Mrs. Penguin, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 26, Video & TV Producer/Director/Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I'm a silly mess of a girl who, above all else in this world, LOVES the Spice Girls. I eat sushi at least 3 times a week, and feel guilty about how much it costs the other 4 days a week. I love designer jeans and cheap accessories. I don't like sweets, but I love the UCLA Bruins!
Evolution…
March 4th, 2008 @ 7:05 pm by Mrs. Penguin
Man, I’ve been engaged for a long time. And boy, for this ONE moment in time, I’m so glad. I was cleaning out my “wedding ideas” folder on my desktop and came across the “evolution” of my wedding invitation. I’m sitting alone here in my office, and the first draft ever popped up. I laughed out loud.This first one screams out “Hey, we’re getting married in a Garage!”
This second one was a desperate attempt at meshing up our new monogram. I adapted it from a really great invitation suite I saw in a magazine, but somehow, my lack of design skills couldn’t make it work. Mr. Penguin just about died when I showed this one to him. He said, “You know those letters are backwards right?” I said, “Yeah, it’s called creativity…” Actually, I was wrong, it’s really called “Crap.”
This one was getting there… I abandoned my graphic design skills and just bought an interesting looking flower off of Clipart.com. This design actually went to print a couple of times (the first time I realized the start time for the wedding was completely wrong, but only after I had printed…). I think I would have been happy to stop at this design, but of course, time ticked on, and I developed my love for little birdies…
Here’s where we are to date! I’m pretty happy with this design, and if I become unhappy with it, it’s just about too late to change my mind!
All in all, it’s been one heck of an interesting ride from the original design to the latest. Home Gocco printing gave me a lot of flexibility to be indecisive. I know that if I’d had my invitations professionally printed, I’d probably have waited a lot longer to put the invitations to print, but each printing session has been a great learning experience. I dole out this piece of advice all the time, but I must say, if you’re Gocco’ing your wedding invitations, try not to make it your very first project. Your skill level will definitely improve with every passing project!Has your invitation design dramatically changed over the months or did you pick a design and stick with it?
14 Responses to “Evolution…”
I feel your pain! I just wrote a post entitled “invitation evolution”… great minds think alike 
i’ve gone through about 10 designs before finally deciding. looks great miss penguin.
umm, yeah… i’ve gone through at least 4 iterations (all on my computer, none printed yet)! We are getting married in early fall, so at first i was really into leaf motifs. Until my FH pointed out that the maple leaf i was playing with looked jubilantly canadian (rather than evocative of early fall). I’m playing with a dandelion motif now that I’m really liking. My gocco is in the mail, and yep, I think my invitations are going to be one of my first projects (eep!).
i love the final product, great job! i need to learn this gocco business.
Penguin I really like the third design of the flowers invites you made. I really dig that design however I know the last one was pretty your theme that your setting for. Anyway all of the designs looks awesome. It took me a while to learn how gocco my stuff.
It’s an interesting progression. For me personally I usually build off of what I have (even when it’s terrible). You at least have the courage to throw it aside and start new!
what a great final design! where did you get the graphic for that one? the imagery and fonts strike such a nice balance together.
This was such a cool post. I loved watching the evolution.
Luckily my colleague, who is a designer, has offered to design ours for us
I love the graphics on them. I was looking something very similar on istock, I love that site.
The evolution is increduble! I love your final product. I keep changing my mind about my invites too….It’s the hardest decision for me to make for some reason…
#1 - all the versions look way hot to me. But I have to agree, I love your final best! It’s ubber cute! LUBS!
your invites pushed me to get a gocco. i do hope you know that :p. that’s how awesome they are!
I should share my evolution too (although I think I am still going through it). My first attempt involved a glue stick & a rubber butterfly stamp 
I stuck with it! I briefly waffled on the graphic (we had chops made in Taipei, and because they were included on the STD, the groom’s mother decided we were having a Taiwan-themed wedding. Um, no.) but eventually went right back to my first choice.
And the printing company hated one of my fonts and nagged me to change it, and I ignored them, and I’m glad.
