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Pretty Paper: From Our Mailbox to Yours!

If you’ve ever stopped by EA on a Thursday morning, than you know that I’m a huge paper freak!  I could spend hours upon hours in Paper Source; hand me a piece of sumptuous letterpress and I’m in visual and tactile heaven!  So when it came to our wedding and decisions concerning all-things-paper, I was as happy as a pig in slop.

I knew that my Inner Paper Maniac had to have letterpress for our formal invitations, but for our Save the Date Cards, I wanted something more fun and bright – I also realized that I needed to save some major coin on the STDs (don’t you just hate that acronym? ug!) to be able to afford the invitation suite my heart was set on (more on that in a bit!).  I toyed with the idea of a postcard but feared that half of them would either get lost in the mail or get lost in the shuffle of advertising postcards that invade our mailboxes everyday.  Snapfish provided the perfect (affordable, fun, & festive) alternative!  Using a 20% off coupon that I received after signing up for Snapfish discount emails, I created our Save the Dates, choosing a glossy foldover card, placing our favorite engagement shots by Stacy Sodolak in one of the many templates available, and sprucing the design up with our color scheme.  To top the entire package off, I dressed the envelopes up with coordinating ink and a custom return address stamp by Sweet Papery.

std-collage
{Photographs from author’s personal collection}

I was quite pleased with how the entire project turned out, and I felt like the cards really set the festive tone for our wedding!

Now on to the Main Event…

Our invitations.  Le sigh. Needless to say, I loved them!  I did a lot of scouring for affordable (relatively speaking) letterpress and was so glad that I found White Aisle.  Not only are Rebecca and Dade Sokoloff ridiculously talented, but they are genuinely nice people who love what they do.  They also run their business with a very rich philanthropic spirit – their story and business model make you feel really good about giving them your business, which is always such a plus after all those ugly vendor horror stories you hear!

{but back to the goods already!}

While I considered several White Aisle designs,  Vintage just always felt “right.”  For one, the name itself fit right into our theme – and the pattern mirrored the lace pieces on my dress perfectly (one of those details that I’m 100% sure no one noticed but myself, but, you know, still freakin’ cool).  But mainly, Vintage had that elegant vibe without taking itself too seriously.  Rebecca worked with me (and when I saw “worked,” I mean that she promptly answered every single one of my 874 requests / questions / concerns / tweaks with the patience of a saint) to create the perfect color and font combination.  In order to cut down on postage and excess pieces, we ditched the inside envelope and went with a reply postcard instead of the traditional reply card (not sure why I was worried about the Save the Dates being lost but not the RSVP cards…hmmmmm).

The calligraphy – source provided by our fan-freakin’-tastic wedding coordinator Gina Whittington with Clink Events – was the cherry on top of my perfect, pretty paper sundae!

invite-collage
{Photographs from author’s personal collection}

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{Our invite makes a cameo at the wedding – SMS Photography}

Stay tuned later in the week for more pretty paper details!  And this afternoon… A Tour of Our Venue!