- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee Blog
As promised, here are pictures of my tri-lingual invitations. They are far from perfect, but they represent the merging of two families and three cultures… and I hope that our non-English speaking guests will feel extra welcome to receive the invitations in their native language.
The outer envelope. The labels were created on QuarkXpress, then printed on 8.5″x11″ full label paper from Staples, then cut.
The fully-assembled invitation: (I have to admit I love the frog button… we super-glued each and every one of them!)
What you see when you open the bottom flap:
The entire invitation, opened up. The middle section is English, left is Korean, and right is Chinese (all last names and dates have been blurred out).
Some detail shots. Notice the little Swarovski crystal on top of the English portion… I got them from a fabric store and hand-ironed each one of them onto the cardstock.
Details of the directions, accommodations, and RSVP cards:
To save money on postage, we decided to use an online RSVP system. After all, Mr. Peony and I are both computer geeks… we couldn’t have it any other way.
Here are some shots of our wedding website, which we created from scratch. I designed it and Mr. Peony helped code the RSVP system using PHP and MySQL.
When you go to the RSVP page, you are prompted to enter your invitation code:
This code, which I included on the invitation’s RSVP card, is user-specific so that when a guest enters a valid code, they are greeted with:
Welcome, [name here]!
Currently, our records indicate you have not stated whether or not you will be attending the wedding.
To change this, change the selection below and click submit below.
Once they submit their RSVP, both Mr. Peony and I receive an email stating so. Guests also have the option to return and change their RSVP response, and when they do, their customized greeting changes to indicate so. For example, if a guest has already RSVP’ed “yes” they will get the following message:
Welcome, [name here]!
Currently, our records indicate you will be attending the wedding.
To change this, change the selection below and click submit below.
After months of working on the invites, I was so happy to finally mail them. And I have to admit I was very excited when I received my first RSVP email!
why do you hate your invites again? i friggin love em peony!
i’m in utter AWE. love them!!! they’re absolutely beautiful!
OMG!! These are AWESOME!!! I especially love the frog button!! And individually ironed crystals? — you are hard-core, woman!! Bravo!! You should be extremely proud of these!
Miss Peony, your invitations are beautiful!
I know you have had a tough time with them, but each and every detail was done to elegantly and I hope your guests appreciate you and your fiance’s effort as much as the readers of weddingbee loved reading about them!
Hi, Did you do these yourself? What program did you use for the Chinese portion of the invite?? Love it!
Your invites and website are beautiful. All your hard work shows. How exciting! I’m so impressed by everything
The invitations are gorgeous, as is your website! I think it’s so neat that you have your website greet each guest by name. However, your greeting seems a little cold to me…”our records indicate” makes me think of dealing with the DMV or electric company, not a wedding. I think a friendlier greeting, like “we’re eager to know if you’ll be joining us, so please click the appropriate box…” or “we’re excited that you intend to join us for our wedding, but if you need to change this…”
It’s a small thing, I know, but it just jumped out at me. Otherwise, I think you’ve done a fantastic job!
These came out GREAT!
Yeah to second, yum, how did you do the Chinese text?
Gorgeous! WHERE did you find the frog buttons?? I looked all over for them and could not find any that didn’t cost $3 apiece.
I LOVE your invitations! Mine are bilingual (French & English) and I had a hard time with my mom dealing w/ the wording. It was totally stressful, and I’m still annoyed. My invitations are being printed as I type, but you should feel GREAT about yours, they are fabulous!
Miss Peony, I think they’re absolutely beautiful! If I received an invitation like that, I would be completely awestruck!
Wow! Those are absolutely gorgeous! How can you not like them? I only did a bilingual one and it took forever. I don’t know how you did that one because I know the cutting part must have been the biggest pain!
VERY impressive! Not only beautiful, but very organized and chock full of information! Your guests will be floored! And touched that you and FI took the time to incorporate all cultures 
They are beautiful! You did a wonderful job. I can tell you put tons of effort into them! I love the button detail too.
Everything about this post—the website, the physical invitations, and the thought/consideration you put into everything—is absolutely stunning. Your guests are going to be blown away.
These are amazing!! I am truly blown away. Makes my basic ivory ones look super boring. Just one question that apparently everyone knows the answer to but me…how do I make a map like that to include with my invitations? I’m not finding any good mapping ideas but everyone seems to be using them. Help!
Great job! I hope you can now see them through our TOTALLY IMPRESSED eyes. I know your guests will be really thrilled to receive such a personal and detailed invite. Brava, brava!!
I am blown away! They are beautiful and YES! VERY Perfect!
Thank you everyone for your kind words. I think one of the reasons I was starting to hate them is because I had to make 250 of them…..it was just so much work!
YUM and Miss Toucan, I used Quark for the Chinese portion. Mr Peony wrote the Chinese in a Word document, then I cut and paste every character individually….because Quark doesn’t have vertical text support (and my version of InDesign didn’t have it either). I then played around with the vertical and horizontal spacing so that it LOOKS to be vertical writing.
H.L. - Good point! I’ll talk to Mr Peony about it tonight.
Jay - I got the frog buttons at http://www.buttons4u.com/ - I ordered a few samples to see which ones would be the best. I ended up going with model #FR090 because it was the thinnest. It was also the flimsiest and therefore harder to work with, but I was afraid thicker buttons would have trouble making it through the postal system.
Once again, thanks everyone!
i too love them! you did such a lovely job!
| Visit our sister sites | eHarmony Online Dating |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
Mrs. Peony, New York Age and Occupation: 27, Marketing Coordinator Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, QA Engineer Engagement Date: June 28, 2007 Wedding Date: April 18, 2008 Venue: The Fountainhead Blogging Since: August 7, 2007 About Me: Both Mr. Peony and I are huge computer nerds, and our conversations usually consist of the latest gadgets, programming languages, and video games. At the same time, I can also be very girly with an obsession with handbags, makeup, and high heels. And art! I've studied studio art extensively, almost majored in art history, and freelance as a web and graphics designer. Mr. Peony and I are having a ball of a time planning a wedding for 250(!) guests, doing our best to infuse our personalities (geeky chic) with the wishes of our very traditional Asian parents.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
Latest Gallery Pics