Wedding 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!
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Share this post: Invites & Website
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!
Ahhhh… SUCH a labor of love!! I’m sure your guests will realize all the time and effort you put into them… YAY! =)
Miss Peony it’s gorgeous I love the invitations. I thought Quark and Indesign version should have the vertical text support. you should have probably done the Chinese part on illustrator or photoshop I’m sure there is vertical text support for those two version. Again it’s so beautiful.
that’s alot of work n you can totally tell from the product….do you have a price breakdown?
I love your invites! I think the trifold portion was beautifully done.
Wow! Your invites are gorgeous! You did an awesome job.
I just love these! I’m curious about what font you used (the more plain one)… it’s gorgeous!
Seriously, these are awesome. I would be so excited to get one in the mail. And then get to go online and look at your pretty pictures and website. Plus its so thorough, informative, organized and most importantly… its pretty.
Wowzers, how did you get these chinese characters into Word in the first place?
Miss Peony, I think your invitations are so amazing. You clearly put a lot of time and effort into them and it shows– they are gorgeous and I have no doubt your guests will be in awe!
Someone else used the word “awestruck”, and I totally agree! It’s so impressive to see all the parts opening out like that…. And everything is so beautiful/classy to boot. We labored mightily over a MUCH simpler design and only 65 invites, so I can’t imagine all the work that went into these!
miss P, those are amazing!
as a fellow site-from-scratch bride, i totally understand your excitement over RSVP notifications. i’m also completely addicted to my Google Analytics webstats.
OMG! Seriously, I can’t do much except echo what everyone else has heard. Did you make the pocket folders by hand too? If not, where did you get them? It’s not too late for me to rethink things! Wow!
YOU BITCH!!! Thesee invitations are freaken amazing, and I can’t believe you did all that!! Looks professional!!!! Even your RSVP looks awesome!
Thank you so, so much for posting pictures of your invites. I had been stressing because I’m going to go through the trouble of inventing trilingual invitations myself (in fact, I’m Korean and my SO is Chinese…so we’re in the exact same boat as you!). I was so stressed out because it seemed like an impossible task but just looking at your photos gave me plenty of inspiration and at least gave me hope that these are possible…though I have no idea if we’re going to be able to make ours look as beautiful as yours. Please don’t second guess your handiwork. Take it from someone who’s very picky herself - I wouldn’t change a single thing about them if they were my own. <3
i am sure that no one will notice, but there’s a minor typo…..you spelled “accommodations” wrong….this is just a lesson for everyone else to DOUBLE CHECK and then spell check and then have everyone else check the spelling on your invites before printing out…..
Wow, they are amazing! Must have taken you ages…
And I love the website. We have one of those too
Your invitations are amazing! They look like a lot of work, but well worth it. What font did you use for your names?
Hi Miss Peony,
I love the look of your invites. I was just wondering how those older guests that may not have access to a computer will RSVP? Did you give them the option to send RSVPs by post?
I was just wondering - did you know that you misspelled accommodations on your invite? If so, are you freaking out? I think we’re both perfectionists and I know it would bother me.
How did you get your website looking so beautiful?! I am in the process of designing my own website and would love to know what program you used…
Thanks!
You’re invitations are so beautiful! Such a great idea with the website also! I’ve been looking all over for those invites folders. can you share where you bought those from? Thanks!!!
I didn’t see the 3 panel pocketfold on Card and Pockets.com. Where did you get those from? I’m actually looking for a two panel one.
[...] know I am very late (sorry!) but here are the details and breakdown for my invitations. Here is a snapshot of the finished product for [...]
Mrs Peony - is there any way you still have your original document for your korean invitation portion? Thanks!
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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.
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