Sewing, Stamping, Mailing - I'm tired!

I finally got our invites cut out, tied up, stamped twice, sealed, stickered and out the door. Whew! Talk about a time-sucker, but they were worth it. Everyone we've heard back from LOVES the finished product, I'll get some photos of the complete package posted as soon as possible - tomorrow I hope!

Invitations are so important for a wedding, because they are the first impression of how the couple is approaching their big day - which is very helpful to guests when it comes to dress style, general feel of the wedding, etc. I personally am so sick and tired of getting generic, boring invites that speak very little visually. A wedding is a celebration of two souls uniting as one - the ultimate combination of two personalities if you ask me. So why not let your personality and at least a bit of soul flow through the paper goods for your big day? Granted, I have an advantage as a graphic designer - I was able to design and create all of our paper and web goods for our big day myself. But there are always plenty of designers out there (me! me!) who LOVE working with other couples to create the paper suite of their dreams. Hire them. It's worth it.

First impressions also get people excited to attend... believe me.

So far we've had several people RSVP whom I would never expect to get into the spirit of our vintage 40s-meets-USO show wedding. We very prominently displayed the URL for our "wedsite" as a hangtag with the finished invitation suite, directing people there for more info regarding our venues, dress etiquette, etc. Well let me tell you - almost everyone I've heard back from has ALSO included a link or note regarding the fabulous retro outfit that they're planning on wearing to our celebration. Now that's influence... all done through paper goods my friends.

I recently ran across a sweet little design company that specialized in fantastically quirky wedding invitations: Royal Steamline. Again, there are plenty of designers out there who love working with couples from all walks of life - so poke around Etsy or websites such as OffbeatBride and see what you discover. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.

And if anyone out there is thinking about pursuing a custom invitation suite, feel free to give me a ring as well - I'd love to help you create the wedding invitation of your dreams. Paper perfection, I aim to amaze. You can contact me directly via jess@rockinbdesign.com!

Pictures soonly, I promise!

Printed Invites, Ready to Go!

But not quite cut out ;) I'll get there this week...






I decided that I wanted to do cute paper-doll style portraits of us for our invites, that guests can color and cut out themselves if they choose. If I had planned a bit better (or a bit further ahead of time), I would have made a note of this ON the actual invites... oh well. Originally I wanted to do letterpress but that was WAY expensive (heart attack expensive), so I decided to buy a bunch of pretty recycled paper and have them printed up full color by a local printer. I like them WAAAAAY better this way, I about died when they pulled the proof for me at the printer's... they're beautiful. Here are the working files, hopefully I'll have a pic of the finished invites once we get everything put together. I'm proud of these puppies!

Yes, we're both wearing our wedding outfits in the illustrations. I did our portraits in pencil, colored in PS, then did layout in AI. We're having a WWII USO show themed wedding, hence the stars and "softened patriotic" color scheme.

Print Design and All That Jazz

I'm designing all of our print goods for the wedding, as well as designing our 'wedsite' and our favors.

I'm pretty proud of the ideas I've come up with so far, our save-the-dates are completely designed and ready to go - I just have to get started on production as those need to go out NEXT WEEK! I don't even have Ryan's guest list yet, I need to get on him (and my future MIL) about that. Our STD's are going to be done in the style of authentic vintage self-mailing telegrams, I downloaded a template from HERE and then recreated the whole thing in Illustrator to lend my own touches and fonts to the layout - lots of tiny details that no one will probably notice!

I still need to design the stamp we will use to seal them after folding, I think I will do something along the lines of old airmail stamps. I also bought cool airmail envelopes to send them out in. My only beef is that I couldn't find any smaller envelopes, just the Monarch standard. Oh well. We're going to print up the telegrams on recycled gold parchment, and then I will either type in everyone's names and addresses with a typewriter OR just have clear labels printed up in my desired font for placement. The envelopes will definitely be clear labeled, unless I'm feeling extra-industrious.

The website is also almost complete, make sure to stop by for a visit when it's done! The address can be found way down in the footer, I don't feel like typing it in here at the moment. I'm so lazy sometimes.

Invite design has yet to be established, I guess I need to get on top of that too. Gah! So much print design to accomplish very, very soon. I DO plan on hand-lettering the outer envelopes (I heart calligraphy!), I'm thinking those brown kraft paper envelopes with the string closure. I DO have a basic outline for the invites, I'd like to do Ryan and I as paper dolls complete with our wedding outfits. I want them to be pretty simple, just because I don't like the uselessness of all that crap that usually comes stuffed into a wedding invite. We're doing email or phone RSVP's, accessed by a contact form on our website. Yay, no extra money for RSVP postage!

I need to hunt down proper invitation etiquette and enclosure info, just to be sure. But again, I really don't want a bunch of stupid junk in there.