Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Wedding invitations

Dear Shayne,

As my lack of posting would indicate, I haven't been too crafty lately. Amazingly, I think I'm still recovering from our wedding in July. I hope to get back to more frequent crafting soon (especially with Christmas looming).

In the meantime, I realized I still haven't shared many of my wedding crafts here. So let's take a look at our invitations!

After the somewhat crazy Save the Dates I had made, I figured the invitations could be simple. To that end, they were a basic card that I Gocco'd with a design I created and the straightforward "Here's where to be and when" info:
wedding_invites1

One of my favorite parts of the invitations was our RSVP cards -- I spent months scouring Ebay for vintage Toronto postcards. In the end, I found a dealer online and met him at a postcard show outside of Toronto to get the final 30 or so we needed. That was kind of a surreal experience, but fun. I used the Gocco to print our info on the backs:
rsvp_postcards

I cannot remember where I saw this, but I shamelessly stole this idea from a wedding blog I was reading at the time -- the options for attending were "will attend" and "will be there in spirit." I absolutely loved that positive way of saying no.

(It was sooo much fun to get those postcards back in the mail!)

I bought this lovely paper from Paper Source and cut it into strips to make a band for the invites and RSVPs. Also, I used printable vellum sticker paper (side note: totally f'ing cool -- no smudging!) to include our website URL on the band:
wedding_invites3

Here are the individual pieces -- I ended up including a piece of vellum between the postcard and the invite because the ink wouldn't quite dry on some of those vintage postcards and I didn't want brown smudges on the invite. (Cause, um, ew.)
wedding_invites2

Miraculously, I let the Crazy Train pass on through the station without stepping aboard and I did not make our envelopes. Just a standard envelope from Paper Source with a fancy printed label from Stuck labels:
wedding_invites4

I failed a bit with that font -- I liked it because I thought it looked casual-yet-fancy, but I did hear murmurs that some of our invitees felt like I was trying to "cheat" and make it look like I hand-lettered the labels.

For the record: I was never trying to make that claim. There is no flipping way I would try to either a) hand-write my wedding invites or b) even make it look like I did. I fully embrace technology, people!

The return address labels are also printable labels -- these were from Paper Source:
wedding_invites5

I felt a ton of pressure to make these "perfect" and I'm not sure that I achieved that goal, but they got the info across, people seemed to like them, and I am generally happy with how they turned out, so I consider that a success.

(Plus, our wedding was totally awesome, so who cares what the invites looked like, right? Heh.)

love,
kelly

6 comments:

Sutter Schumacher said...

As someone who shamelessly thought her own wedding announcements could not be beat for a simultaneously contemporary/casual/sophisticated style (yeah, it's my one concession to wedding vanity), let me be the first to say I LOVED your invitation, Kelly. And as someone who shamefully couldn't attend the big event, it was a lovely way to vicariously experience your great sense of wedding style.

Shayne said...

The invitations are even more awesome in person. What difference does it make to anyone if you hand-addressed the labels or not? Weirdos.

kelly said...

Sutter -- your wedding announcements were, by far, the loveliest wedding announcements (or invites, or any kind of wedding-related mailing!) I have every seen, so your compliment is much appreciated.

Shayne -- Yeah. I was so surprised when someone made the comment to me, "I see you tried to make it look like you had hand-written these. You almost had me fooled for a minute!" I thought, "I... what now?" So. Weird.

Shayne said...

I should dig out my wedding announcements and post them.

kelly said...

Yes! You should! :)

free printable wedding invitations said...

How lovely!! =)