of us to send to our guests! With a destination wedding, I was told to mail them out about 8-6 months out. Right now I am at the 8 month mark so I think it’s a good idea to order them and get them mailed out!

So what do ya think? Should I change anything? Honest opinions please!

Sorry for all the blurs...can't be showing all our personal business

Going DIY with our invites was the only option on the table. But, I have to admit, I didn’t really DIY. I had others DIY for me.

I decided that those print-your-own invite kits, just weren’t my thing. They were boring and generic. Not to mention that my printer has since crapped out on me. It couldn’t handle a simple document let alone 100 pieces of card stock.

I gave my graphically inclined maid of honor, who is also my sister, a task to design our invitations and RSVP cards. I gave her a monogram I got for free from the Wedding Chicks, the color scheme and the wording. The rest was up to her.

When she was done and I printed out the file, I was so thrilled with it, I cried.

I sent the file off to FedEx Kinkos for a test print. I wanted to check up on their workmanship before giving them my money. A few hours later, I got a call from Adam who informed me that the test print before the test print had come out very blurry. Turned out, the file was set to 72 dpi. Oh…you mean that’s not high enough? Neither my sister or I knew that {See the tips below for more info}. She redid the invite and it was resent to FedEx.

Despite FedEx being slightly more expensive than Staples, I decided to give them my business based solely on the customer service that I received. It would have been really easy for Adam to print me out a card, have me drive down to the store and then charge me  $1.25 for the blurry print. Instead he worked with me. And, when I finally did the test print, he didn’t charge me for it.

My only problem was when I was stuffing the envelopes, I found two completely blank pieces of cardstock, which I’m assuming got stuck in the printer somehow. Since I was smart enough to order more than I needed, this wasn’t an issue. And I’m not bitchy enough to complain about it.  Since I still have Italian wedding announcements to get printed I might mention it just so they can be on the lookout for a potential problem, but there won’t be any ranting or raving from this customer.

And, without further ado, here are our wedding invitations.

Honestly, the only issue I have in the placement of some commas in the address. I have looked at this a million times and didn’t see them until I printed 110 of them. Everyone else that looked at them missed it too. Ehh…whatever.

The Numbers:

I’m excluding sales tax in this breakdown because sales tax differs in each area.

Design: FREE thanks to my wonderful sister.

You will find that printing places like FedEx are going to charge you per sheet. They may or may not charge you per cut. FedEx only charged you per sheet but do not charge you per cut, whereas Staples does.

110 invitations = 55 sheets (2 invites per page) at $1.24 per sheet = $68.20

110 RSVP post cards = 28 sheets (4 cards per page) at $1.24 per sheet = $34.72

Total: $102.92 plus tax.

That’s 94 cents an invitation. Yes. You read that right 94 cents.

BUT don’t get your budget hopes up too high. You have to send those puppies in something, right?

Greeting card envelopes, 50 to a package = 6.99 x 3 = $20.97.

But, get excited again because by using post cards I have saved myself from buying another $20 worth of envelopes.

For the invites, RSVP cards and envelopes I paid $123.89 plus tax or $1.13 per invitation.

Unfortunately, we’re not done, but there is some savings here as well.

Postage:

$ .44 x 110 = $48.40 for the invitations envelope.

$.28 x 110 = $30.80 for the RSVP cards

Because I used a lightweight card stock for both the invite and the RSVP card, and didn’t embellish them, I was able to use a 44-cent stamp instead of a 64-cent. I also included a piece of paper with our wedsite and the information card given to me by the hotel. The lighter you keep your invitations, the less you will spend in postage. For me, this amounted to about $23 in savings.

Simply by nixing the envelope and using a set of size restrictions, I saved $18 on your RSVP cards.

In total, I saved $41 on postage because I kept my invitations light and simple and provided a post card instead of  a traditional card for the RSVPs

The grand total is: $203.09 or $1.85 per invitation plus tax.

Tips:

The real savings here, came with design. My sister didn’t charge me for her services, whereas other designers will. If you’re lucky enough to have a friend with design skills, just ask if she’d be willing to lend a hand. If you can’t pay her, at least take her out to dinner or tell her to consider it her wedding present to you. If you don’t run in creative circles, put up an ad on Craigslist or at the local colleges looking for some work by design students. Most of these kids have pretty awesome skills with design before stepping into a formal classroom. My sister is completely self-taught (hence the dpi issue). You’d have to pay them, but I’m sure they’d do it for a case of beer……err…..like $50.

