Weddingbee Blog

Thank you for the warm responses on our invitation post! The Mr and I had huge smiles on our faces while we read everyone’s super sweet comments. It made all our hard work totally worth it. And now, we’re ready to share the details. There were so many elements to our invitation suite, so I’ll try my best to lay things out as clearly as possible. But if you have any questions, feel free to send them my way!

Each part of the invitation was designed in Adobe Illustrator.

One-by-one, as I finished the designs, I would send them to Bridesmaid Hojo for clean-up (much like she did with our Save the Dates). She’d also let me know if something was drastically funky or out of place. Afterward, she pulled everything into Adobe InDesign and sent the files to me print-ready. She even added these neat little crosses on the corner of the pages to indicate where the paper should be cut, otherwise known as crop marks.

FONTS: All fonts were downloaded from dafont.com and fonts101.com.

• Non-cursive print: SavingsBond
• Cursive print: Prose Script S Si
• Map text: Sue Ellen Francis
• Outer envelope text: Miss Brooks

MAIN INVITATION

Creating the main invitation was a walk in the park (compared to the rest). More time was spent on wording and deciding how much information to include. Initially, I included the locale of the ceremony and reception, which made the wording bottom heavy and created an off-centered look. This is how the tri-fold was born. We decided to leave out the specifics on the main invitation, and include this information within the tri-fold.

1. I purchased the vector image from iStockphoto with leftover credit I had from past projects. I typed in ‘ornamental wallpaper’ as my search criteria and went with this one because of the hibiscus looking flower in the pattern. After that, it was just a matter of deleting portions of the wallpaper to create what you see above.
2. The hibiscus was downloaded from iStockphoto as well. I went a little nuts downloading images, not knowing exactly where they’d be used. This particular hibiscus was taken from a montage of sea elements. I only used the hibiscus and a couple other images for map icons, which probably didn’t justify the 25 credit purchase.

TRI-FOLD

Final tri-fold dimensions: 6.5 (height) x 13.5 (width).

It’s hard to offer any techniques on creating the design, because most of this resulted from trial and error in Illustrator. Basically, I grabbed any free (vectorjungle, hello!) or cheap (1 credit from iStockphoto) vectors I could get my hands on, and used the pen and direction selection tool in Illustrator to drag points around until it morphed into whatever shape I was trying to achieve. For instance, I copied the water from the top-left vector into the tri-fold cover, and used the drinks on the top-right vector as an icon on the reply card, etc. You get the picture.

All of the images above are free vectors downloaded from Vector Jungle.

The second page details the wedding events and hotel block information. We scaled back on hotel block specifics, and instead, directed them to our wedding website for detailed information.

Here’s a closer look at the map. The map, by far, is my favorite part! I loved making it. Again, I found each of those images online either from iStockphoto or Vector Jungle. To create the outline of Oahu, like many others, I copied a screen capture of a Google map into Illustrator, and traced the edges using the pen tool.

REPLY CARD

I picked a couple pictures from past vacations, and used this tutorial to apply the sepia coloring effect to each. Then, I followed this tutorial to create the block letters with the images inside.

On a side note, we’ve gotten a handful of reply cards, and one issue we’re finding is that some guests check the boxes, fill in all the blanks, but neglect to include their name. We’ve figured out most of the Jane and John Does, but it did make me rethink what we could’ve done to prevent this oversight. Maybe we could’ve made the text larger or used different wording…. eh… you live and you learn!

BELLY BAND

Onto the belly band! Are you still with me?

Making the Luggage Tags

1. The belly band held all invitation pieces together. The passport stamp was Goccoed onto one luggage tag, and the other was scrap paper from our envelope liner mini-project.
2. We (we meaning Mr Piglet) cut the 8.5×11 vellum sheets into three even strips. We used Tombow adhesive to adhere the two pieces together on the back side of the invitations.
3. A craft punch from Michael’s was used to cut out the luggage tags.
4. A couple years back, I bought a Crop-A-Dile when I was making wedding programs for a friend. I ended up going another direction and never had the chance to use it. Until now. And it’s awesome and really simple to use. First off, you punch a hold through the luggage tag with the crop-a-dile.
5. Insert the eyelet into the hole.
6. Adjust the bases on the crop-a-dile based on the eyelet size being used. There are several tutorials on YouTube in case you’re interested.
7. Punch the eyelet
8. And you’re done! Here’s a picture of the front.
9. And the back.
10. We purchased hemp twine, and Cebelia crochet cotton thread from Jo-Ann’s, but ended up returning the hemp twine because it smelt like poo, kinda. Well, to me it did. I didn’t want our guests to open the envelopes to that unwelcoming smell. Luckily, we found some non-smelling twine in the jewelry section at Michaels.
11. The twine and crochet thread was cut in to 25″ pieces. Each piece was folded in half, and inserted into the hole.
12. Take the end pieces, and insert them through the loop, and pull! My instructions blow; hence, the pictures above! Do this for both luggage tags.

Tying it All Together

For this portion, I’ll let the pictures do the talkin’.

CARDSTOCK AND ENVELOPES:

• natural cream linen cardstock 80# (8.5 x 11) - main invites, and reply card
• natural cream linen cardstock 80# (11. x 17) - tri-folds
• vellum blue paper 27# - belly band
• A7 sand specks recycled envelopes - outer envelope
• A1 (4-bar) light yellow envelopes - reply envelope

PRINTING

We used a print shop to digitally print, cut, and score (tri-folds only) our invitations. They were very affordable, and very busy. Each encounter with their staff felt somewhat rushed; and as a result, the quality suffered (and we ended up doing reprints). Despite these bumps in the road, it all worked out in the end!

I’m sure most of you are curious about our invitation costs (as am I). I have most of the receipts, and I will work out the cost breakdown. I was hoping to cut costs by doing these ourselves, but my gut tells me we spent more than we anticipated.

Are any of you in the same boat?