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Mrs. Tomato Mrs. Tomato, Napa Valley Age and Occupation: 25, Technology Project Manager Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Engineer Engagement Date: October 22, 2006 Wedding Date: July 1, 2007 Blogging Since: May 1, 2006 Venue: Auberge du Soleil About Me: I love all things beautiful. From handmade stationery, feminine fashion and delicate flowers to the little moments in your life treasured with your loved one. I am also notorious among my friends to be a deal hunter! My best deal was perhaps my Monique Lhuillier dress for $1100 (orig. $5000). I also tend to use a lot of exclamation marks! =)
 
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Mrs. Tomato, Napa Valley Age and Occupation: 25, Technology Project Manager Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Engineer Engagement Date: October 22, 2006 Wedding Date: July 1, 2007 Blogging Since: May 1, 2006 Venue: Auberge du Soleil About Me: I love all things beautiful. From handmade stationery, feminine fashion and delicate flowers to the little moments in your life treasured with your loved one. I am also notorious among my friends to be a deal hunter! My best deal was perhaps my Monique Lhuillier dress for $1100 (orig. $5000). I also tend to use a lot of exclamation marks! =)
About Mrs. Tomato

Done With Invitations!

May 2nd, 2007 @ 2:35 pm by Mrs. Tomato

….well, the NorCal ones at least. ~60 more to go for SoCal.

I was commenting to Mr. Tomato the other day that “I hope people will understand the significance of the individual components of the invitations.” He gave me a blank look. Uh oh.

“They have significance?” he asked.

So I have decided to post and explain what each component stands for, so all my labor is not disposed within 10 seconds by the receiver.

Here is my labor of love (heh) for the past six weeks…the wedding invitation!

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Edwardian Script and Felix Titling font (I’m all about combining style and practicality). “True Blue” stamp (I wanted something whimsical) in the upper right hand corner.

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Gold “Love” wax seal to convey elegance.

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Vellum envelope tied with a pale yellow ribbon. Pale yellow and peachish-pink are the wedding colors, which are supposed to convey warmth and the sunset (after all, our venue, Auberge du Soleil, means “Inn of the Sun”). I’m a perfectionist so I must have tied and retied those things for I don’t know how long…I wanted the bows and ends to be near equal length. By the way, that ribbon was going to cost me $156 at Ribbonerie in SF!!! (Don’t worry, I bought much less and ended up spending around $30). Whew.

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Vellum cover with gold leaf motif…the gold here ties in with the gold wax seal…both are supposed to convey elegance. The gold leaves are supposed to give the upscale country feel of Auberge/Napa Valley (where the wedding is to be held).

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“The Strongest and Sweetest songs yet remain to be Sung.” -Whitman. (quote on upper right hand corner)

Whitman is perhaps my favorite poet… Mr. Tomato often jokes that I’d probably run off with him if he was still alive. I engraved this quote on Mr. Tomato’s silver necklace when we first started dating…it symbolizes that the strongest and sweetest part of our relationship is yet to come (which has continued to prove true!).

I hand drew the two flower branches. They symbolize two souls joining at one (see where they touch at the bottom?). OKAY JUST KIDDING–I just made that up (this is why I was an English major). I drew the branches because I wanted something to go with the gold leaf motif, and got the idea from the flower branches Mr. Tomato buys every so often to stick in his vase at home. Each card was painstakingly colored in. Peachish-pink flowers to go with the wedding colors, and gold leaves to go with the vellum. Was it worth it? I have no idea. You tell me.

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Pale yellow (again, wedding color) RSVP card is enclosed in a vellum envelope.

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“We hope you can share this day with us.” blush01

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Inside, the guest finds an RSVP code. Mr. Tomato spent two weeks coding an online reservation system on our wedding website and it’s great! We’ll be saving money in postage. Guests can also find more wedding info (address, dress code, etc) on our website.

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Inside the invitation. Simple and sweet, just the way I like it - I wanted to create something easy for people to read.

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Mr. Tomato thought it’d be awesome if I signed the back of each invitation with my name. So I did.

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SIX WEEKENDS TO MAKE INVITATIONS…WAS IT WORTH IT?

I kinda knew what I was getting myself into. After all, I made wedding invitations for my friends before so I knew the cost of labor was going to be tremendous. But this was one way for me to personalize our wedding. Our wedding is going to be small, and I wanted the intimacy to come through with handmade cards. Still, from every experience I learn something new…

THINGS I LEARNED

-If you are making invitations just to save money, think again. There are so many economical options out there nowadays–including Costco.

-Never feed a hand torn edge into a printer. It will print crooked, again and again.

-However, if you insist on having the “torn edge look” (as I did) then try hand feeding. The chances of crooked printing diminishes greatly.

-For the most painless route, select plain card stock as your paper. Printing on slippery, shimmery paper is a bad idea–the home printer doesn’t grip it very well.

