District Weddings

Today, Julia is popping by to tell us about her invitations. I love her winter motif!

Now that our invites have been mailed and the RSVPs are rolling in, I am so proud to share our invites with the blogosphere.  Hopefully it will serve as inspiration to someone out there just like I was inspired by the many invites on the bridal blogs I read everyday (call me obsessed).

As I have written before in my color post I picked out the envelopes, paper and pocket for the invite shortly after I became engaged.  I was originally inspired by Jessica Lynn’s invite at the Tying the Knot blog. (I highly recommend reading all about her wedding.).  I know that pocket invitations are really “in” nowadays, but I had never seen the Marsupial Koala Pocket.

The ladies at Paper, Rock, Scissor (one of very few places that carry the Marsupial line) were great and sent me free samples of the pouch, envelopes and swatches of paper. I was immediately sold and we were set for several months before we had to start designing the invite. Occasionally, though, I would pull out the samples and start imagining the day when I would have the finished invite in my hands.

Fast forward to October; my fiancé started on the design of the invitation. Yes, I know that many brides are not blessed to have someone in their lives that is a graphic pro, let alone their fiancé, but if I had not, I would have hired someone. Plus, designing the invitations myself was really important to me (especially because I work at an ad agency and creativity is king). There are so many great designers in our city, including many bridal bloggers that have turned it into a business.  So, I highly encourage everyone to be creative.

I set up all of the text and sizes in PowerPoint and then gave it to my fiancé with some inspiration photos.  Now I have to admit that I actually started the invite in PowerPoint the morning after my engagement because I was just so excited.  It actually turned into a blessing because I got to research different wordings and take my time.

The invite he designed was truly unique. See the pictures below. And when it was printed on the sparkly paper, the pop of blue on the tree just made everything look perfect. As Rachel Zoe says, “I die!”

The last element was not really thought about until practically the last minute; the stamps. One of bridesmaids and I were talking about the invites and she said that her friend had used www.stamps.com to design a custom stamp (yes, I know these are all the rage, but I originally was not into them) and uploaded a picture of their dog.  Now, that got my attention! And it was the perfect way to incorporate our energetic dog, who cannot be part of the wedding.

After about 2 weeks of working on the invites: printing all of the envelopes using my home printer (I won’t elaborate on that nightmare here), inserting everything into the pockets, stamping the return address (I designed the stamp and ordered from www.simonstamp.com) on the envelope and RSVP envelope, using double-stick tape to adhere the invite to the front of the pocket and sticking on the stamps, they were ready to be mailed. Phew! The day I went to the post office and mailed them, the wedding felt official. It really was a defining moment in the wedding planning process.

And lastly, I have to share 3 major lessons learned:

1) I should have just paid for someone to do calligraphy on the outside envelopes. I bought the most amazing font, Nelly but my printer ended up eating so many envelopes I had to pay for more. It would have actually had been cheaper to pay someone. Of course, I originally thought I was going to save money.

2) I used the great advice from fellow bloggers about putting an invisible number on the back of each RSVP card. So, in case someone did not write their name, you could figure out who they were. Check it out here.

3) To get the stamp straight and perfect on the back of the envelope and RSVP envelope, I made myself a jig from cardboard. I highly recommend testing this, as you cannot possibly free hand each stamp and get everyone straight.