The Invites…

Having spent ten years of my life as a Graphic Designer, creating my own wedding invitations was something I both longed for and dreaded. So many ideas, so many possibilities, everyone expecting something fabulous from you – the pressure! But, ultimately, it is really fun and rewarding that I have been able to create so many elements for my wedding myself and in the end, after a week of agony, I am very pleased with how the invites came out.

I knew I wanted to go with a long skinny format (to mail in a #10 business envelope), so that was my starting point. Next I worked on the wording, which may have been the hardest part of all. I wanted to keep it casual and light hearted, but still appropriate and sweet. After many long hours, this is what we ended up with:

Together we laugh, we dream, we love…

…and on this day, we marry.

Because you have shared in their lives by your friendship and love, we invite you to join us as

Nicole and Tyler

exchange their marriage vows

We then included the date (September 12!), time and location and ended with my favorite part: Yard games, merriment, dinner, dancing, sinatra and an overabundance of cake to follow.

And when I say 'overabundance', I really do mean it. For those who have not seen my previous posts, we are having an entire table of cake! Eight different ones to be exact, in six different flavors, each on its own pretty little cake stand, all lovingly baked by two amazing friends. Of course I'll be sharing pictures!

Back to the design, I next focused on the physical format of the piece and, initially, all I knew was that I wanted to somehow stitch the invitations together!

I decided on a little 'booklet'. The back piece was a heavier weight paper with a little 'tab' that wrapped around the front over a lighter weight top sheet. We stitched them together on the sewing machine. And actually, when I say 'we', I mean Tyler - he stitched them all! Ain't he great :)

The invites were printed digitally at a company I used to work for. Digital printing is a good, affordable option for printing in full color. The quality is not as good as when you print on an offset printing press, but the cost is about 1/8 or so in comparison, especially when you only need a small quantity of something.

For the RSVP, I created a small card which included an email address and phone number for responding. Since things are on the casual side, I thought this was an appropriate option. It also saves money on an rsvp envelope and postage, and also saves time.

I designed a wrap around label for the mailing envelope and printed them on my inkjet printer. The return address is on the same label and wraps to the opposite side of the envelope. I found it to be an easy way to print the labels and I really love the look of it.

I ordered the open end #10 envelopes from Paper Presentation, but you can also find a great selection of colors at Paper Source. I ordered full sheets of ivory label stock from Labels by the Sheet where you can also find many other great colors if you are looking for something other than standard white. So what do you think?!

(A big thanks to Luzel over at 'I Do'-it-yourself weddings for sharing my invites! It's one of my favorite blogs and an amazing source for the best handmade wedding goodness!)