Make sure that the file resolution is set to at least 300 dpi or dots per square inch. It basically means how clear your image is. The higher the dpi, the more crisp the image. 72 dpi is fine for web stuff, but is not good for printing. If you are using an amateur, make sure they know what dpi is.

My sister & maid of honor recently sent out invitations to my bridal shower that will take place in mid-July.  The details have been “Top Secret” and completely under wraps.  She is one of the most creative people I know so even though I absolutely hate surprises, I knew I was in good hands.

And boy, was I right?  Last week, I received this cute little invite in the mail & now I am over the moon with excitement! The surprise?  A mad hatter tea party themed shower!

A Mimosa and Bloody Mary bar? Yes, I think so! Don’t mind if I do!

What did you do for your bridal shower?  Who planned it? Did it meet your expectations?

We just mailed out our invitations at the 6 week mark and let me tell you, paying postage sucks. We seriously spent $20 more on postage than we did on our invitation and that includes  not stamping 50% of our response cards and hand delivering the invites to our college friends who won’t be at their homes.

Wait! The Lilacs didn’t stamp response cards? What a wedding sin!

{from usps.com}

We are managing our RSVPs online so we went through our guest list and marked how many stamps we needed for each invitation. For mailed invitations with unstamped response cards we only had to pay 44 cents in postage. For the stamped response cards it came  to 88 cents per invitation. And our hand delivered ones were free of postage!

The people who regularly use the internet and who we believed would not be hung up on tradition received response cards with my email, our online RSVP and and envelope if they really wanted to mail it. Everyone else did get stamped response cards.

I did get a note from my sister (who is IN the wedding) informing me that I should have stamped the response cards and she would mail it anyway. I really hope she RSVPs yes!

Weddings must be what’s keeping the Post Office in business! It’s really hard to trim budgets there, but we did!

Confession time. I have always been “in the loop” about when my bridal shower was going to be. Reason? My sister is away during the summer visiting her boyfriend in another province and so she only comes back home once a month (it’s expensive to go back and forth). Long story short: the date for my bridal shower was set by keeping her visits in mind.

So, it’s not going to be a surprise, but my mother has sworn that I won’t know anything else. Not the games, not the food or anything else. Except, we had this conversation earlier this week:

Mom: “I can’t find any cute shower invitations and I need to send them out next week!”

Me: “What’s wrong with the ones you’ve found?”

Mom: “They’re so generic, fill-in-the-blank type ones.”

Me: “I know just the place to find personalized ones!”

And where do you think I lead her? To Etsy, of course! In which Mom and I agreed together on the invitations we wanted and she customized the wording exactly how she wanted it. Here they are!

From gorgeous Etsy shop JillFrancine, in pale shimmer pink with matching pink envelopes:

Isn’t that just so pretty? We chose brown cardstock as a background and brown font color. Anddd, they offer table numbers, wedding invites, ceremony programs (all at super reasonable prices) — and look these lovelies:

fancy favor boxes! I love the monogram, but I also saw an option that has the same silhouette as the shower invite with the words “thank you” at the bottom. Names and wedding date could also be added for a sweet touch. I’m really considering them as favor boxes for the shower, but my mother is insisting that she and my sister are taking over, and that I am not to know anything more of this shower:

"You need some surprises!" Right.

But at least I scored these gorgeous invites! Yay!

Jill was fabulous to work with — I needed a rush order (remember, Mom’s sending them next week!) and she had 30 of them proofed twice, printed, assembled, and mailed within a day! She even printed out the addresses of our guests and the return address. Now how’s that for service?

So. If you’re planning someone’s shower, or need to drop hints about the kinds of shower invites you’d like (teehee), or if you’re needing anything wedding invitation/ paper related, and you want a recommendation? Go see JillFrancine. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning”, said Emerson. Well… JillFrancine was our good fortune.

Are you somehow involved in your shower’s planning process (even a tiny bit, like me)? Or are you completely in the dark?

Our RSVP deadline is tomorrow. Since we sent the invites, I think I have heard every excuse and scheme under the sun. It has not been a pretty six weeks. I’m not going to go into detail (this is not supposed to be a ranting blog, I had to remind myself), but I do want to share with you our numbers thus far.

