Weddingbee Blog

I’m going to let you in on a little (or large) secret, hive. We’re still up in the air about our invitations. I talked here about not DIY-ing them, and probably going with something that is printed for us, rather than us printing, but we haven’t gotten much farther than that. Or rather we did, but I started second guessing. But, let’s start at the beginning…

Cinnamon Buns and I sat down one night and went through the invitation section on Etsy. Now I bet we didn’t see all of it, but we browsed a good portion of it, and I’d been favouriting stuff left, right, and centre. When we sat down that night, we decided that we should order some samples, so we narrowed it down to our mutual favourites. We both had to like the design, or we wouldn’t bother ordering it. We ended up both liking:

Formal Vintage Ticket by LetterBoxInk

Apple Swirls by RuffHouseArt

Vintage Style by DesignAndInk

iHeart You by LittleSparkCreations

So, these decisions made, we decided to order. We ordered the Vintage Ticket as-is, we ordered the Apple Swirl in the style of this listing with the grommets, and we ordered the Vintage Style. We did not end up ordering any of the iHeart You invite, because of the atrocious shipping they charge for one sample: $1 if you’re in the US, $13 if you’re not? In case you didn’t know, us foreigners can access the USPS website too. We can use the shipping estimator, so we know when you’re ripping us off. Sending mail to another country isn’t that complicated! I do it all the time! So, even though we loved it, we let it go.

They arrived, and the two of us had a sit-down to go over them and talk about what we thought. Then we went out for breakfast with Cinnamum-in-Law and talked about them (she liked the tickets best), then I mailed them to Cinnamum with notes of our likes and dislikes attached.

The Vintage Style was pretty, and used nice paper, but we felt a little underwhelmed for some reason. I think we like quirkier things than that. I liked the Apple Swirls one, I loved the booklet style, and the perforated RSVP card, but we both agreed that apples really have nothing to do with us or our wedding. We both really, really liked the Vintage Ticket, because it was a bit of a tie-in to our jobs. We do love our jobs, and theatre is what brought us together, so it seemed appropriate. I think at this point, Cinnamon Buns stopped thinking about invites, thinking we’d chosen the tickets. While I loved the tickets, I kept trying to find ways to tie in our book theme to our invites. I even came up with a few sketches, that could possibly be used instead of the apples!

When the parcel arrived at Cinnamum’s, she sent me a few comments by email. Her main problem with most of them was: the invitations were trying to cram too much info, in too many styles of font, in too many colours of ink, on to a small card (looking at you, Vintage Style). She liked the idea of a pocketfold or grommet to hold everything together, and both parents’ full names inviting people. This means we need extra space, as Cinnamon Buns has two sets of parents.

Where I did agree with Cinnamum was when she said “The theme of your wedding is reading and books. I think that needs to be reflected right at the start with the invite.” Although I do sometimes hesitate to use the word “theme.” I prefer “bookish accents.” If it’s a book theme, shouldn’t I be wearing a dress made of books? Sometimes I say our wedding theme is “Stuff We Like.”

I continued looking for book-invite inspiration, and Cinnamon Buns continued thinking we’d made a decision. Next up: all the invites a bookish bride could want! Mostly.

The ticket invites are certainly “us.” but I feel like we could find something more cohesive with our wedding ideas. Do/did your invites tie in precisely with the wedding, or just generally with you as a couple? Would you find theatre ticket invites odd for a wedding that is not theatre-themed?