This is Not a Dress Rehearsal

This is Not a Dress Rehearsal

February 18th, 2010 @ 3:04 pm by Mrs. Spaniel
Share

The Spaniel-in-laws have been really supportive throughout the wedding planning process, and are throwing us this awesome rehearsal dinner to boot. So last night, Mr. Spaniel and I decided to help them out a bit by throwing together some invitations.

I really wanted to keep the rehearsal dinner vibe fun and festive and colorful, which means I tried to resist the draw to my usual clean, simple aesthetic and not just copy these invitations.

(source)

Even though I really, really wanted to.

Instead, I focused more on invites like these.

(source)

But good intentions are all for naught when your color ink jet runs out of red and yellow inks! “Black and blue” is not exactly our theme for the evening, so I was able to indulge my inner boring invitation girl, and I came up with these.

Without illustrations, these couldn’t have been simpler to make. I created a 4.5×6.5″ document in Word and used the Jane Austen font from Dafont, which I love and have been dying to use for something. I had a lot of leftover blank invitation cards from a previous project (non-wedding related!) that I got from Cards and Pockets that I just threw in the inkjet (my laser printer can’t handle such small paper), and then I used some leftover double-sided tape to get them onto black mats—made from scraps from the programs (which were conveniently 5×11″… now if only I could think of a job for the 5×4″ scraps that are left!).

(personal photo)

The part of these invitations that I got really excited about were the black envelopes. I’d wanted to use black inner envelopes for our wedding invitations with names written in gold, but by the time I thought of it, I’d already printed return addresses onto the cream envelopes and didn’t want to spend any more money. So instead, I addressed the rehearsal dinner invitations in gold ink—an excellent test for the black place cards I plan to make! I used a gold calligraphy pen with a 1.0 mm nib—it was a little thick, actually, but I couldn’t find a finer point.

What did you do for rehearsal dinner invitations?

Tags: rehearsal, stationery |

Share |

Latest Gallery Pics

Hot Pink and White with Zebra 36" Lighted Spandex Ostrich Feather Centerpiece

15 Responses to “This is Not a Dress Rehearsal”

Bee

Miss Lace (message) 702 posts, Busy bee

*sigh* no clue, but we used black envelopes for our invitations and everyone loved how different they were - clean and sophisticated!

2/18/10 @ 3:07 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Pug (message) 3,753 posts, Honey bee

ooh, black envelopes with gold writing–nice! i’m glad you got to incorporate certain elements (austen font, black envelopes) into your rehearsal dinner invites that you hadn’t used otherwise. and great job on the invites–simple but elegant without looking too fussy.

2/18/10 @ 3:13 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Hamster (message) 4,045 posts, Honey bee

OOh, love the black and gold idea. I haven’t even thought of rehearsal dinner invitations yet, ahhh!

2/18/10 @ 3:45 pm (reply)

Member

ladyox (message) 831 posts, Busy bee

A 5″ x 4″ piece of scrap paper can become a 2.5″ x 2″ folded place card - I’m using my leftover invitation scraps to do mine. Just a thought for your leftovers!

My in-laws are handling “marketing” as they call it for the rehearsal dinner. I’m scared.

2/18/10 @ 3:50 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Argyle (message) 2,516 posts, Sugar bee

I haven’t designed them yet, but they’ll have a similar look and feel to our invites, and we’ll probably do them in orange, since our main invites are red.

2/18/10 @ 4:04 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Sewing (message) 2,701 posts, Sugar bee

so fancy with the black and gold! and I love that font!

2/18/10 @ 4:34 pm (reply)

Member

artbee (message) 6,643 posts, Bee Keeper

my fmil did them. one less thing for me to handle, yay!

2/18/10 @ 5:35 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Nachos (message) 1,733 posts, Bumble bee

Even though they’re not whimsical and colorful like you originally planned, I think they turned out great! And I HATE running out of ink when in the middle of a project, it happened when I was printing our wedding invitations AND the Hershey Kiss labels. Grrr.

2/18/10 @ 5:46 pm (reply)

Member

tea (message) 7,263 posts, Bee Keeper

i think these turned out great! you’re doing the same for your escort cards yes? will you be using a different, thinner pen?

2/18/10 @ 6:03 pm (reply)

10.

Member

AzinAugust (message) 1,651 posts, Bumble bee

I love these, my MOH did something similar and 98% of the guests told her she had “amazing handwriting”… I guess they didn’t know how much we love DaFont.com

2/18/10 @ 7:19 pm (reply)

11.

Bee

Miss Spaniel (message) 6,792 posts, Bee Keeper

@ladyox: Marketing! I love it. FMIL is throwing me a shower this weekend, and I knew she was stressing, so I wanted to give her a break by helping with these!

@Miss Nachos: Thanks! Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve run out of a crucial color during a project.

@tea: I will use a thinner pen if I can find one, but so far I’ve only found 1.2mm and 1.0mm (I now own six gold pens! Oy!).

2/18/10 @ 7:31 pm (reply)

12.

Bee

Miss Cardigan (message) 8,645 posts, Bee Keeper

They look great! Love the black and gold color combo

2/18/10 @ 9:14 pm (reply)

13.

Member

EAQ219 (message) 1,448 posts, Bumble bee

I love the simplicity! And such an easy DIY. I really want to do RD invitations, but I have a feeling the in-laws might think it an unnecessary expense. Even though I have PLENTY of cardstock to DIY. Hmm…we’ll see. Maybe I should talk about that soon.

2/19/10 @ 6:39 am (reply)

14.