Invited: 106

Accepts: 59

Accepts with condition*: 10

Regrets: 13

No answer: 20

Hmm. That makes me think of some of my guests!

*Okay. Let’s talk about the “accepts with condition”, shall we? Part of my family, some of my father’s cousins, have marked “accepts with pleasure” on their RSVP cards, which I received today. On Monday, however, while chatting on the phone with my aunt, it is mentioned that this “accepts with pleasure” is conditional to how their mother, my father’s aunt, feels on the day. She’s elderly and doesn’t have many “good” days. If she’s having a good day, then they would all love to come. But they’re all going — as in all 10 of them — if she’s well, or not coming — as in all 10 of them — if she’s not. Now, I understand that she’s not well. I sympathize. My Nonna isn’t well and she won’t be able to attend the wedding and that breaks my heart. But please. It’s a small wedding. A table of 10 in a small space matters. It isn’t a big 250 people wedding where a table more or a table less won’t make a difference. In an 80 or so people wedding, 10 people less is a lot less people. And it’s a lot less people to have to pay for if they don’t show up, because you can bet the venue is going to charge us if we say they’re coming but they don’t show up. What bothers me the most is that these people have all been married and know how weddings work. You can’t just RSVP a “conditional” yes! So… we’re going to have to call them and say they need to say a definite yes, or a definite no, because we have to let the venue know. That’s just how things work.

Also — 20 people with no replies, one day before the RSVP deadline? I’m guessing most will be regrets. We’ve been pretty surprised at the turnout of the RSVPs, to tell you the truth. People we were sure would be there are part of our regrets — for various reasons.  Like I said, it’s been a tough six weeks.

Do you have any “accepts with condition”? Or, have you had any surprises in your regrets?

My RSVPs are starting to trickle in… and you know what I hear most often from guests about our invitations? “The writing on the envelope is so elegant!” … “I just knew when I saw the calligraphy that something special was inside”, and even “it was so nice to see our names written in such a pretty handwriting amongst all the bills that arrive daily!”  Just goes to show, my $1 per envelope calligraphy investment? Totally worth every penny.

My amazing calligrapher, Kristen, e-mailed me today with her mission. She wants to have the chance to have worked with brides in every state of the USA by the end of 2011. There are 30 states she hasn’t done calligraphy for yet — and so she’s offering to do calligraphy for those brides for free.

See the details here … and just send her an Etsy message to fix it all up. I can’t praise Kristen highly enough for her gorgeous work and attention to detail.

Please let me know if you end up doing this — and spread the word! Every bride deserves pretty envelopes, even ones on a budget

Let’s talk about our invitations. Originally, the plan was to DIY them. I searched for inspiration, and then Mr. Magnolia created a design using Photoshop. We were going to order paper and supplies, and print them out at his work since his job had a super deluxe printer.

… but he changed jobs and very quickly, and we didn’t have time to print them. We had the design, but it wasn’t printed. So I started searching for having our design printed. I looked at having them flat printed, but in the process, fell in love with letterpress. I searched and searched for affordable letterpress (a walking contradiction, right?). Right when I was about to give up, I found Leslie from 4houndsPress. She understood my vision. She was in our budget. It was like a dream come true. After a few weeks of exchanging e-mails and making sure everything was a go, Leslie sent me our gorgeous invitations:

It pains me to blur out the details! From 4houndspress

Close-up of our bird design, letterpressed from 4houndspress

RSVP cards, from the amazing 4houndspress

all courtesy Leslie at 4houndspress

We also had maps made, for a total of 3 pieces. Only the invitations were 2 colors, blush pink and gray, everything else was gray. Did anyone notice the two languages? I had invitations (and consequently, rsvp cards, and maps) printed in French, and also in English. That’s double the amount of plates needed…. and I still got an amazing price for letterpress from Leslie. So if your heart dreams of letterpress, contact her. You won’t be disappointed!

These lovelies arrived last week, at the same time as my envelopes from Kristen:

Calligraphy from Kristen {click for link}

And after stuffing my envelopes yesterday, they are now in the mail as of last night! I can’t believe how early our reception venue requires the head count (end of April for a mid-July wedding) … so our invites had to be sent out now so guests have 4-6 weeks to respond.

I can’t wait for people to start receiving them! I can’t believe that after months and months of establishing an invitation “vision”, that these are now all sent!

