The Night Before
August 20th, 2008 @ 10:59 am by Mrs. Cupcake
Although I was very, very tempted to make our rehearsal dinner invitations as complicated as humanly possible (an unfortunate personality trait of mine), a wise friend strongly advised me to keep them simple—our guests would never know that I had originally planned on doing a layered invitation with the top layer having rounded corners, and I shouldn’t create more work for myself! Although I’m sure I would have loved the complicated result as well, the less complicated route saved me a lot of time (and sanity) and I was still happy with them.
Our bridal party and close family members received this invitation for the festivities that will be occurring the night before our wedding:
Everything was printed on Stardream Quartz, and I used matching Quartz A7 envelopes. I did not print anything on the envelopes as FMIL Cupcake took care of all the addressing!
Along with the invitation, I included an insert with driving directions and an insert that describes the history of The Ship Inn, where our dinner will be held. The history is on the restaurant’s website and I thought it would be a nice touch, since it is an historic building. Now the guests will have a little insight into the location before they get there.
I wanted the design to complement the color palette for our wedding, but I also wanted these invites to be fun and a little different from everything else our guests have received for our wedding. The wallpaper image that I used for the background was from good ol’ iStock (it was a seamless pattern vector file, and I changed the colors). I like that the damask wallpaper pattern complements the old-fashioned ambiance of the Ship Inn while the bright colors give it some modern flair. The font I used for all pieces is Century Gothic, which is one of my favorite sans serif fonts.
All of the rectangle shapes with rounded corners (which frame all of the copy) are what I had originally intended to make top layers, which would have meant twice the printing, twice the cutting and the additional hassle of corner rounding (no matter how much I love the high-tech corner rounder in my workplace!). Printing everything as one layer did not alter my design at all and it made things lighter for mailing purposes, as well. Hooray for simplifying!
How involved are you getting with your rehearsal dinner invitations? Have you decided to simplify any of your big projects for the sake of your sanity?
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13 Responses to “The Night Before”
did you print them on the office laser printer?
I did an Evite for rehearsal as well… I wanted to do invites… but everyone I told (mom, FI, etc) was like TOO MUCH they know they need to be there… blah blah.. so I felt silly doing it at that point…
@sara: Yes, we have a Canon printer at work that works well with Stardream Papers.
How do you find patterns on istock without overload? I was trying to find a simple floral pattern for my invites, but I had to stop after the first 4,000 results because my eyeballs fell out of my head.
Oh those are soo cute. I love how the stripeys run over the damask. That’s my kinda patten I tell ya!
I let the in-laws handle everything for the rehearsal dinner since they were covering the cost. My SIL made the invites and they went along nicely with my invites. From what I saw they were cute. howvere, she forgot tos end me one so I never got a close look at them. I guess she made some cute jokes about “Being a part of history”. However, I had no idea what anyone was talking about when they would say stuff to me like “Well I want to make sure I get to be a part of history though, right? wink wink.” I was so lost.
Oh I love the Ship Inn…it is literally a hop skip and a jump from my Corporate HQ (On valley creek blvd) Yum, now I’m hungry!
i do a lot of scrapbooking love all you did
@Melissa: iStock can definitely be overwhelming. If I don’t find anything remotely what I’m looking for in the first 10 or so pages, I usually change my search terms to see if that helps to yield better results. I definitely go through A LOT of images to find what I’m looking for usually, but most of the time it’s because I have a clear image in my head of what I’m looking for!
@PrettyKitty: Have you had their desserts? To die for!!!!
Miss Cupcake, your inspiration never ends! Please tell us you’re designing MORE wedding-related items.
PS–I heart Century Gothic too! 
@avd: don’t worry, I’ve been slacking on the blogging because I have been buried under lots more projects that I plan to share with you soon!
[...] also captured a few nice shots of our invitations…. much better than the shots I took a few months [...]
Mrs. Cupcake, Philadelphia
Age and Occupation: 27, Graphic Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Construction Project Manager
Engagement Date: February 10, 2007
Wedding Date: September, 2008
Blogging Since: December 7, 2007
Venue: The Desmond Hotel in Malvern, PA
About Me: Mr. Cupcake and I hit it off at a Halloween party and immediately began a long-distance relationship. After two years, he moved to my neck of the woods, and a year and a half after that, he proposed at the “place we fell in love.” I am a true perfectionist who enjoys designing and creating more work for myself, so wedding planning is my perfect outlet. Mr. Cupcake and I are both old souls, and we hope to weave that aspect of our personalities into our wedding day.
Hah, I made an evite for the rehearsal dinner. We’re just doing pizza and beer with friends in Polebridge, so anything else would have been overkill.