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Channeling Your Inner Designer

I’m not a professional designer, but I am among the growing population of brides who plans to create her own wedding invitation suite. It’s more affordable, more personal, and with help from tools like Gocco, it’s actually doable. (If you’re still on the fence about Gocco, just check out these amazing ideas from Cyd. I bought mine from the lovely Amy I. just a few weeks ago, and I can’t wait to start crafting!)

But before I get into invitations, let me tell you about the design decisions that will influence a lot of our DIY projects.

Color Scheme: Obviously color is important. It creates visual unity from the Save the Date you send months before your Wedding Day to the flowers and linens your guests see when they walk into your reception. We chose shades of reds and oranges based on the colors of early fall. Even though we’re getting married on August 28, I think this scheme will perfectly compliment the dark greens and browns of our outdoor venue.

colors

Fonts: Font styles can really help to set the mood for your wedding — be it formal or casual. Script font is, of course, the most traditional choice. Examples include Edwardian Script, Sackers English Script, and Vivaldi. But we wanted to diverge from the conventional. We wanted a font that said celebration, merriment, and casual comfort.

In addition to the fonts in my FontBook (for MacBookPro), I also found a few freebies at dafont.com. (You can also find affordable options at myfonts.com.) First I experimented with a combination of Scriptina and Geosans Light. I also tried Rotis Semi Serif and Gabrielle. But in the end, we chose the combination of Zapfino and Georgia. It helped to see each font with our actual invitation wording and with our full names and monogram.

Monogram: From the beginning, Nick and I knew we wanted to create our own monogram. Here are two great sources for inspiration: For the Modern Bride and BriannaNichole Wedding Monograms. They show some really creative options for layering color and clip art. But because we may customize a magnet with our monogram, we decided to keep it to one color and one opacity. Here are a few that didn’t quite make the cut: monograms

And the one that did:

monogram_en1

We ended up choosing the most simple of them all, but we may try variations, depending on where it’s being used. I just love how the “e” flows into the “n.” So far we’ve used it on our website, and we plan to incorporate it into our invitations. We may also apply it to other items like our favors and guestbook.

Website: Almost every bride and groom have a wedding website these days. It’s a great vehicle for communicating with your guests in a quick and efficient manner. There are plenty of template options out there (Wedding Channel, eWedding, and Wedding Window to name a few, or you could set up a WordPress blog), but I’ve been designing websites for nearly four years, so it was only natural that I wanted to build ours from scratch.

We purchased a URL from Yahoo for $9.95 and bought a one-year hosting plan through IPower for $47.40. Here’s the link: emilynickwedding.com, and a screenshot for your viewing pleasure:

website

Where do you find your design inspiration? Did you come across any unique color or font combinations?

Next up: Our Save the Dates