Would you consider letterpressed invitations, or calligraphy on your envelopes? What are you doing for invitations?

Ah, the famous list. We drew one up shortly after we got engaged, but since then the “list” has not been revisited. Time to take it out – and finalize it! We have a strict venue person limit, so we have to make sure to not go over it. At the same time, it’s important to invite the “right” guests.

(Source)

Umm, yeah. I wish it was as simple as following a flow chart, LOL.

So many questions! Family we haven’t seen in years… yes or no? My coworkers, who change every year since I’m not “stable” in my job yet… yes or no? Where to cut? Where to add? A list and B list – yes or no?

So, we’ve gone with the “People We are Related To and see Frequently + Close Friends” formula.

Anyone else have trouble with the famous guest list?

Confession: early on in my planning process, I had the hope to do calligraphy on my own wedding envelopes.

Realization: Some things are better left to the pros.

Where to go? Etsy, of course! And I found Kristen, the calligraphy genius with incredibly affordable prices.

I was torn between two fonts:

Holly font.

Anna font.

So I ordered samples, and they arrived last week… and are stunning. Kristen addressed the samples to me using her calligraphy, and my parents, who were home and retrieved the mail, knew right away what this envelope was for. And I think that’s the idea… that our guests will see their names, beautifully written in this gorgeous calligraphy, and know that inside this envelope holds something special. Like our wedding invitation!

I can’t wait to see the final product, and I am so thrilled to have found our calligrapher!

Anyone else have a love for pretty handwriting?

Here’s a funny story for you… well, not so funny at the time.

Two days before the wedding my sweetheart joined me in Florida. On the evening of his arrival I was going over final plans with him and casually showed him the program for the ceremony.  The stationer I picked, the amazing Michele from Blush Paperie, had done an amazing job (and totally affordable!).

He looked at me with horror on his face, “That’s not the Best Man’s last name.”

Wedding Programs from Blush Paperie

Whaaaaaaaat? And yes, there it is. I totally had given Blush Paperie the wrong last name for the best man. How could I be so stupid? Well, when you consider that at the time of putting the wording of the program together I was probably also booking hotel rooms, checking flights, making an appointment for my final dress fitting and chit chatting about plans with my maid of honor, I guess it’s a pretty easy mistake to make.  And then make again during the proofing process. And then not notice when the programs arrive.

I was so heartbroken! I didn’t want to toss the gorgeous programs that matched our gorgeous invites and table numbers. Michele had done such an amazing job with them! They fit so perfectly into the palm leaf fans I had on everyone’s chairs.  So the first thing I did was call Michele, while hyperventilating.

And what a superstar she was… can you believe that in under 24 hours, the day before the wedding, she had a new box of corrected programs delivered to me at the hotel.  And she did it with a smile and a “I totally understand how that happens.”

Moral of my story:

1)  Let your hubs-to-be proof everything even when you think, “I’ve got this one.”

2)  Slow down and breath occasionally.

3)  Pick awesome vendors like Blush Paperie. She really saved the day and I am forever grateful. Sometimes going with a smaller, independent vendor really makes a difference. She didn’t need to look up my file or put me on hold or ask a supervisor. Likety-split she had the new ones printed and set for overnight delivery.

It was enough that the invitations, envelopes, place cards, thank you cards, programs and table cards were lovely and just what I wanted (and really, I can’t say enough that they were amazing quality for the price). But it was unbelievable how far above and beyond the call of duty she went to help correct MY mistake. Thank you!

Mr. Magnolia convinced me a few months ago that we can, in fact, DIY our invitations. The whole thing. Cutting, measuring, aligning, assembling, *designing*…

Violet Dude and I have sent out our Save the Dates, and we are getting a lot of positive feedback (Which we are thrilled about!)  Our theme is “Vintage Baseball” and we knew from the beginning that we wanted to create baseball game ticket save the dates, so I took an old Boston Red Sox ticket (our team!!) and used that as a basis for our design.  We also liked the idea of making them into magnets (people are less likely to lose them, or forget to Save the Date if they have to look at our faces every time they go for a glass of O.J. or a bowl of ice cream!  We are very happy with how they came out! 100% DIY. The total cost was under $30 for 64 magnets. (this included the envelopes, and sheets of magnet paper)

No Rainchecks!