-Kinko’s won’t print anything smaller than 8.5 x 11.

-Never think you are done until you are actually done. We thought we’d be done in two weeks. Look where that got us.

Good luck!

19 Responses to “Done With Invitations!”

1.
07hawaii says:

we hand assembled our boxed invitations for our destination wedding…that is, we are still assembling them. entire last weekend was spent on just the clear labels and address labels on all of our pieces! then there’s the assembly of all of the inserts,a sash on each invite, a starfish, bubblewrap, and clear mailer. i want them out this weekend…but realistically before the postage hike!

2.
Miss Snow Pea says:

Wow Miss Tomato, that really is thought out! You’re my kinda gal! They are beautiful. You did put alot of work into them and they show. The hand drawn flower branches are lovely.

3.
Miss Emerald says:

Wowza! Those look amazing!! I totally agree with you about the DIY invitation route not necessarily being cheaper =/

And BTW, your venue looks ridiculous… I mean ridiculously FABULOUS!! Sooo jealous… *sigh* =)

4.
n says:

wow you really did so much work! i have been told that wax seals get eaten up by the post office machines, but am i wrong? also, it does not sound that small of a wedding, if you’re sending 60 to so-cal…

5.
EG says:

Beautiful!! I would love to receive that in the mail!

6.
thistleorchid says:

Can you tell us where you got that vellum? I’ve been looking and looking for a selection of printed vellums at a reasonable rate to make an inner wrap for my invitations, and beyond what I found at Michaels, I haven’t found much of anything online (well some, but mostly ugly decorations).

Perhaps others might be excited to know where you got your supplies and ultimate cost?

7.
Mrs. Butterfly says:

this may be asking too much, but i think it would be LOVELY if you could list out all your materials, costs, and detailed instructions. IF you can and IF you have the time. i just think so many people would benefit from it because your invites are beauuuuutiful!

8.
Miss Tomato says:

Hi all!
I wanted to answer a few questions…

to n’s comment,
the SoCal invitations are for a reception we’re having down there two days after our Napa ceremony/reception (which we’re only inviting about 65 people).

to thistleorchid’s comment,
I ordered the outer envelope, notecard envelope and vellum paper from envelopemall.com and they’re great! It came on time and I found their prices to be way cheaper than the local stationer/art store in my area (esp when you buy in bulk!).

Link to the vellum paper:
http://www.envelopemall.com/detail.aspx?ID=358

My RSVP card and envelope came from Paper Source.

The notecard itself came from Aaron Brothers art/framing store.

My ultimate cost was about $120 to create my invitations (for the notecards, envelopes, vellum paper, RSVP cards/envelopes).

Hope that helps!

9.
Miss Tulip says:

You’re invitations are beautiful! Mine are DIY sort-of…I designed them in InDesign, and the grape leaf came from Illustrator.

But yours are AWESOME!

10.
Vero says:

Miss Tomato, Can you tell us if your website is something that you and Mr. Tomato build yourself … or is it done through those wedding website such as eweddings.com

11.
Manda says:

They are beautiful.

Kinkos can print (and should) on anything as small as 4.25×5.5, just bring extra since smaller things jam in the machines. They can print black ink on things as small as placecards too, it just takes a little longer as we have to do each individually. .

People may not grasp all the meaning, but they will appreciate the beauty!

12.
JenChen says:

I totally know what you mean about printing crooked!!!! OMG! I had to handfeed my printer too so it wouldn’t be so crooked. It was sad. haha. Some of the invites still ended up slightly croooked… but hopefully no one can really tell!

13.
gracielou says:

Miss Tomato — JEN! i know you! can’t believe it’s been 5 years since i was back int the pv! admittedly, yes, i still read weddingbee even though i’ve been married for almost 2 years :) my husband says it’s like my crack. true. hope you’re doing well and congrats!

14.
twelvetigers says:

If it’s any consolation for all that hard wwork, I’d be very very imressed to recieve such a thought-out and meticulous invitation. I’d be dying to see what wonderful things would be at the wedding itself, if those are just the invites!

15.
Iris says:

Turned out nice. Glad you made the point that DIY invites are not necessarily a money saver. Now I don’t feel so bad that I picked something out of a catalog.

You got all that stuff in the envelope under a one-ounce 39-cent stamp? Wow. And even if it took longer than expected, at least you beat the 5/14 postage hike!

16.
Tiffany says:

Teehee! Walt Whitman was slightly homosexual. I don’t think he would have run off with you even if you wanted to! :D Maybe you can tell Mr. Tomato that next time and see what he says.

17.
Tea says:

the effort was well worth it for those invites. they are amazing!

18.
kanipark says:

wow… your invites look beautiful… and i personally save all invitations :)

19.
Annie says:

i LOVE your invitations.. love whitman too!


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