I realized I haven’t posted pictures of our invitations yet! And I wasn’t even paranoid about wedding crashers. Anywho, I really wanted letterpress invitations more than anything else and it was my big splurge. But really, not that bad. I used someone local, Jenny Barry from Press Charming, and I brought in some art nouveau books I’d bought to try and figure out a design. Jenny sent me back so many possibilities and this is what we finally decided on!

We got a 5×7 invitation with a postcard size reply card (saved on postage for the envelope and the reply! One regular 44 cent stamp was enough for the invitation (we liked the king & queen so that worked out) and we used polar bear postcard stamps for the postcards (not my favorite but we didn’t really have an option and the colors didn’t clash).

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I’m a huge admirer of the gorgeous stationery that Heather, the creative genius behind Maida Vale, creates.  Maida Vale has recently relaunched their website and Heather shared some photos of her collection!

{Punctual}

{Bloom}

{Wren}

All of the designs are available in both offset and letterpress printing.  So what are you waiting for? Run and go visit Maida Vale’s new site – full of eye candy galore!

E.

As promised here are some photos of the new Papeterie studio. We are so excited to finally have a place where customers can come and sort through samples, give us their feedback, and interact with us one-on-one to create the perfect stationery item! Our studio is located in Monterey Park, California, about 15 minutes from Downtown Los Angeles. We welcome anyone who is interested in learning more out Papeterie to stop by. You can browse our various products and designs and even see how our antique letterpress works.

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After the church and reception venue were booked and the date was set, it was time to think about our Save the Dates.  Matt and I were talking one night and decided that we wanted to create a map chronicling the paths we each took to find each other and where we are now.  We both went off to college, moved across the country after graduation, and met as two midwestern kids in NYC before getting engaged and moving to Memphis. And now we were planning a wedding in Louisville. Whew.  It wears me out to just write it.  I mentioned our idea on Pretty Bride and soon Laura Hooper came to the rescue.

Our save the dates were a hit!  Now, it was on to invitations. Early on in the process I decided that I wanted us to create the invitations ourselves. Please note that I am not a graphic designer or a craft-maker extraordinaire. However, this seemed like something we could do and a great way to save some money that I could use on something else.

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So now that you’ve seen the fantastic “campaign logo” created us for by ABCD, can you guess what happened after that? As much as I love paper, and as much as Amy loves working with fresh, outside-the-wedding-box visions, we  couldn’t stop our collaboration at the logo. We asked ABCD to design our entire wedding stationery suite, and let me tell you… it was one of the best decisions we made in the entire wedding planning process.

By the time we brought ABCD on board, Trevor and I had already spent a couple of Saturday afternoons flipping through invitation books at stationery stores. Our basic reaction to most of what we saw? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. We needed color and art and whimsy in our invitations, and didn’t see it anywhere. We knew our invitations would set the tone for our wedding, and for a girl who used to spend her allowance on pretty paper, I wanted them to be amazing. We wanted our guests to look at their invitations and know that a mellow, tongue-in-cheek, bursting-with-love, FUN weekend on the Outer Banks awaited them. Design-wise, we needed to strike a fine balance. We wanted our campaign logo to be present, but not be overpowering. We wanted to play on the political theme a bit, but not be too gimmicky. We didn’t want traditional script or calligraphy, but we also didn’t want them to be too modern, either. We wanted a vintage and folk art flair, but also to somehow represent the beach. And we wanted letterpress, but we didn’t want to break the bank. A tall order, right? Amy took it all in stride. Here’s our fabulous stationery suite, as designed by ABCD:

The components of the suite played off each other throughout all of the pieces. We had folk art flowers, a swirl motif that hinted at ocean waves, an old-fashioned typeface along with cleaner fonts, and language that was playfully political. ABCD worked within our budget to find ways to maximize the bang for the buck. And oh, was there bang! The first thing guests saw was our love story, letterpressed on the belly band. Notice the Constitution joke… we couldn’t help ourselves!

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This is Part II of a two part series on my invitations. You can read Part I on the envelopes here.

When it came time to decide on our invitations, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle. I’ve always been into paper and stationery so of course I was going to be picky, but A too had some strong opinions when it came to invitation design. His main concern was with anything too “girly”. He didn’t want tons of flowers (actually he didn’t want any flowers at all) or overly scripted fonts – which was fine because I didn’t either. We also needed an invitation suite that fit into our somewhat unique color scheme of plum, mustard and charcoal gray.

And as with every step of the wedding planning process – budget was a big issue.

We started at our neighborhood Paper Source, which is usually my go-to place for all my papery needs (literally, my paper source. Ha! Moving on…). I had long envied the couples who spent sunny Saturday afternoons curled up by the window at Paper Source, casually flipping through the volumes of invitation samples, pointing and smiling and discussing everything they liked. Unfortunately, that is not the experience we had. Everything we found at Paper Source seemed too cliché. Nothing felt like us. There was very little in our color scheme and to top it all off, it was all pretty pricey.

That’s when I emailed Lynne Johnson at the Inviting Company. I originally asked her to send me some pricing on a particular line she carried. She emailed back and said,

“This is more than a business to me. It is my passion. I am sure once you sit with me and see how I can help you design the perfect invitation that will reflect you, your fiancé and your event you will see this. I do more than just invitations and I will be happy to show you what I can do. Most importantly, I pride myself in working with all budgets. I carry many commercial companies from the high end to the economy brand. HOWEVER, I very rarely sell invitations from the books.