Another thing that has happened recently that I did not have the time to blog about immediately was our invitations.  We worked with Custom Paper Works’ Kate out of Michigan to design us a travel-themed invitation to go with our travel-themed wedding.  Custom Paper Works specializes in passport-styled invitations (among many other beautiful things), primarily for destination weddings, but also for those like us who are travel fanatics.  I found Custom Paper Works back when we first got engaged by doing a Google search for travel themed wedding invitations. Kate’s work immediately grabbed my attention for being wonderfully unique, yet elegant.  I immediately reached out to her to secure a start date for my invites.  That start date came & went in April this year. At that time, Kate and I started work on my charcoal gray & ivory elegant passport invites, and I think she captured exactly what I wanted.  Gorgeous charcoal gray passport invitation with elegant ivory foil printing on the front and ivory inside pages with curvy black print.  Check them out for yourself:

I’d highly recommend Custom Paper Works for anyone going after the same theme as us or planning a destination wedding (and anyone looking for one heck of a designer for other wedding stationery)!

I had taken a few pictures of my wedding invitations – but of course can’t find them now.  I’ll have to pull out the box at some point and snap some photos for you.

As a designer and artist I was pretty set on doing a little bit of DIY with my invites.  But I was doing a very classic wedding, so I needed to have them professionally printed beforehand.

I went to a local boutique invitation company in Bethesda, called Creative Parties.  One of the women sat with me and went through about 10 of those huge (very heavy) binders picking out the perfect color, shape, font, etc (which you will see in Part 2).  The one thing I KNEW I wanted and had to make sure everything worked with – was the pocketfold.  This was probably my favorite part of our invites, and given all of the ‘stuff’ that you send out to people, it was perfect for keeping everything in one place.

I went with something like this, although ours were vertical and not horizontal:

http://www.lcipaper.com/pockets-by-size.html

Are you using pocketfolds or double envelopes to make sure all of the pieces stay together?

I’m one of those girls who actually understands maps, in fact I actually have a map in the map pocket of my driver’s door (old fashioned right?).

I’m starting to feel a need for bridal GPS assistance however. It’s slowly starting to dawn on me how crazy the next 12 months are going to be and how much of a work out my GPS is going to get!

The bulk of wedding preparation will be done from my apartment on the University of Mount Union’s campus. My parents are a 3 hour drive into Pennsylvania and my future in-laws are 30 minutes south. I purchased my dress at the Alfred Angelo store in Boardman, Ohio. Our photographer, my good friend (and crucial planning buddy!) as well as the good bridal shows are all in Cleveland. Thankfully, lots of things can be done online! But sometimes you just have to head to the store for things, and my stores are another 30 minutes away in Canton, Ohio.

My little driving circuit is nothing compared to our nationally (and internationally) diverse guest list. I would love to get a map and put pins on every city where someone will be receiving an invitation! We’re addressing envelopes to every corner of Ohio. Friends and family will also be receiving invitations in 9 different states and one invitation is heading around the globe to Japan!

It’s kind of nice to know that we have so much of the map covered in people who care about us and wish us well in our new life together.

With how scattered my girl friends and family are, I’m going to be planning without a close support system. Thankfully, Lilac Dude and I live in the same building! Are you planning at a great distance from your best support?

The time has come to reveal our lovely wedding invitations. I did a lot of research and put so much thought into our formal invitations. I wanted my personality, as well as Towie Bear’s to shine through our wedding stationery.

Our signature color is Tiffany blue mixed with black and white. The theme is the blending of two cultures and the following image is what we got.

Tiffany blue is definitely the star of the show. However, the black and white create the right balance for such a bright color. Our stationery vendor designed the logo that you see on the middle of the card. The logo was used as the seal of our invitation. We also used the same logo in our video shown on our wedding website.

Inside our wedding invitation, you can see on one side the formal invite and on the right hand side the details of our wedding. Since we have some guests coming from out of town, we decided to add details such accommodations and driving instructions. To save some money, we had our guests RSVP with a postcard that was inserted and pre-stamped on the invitation.

Towie Bear and I had great reviews from our invitations. He likes them because he thinks the left side of the card looks like race tracks. This comment is coming from someone that is passionate about cars and motorcycles. That’s my fiancé!

What inspired you to design your own stationery? I would love to read about how you developed you own wedding invitations.