Weddingbee Blog

When we left off, Cinnamum had suggested going the book-y route for invitations; she sent me a few links and a few ideas. One of the ideas was:

How about a photo of the two of you on the front, as though it’s a best-selling novel? A catchy title. Quotes on the back, like:

…boy-meets-girl story against the backdrop of the Rockies. Would their romance be just a summer of love, or would she go to the ends of the earth to be with her man?

…In the dark and dangerous world of backstage at the theatre, their love blossomed. Could it survive a Calgary winter?

While I love how enthusiastic Cinnamum is getting about this…I don’t want that style of invite. I found it hard explaining why I didn’t like that idea, when I still wanted a book-related invite. I think the best I could come up with on the phone was “It’s too theme-y.” This is where I turn into Goldilocks—“Too theme-y!”, “Too standard,” and the elusive “Just right!” So, thus started the search!

(source and tonnes more photos from a DIY bride!)

(Etsy store Whimsique will make this style for you if you can’t stomach hollowing out a book.)

These invites are stunning, gorgeous, and unforgettable, but we have way too much family overseas to mail actual books as invites. Please go look at that first link, though, to see the amazingness.

(source)

Mum suggested these invites, modeled after the old Penguin paperbacks. This has special meaning for me as Penguins have always been a big part of my life: Dad collects them. Penguin numbered their books when they started publishing, and Dad’s goal is to get first editions of the numbers 1–2000. I have so many childhood memories of poking through used bookstores, looking for those covers, and Dad with the list in his Filofax. Sadly, that invite doesn’t seem to be produced any more, plus the orange covers are for fiction. I’m pretty sure romance was magenta, and I know dark green was mystery, blue was biography…my geekiness is showing again, isn’t it?

There’s a box of Penguin postcards available that I could do something with, but I don’t know if I could handle each invite being different. I’d agonize over which one to send to who! Although they might make fun thank you cards…

There’s always the looks-like-a-beautiful-yet-generic-book invitation (not a romance novel with us on the cover!):

(source)

(Storybook invite from LetterBoxInk—the same people who did the theatre-ticket invite we liked!)

I think these work well for a destination wedding, or a more complicated event that needs various directions and stuff to fill up 10 pages. When your ceremony and reception are in one place, there’s way less info that needs to be distributed. Plus, we have a wedding website for that extra stuff!

There’s the whole library thing:

(source and more photos)

If pressed, I would call our decor more “quirky used bookstore” than “library.” I have to confess…I buy the books I want to read. I don’t necessarily buy them new, but I haven’t renewed my library card in at least two years. I felt a little crazy the first time I actually said out loud, “No, we’re going not so much for library, but more for books in general.” But if you want library…here’s some free templates!

I felt like I’d reached the bottom of the barrel—nothing more was showing up when I searched for “book invites” or “literary invites” or any such thing. Then I decided to go check out this save the date I’d favourited on Etsy a while back:

(ellothere’s Etsy shop)

They’d added a new item to their shop! A coordinating invite!

(source)

NOW we’re getting somewhere! This doesn’t have room for three sets of parent names, and there’s no clue as to what an RSVP card or other insert would look like, but I could work with this!

The same day I found that, I found this invite that was also new to the interwebs:

(source)

These two last ones really got me going and got me super enthusiastic about book invites again. I had been thinking of just going with the ticket ones at this point, just because I couldn’t find anything else, and I couldn’t put into words what the perfect bookish invite would look like. But I think some combination of these last two could be it. The last two inspired me to do some rough sketches of what a larger bookcase invite could look like. So far I keep coming back to one of those delightfully messy bookshelves with some books upright, some piled, a couple silhouettes, some vases…I’m not certain whether I prefer perspective, like the book-pile invite, or 2D, like the bookshelf invite above.

I’ve shown my scribbles to Mr. Cinnamon Buns, and he thinks it is a good idea to explore. I think he was a little taken aback when I brought up new invite designs, but he’s drawn me a few bookcases and examples, too, so I think he’s running with it. We definitely hadn’t planned on getting our invites custom designed, but neither of us has the skills to put something like this together. I could manage our simple save the date, but I couldn’t actually create something like this from scratch. I know I said we weren’t going to DIY the invites…but it’s a bride’s prerogative to change her mind, right?

We haven’t followed up any custom-design leads, and we haven’t yet said goodbye to the ticket invites, but I think we’re in a good place idea-wise.

Did you get an invite custom designed for you? How was that process?