I am a creative stationery designer with a background in fine art, greeting card design, and advertising. I have a great affiliation with a printer in Maine who does all my custom printing and this allows me creative freedom while keeping costs in check. An invitation should reflect the bride and groom and the event they are creating…my invitations are all colors with custom monograms and personalized drawings of things that reflect you.”

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The lovely lady who is designing our wedding invitations emailed me today to start the design process for the invitation suite.  The primary thing she needs to start is the wording, which I initially thought “no problem, I’ll just google ‘invitation wording’ and copy, paste” – boy was I wrong.  First of all, there are SO MANY options out there: casual, formal, church ceremony, dry reception, etc.  Thankfully, I knew exactly what I wanted it to “feel” like, so making choices there wasn’t a struggle.  However, I hadn’t thought at all about the fact that my mom didn’t take my dad’s last name when they got married.  She’s not a raging feminist, she just liked her name and so she kept it (and she doesn’t care at all that I am changing my name when I get married).

To be honest, this is the first time in my life that this has ever really presented a problem for me.  Sure, other people might have been confused, but I always knew my parents were happily married, despite the fact that they didn’t have the same last name, so I never cared what other people thought.  For some reason, now I care.  Do I write:

“Ms. Mom Sassy and Dr. Daddy Cool
request the pleasure of your company…”

or

“Dr. Daddy Cool and Ms. Mom Sassy
request the pleasure of your company…”

or

“Ms. Mom Sassy and
Dr. Daddy Cool
request the pleasure of your company…”

or

“Dr. Daddy Cool and
Ms. Mom Sassy
request the pleasure of your company…”

What are the implications of all of these options above?  I’m pretty sure that separate lines means divorced, but I’m not sure.  And I think in a couple with differing last names the woman is supposed to go first, but, again, not sure…

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At long last, I am finally going to share with you our beautiful letterpress wedding invitations from the one and only Bella Figura. When you’re surrounded by incredible letterpress invitations every day (because I work at Bella Figura, for those who do not know) deciding on your own becomes incredibly difficult. After a couple of months worth of debate, literally, we decided on Keswick, a 7″ square size, in mediterranean and pale gray inks with mediterranean envelope liners. The entire process was incredibly exciting – including hanging out with our printer, Carrie, as she set up the press check – but nothing topped the day I finally got to hold them in my hands. I love love love how they turned out and we will certainly be having a set framed soon.

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Kathy at Merriment Design has outdone herself again!  I adore these fabric-backed invitations with half sewn fabric flowers.  My favorite part is the creative use of patterned fabric to create several unique designs with the same components.

You can find the complete list of supplies and a full tutorial at Merriment Design!

In November EAD held a DIY contest, and E. encouraged me to enter my invitations, still in progress. Oh sure, I said, If I finish them soon! E., I totally did not finish them soon. Ladies- (And gentlemen? If you include DJ and one brother) I finished printing the maps on July 17, the night before we mailed them. Expert procrastinator. Hey E., can I enter now??

They’re a hot Gocco’ed mess of not-a-graphic-designer, but I’m pretty happy with how they came out. I had a fabulous time making them and they have all the pertinent information, so… success!

Whew, I’m back!  It actually happened, I am actually married!  I still can’t believe it.  After 6 and 1/2 years together, and 20 months of engagement, a whirlwind of anticipation, preparation, realization, celebration and recuperation, we are husband and wife.  I couldn’t be happier.

I really can’t wait to share all the details and *amazing* photos with you – but hey, you can’t really “come” to my wedding without an invitation, right?!?  Its about time I shared the thing that kicked off the whole parade……. our invites!  Check it out – our very own Rebekah from EAD did consulting on the design and printing, and we recruited a friend to draw an illustration for us.

The first thing the guests saw when they received their mail, was a jupiter stardream envelope (just like we used for our STDs), with the Ganesha image we are using in lieu of a monogram, printed on front.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of one before send-off, but you get the gist!  Printing them was just easier than handwriting, and we don’t have great handwriting, so we picked a funky font to give off the right vibe from the get-go.

First things first: pockets that I made using sari material from ebay, fabric glue, and pinking shears – easy peasy, and they really upped the glamour of our parcel.  The fabric was gorgeous in person.  I even steeped the fabric (and by ’steeped’ I mean stored the fabric with) chai tea bags, so it smelled exotic and warm!

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I have a serious weakness for vintage stamps on just about anything – but particularly wedding invitations.  I used them to mail my own invitations (you can find a horribly blurry photo on my blog – apologies in advance), E used them for her vow renewal invitations, and I just love the way they add an extra pop of color and personality to the overall invitation.  By now you all know that I’m a firm believer in trying to customize your invitations as much as possible so that they accurately represent you and your wedding style – and vintage stamps offer another opportunity to do just that, whether chosen thematically (like E’s baseball stamps), by color, or even by state.

There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of vintage stamps still available through ebay and local stamp stores, so you can find the perfect stamp for your invitation whether you’re planning a super-formal black-tie wedding or a laid-back wedding in your parents’ backyard:

{E’s vow renewal invitations – from her personal collection}

{photo by liz banfield via ritzy bee}

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