Weddingbee Blog

We started our invitations this weekend. I bugged Mr. Funnel Cake to go buy some paper so we could play around with sizes and things. We had already spent a fair amount of time discussing what we want and how to approach designing an invitation that needs to be in English, Portuguese, and German. I was in favour of doing an e-invite because they are green and cost friendly, but I was shot down by both my mother and Mr. Funnel Cake, who insisted that this was a wedding and we needed to do something printed. As a designer, if I’m going to go to the effort of printing something, I want it to look damn good!

Mr. Funnel Cake has been pretty set that he wants to include a wax seal in our invite. I’m not exactly sure where a manly man gets a notion like this, but he is adamant about including one in our design. We are still debating about what to put on the wax seal…one of our initials, some kind of monogram, or something else…but it’s being included in our designs.

Also, as a throwback to Mr. Funnel Cake’s Swiss roots, and also our wedding’s colors, we are trying to design square invites in the colors red/white/black to reflect some Swiss design. I was debating using Helvetica type, too…but I’m just not sure I care for it enough to commit to it for our invites. I’m looking at Didot, Akzidenz, and maybe something by Hoefler Frere-Jones. They always have the most succulent test styles on H&F-J—I just want to use all their type! I think half of the love is that they have everything in muted tones with lots of shading and soft colors. Everything just looks elegant.

We bought a bunch of red, white, and black paper and square envelopes…and I printed out some damask patterns because I like the idea of tying in a black and white pattern to the red. It would fit in with our classic and elegant “theme” for the wedding (if we really even have a theme).

So far we have two ideas…both photographed not so well by my iPhone.

Idea #1:

Idea #1 uses red velum envelopes. The idea is that the white trifold would have a red damask belly band that you can see through the red envelope, as well as our initials (KH)² and the date of the wedding. (Yeah, we both have KH initials…so KH x KH = (KH)². Are we dorks or what??

Anyway, I really like the red velum, but I’m a little unsure if I just think the invitations are boring.

Idea #2:

Idea #2 is simpler in appearance, but would use a more expensive printing process. With the flaps that come over the trifold, we would be looking at a die cut to get the paper in that shape. Since we (OK, me, the graphic designer) are interested in letterpressing, adding a die cut in could really drive up the costs. I like this design better, though, as it’s more classic and simple…but I’m still thinking about whether I could incorporate the damask pattern or not. If I leave the outer trifold completely blank sans the red wax stamp, maybe it’s also a little boring.

Anyway, all of these are just mocked up without text. Mr. Funnel Cake wanted to see what the (KH)² would look like on the front of idea #2, but I didn’t like it at all. If I ended up doing it on the little triangle flaps, I would think about integrating it a lot more, or at least doing it very small, subtly, or “Swiss” like.

We are still figuring out which language to put on which trifold side, and whether we should include an RSVP envelope or postcard…because we haven’t decided whether to give the Brazilians and Swiss RSVPs as well. My mother insists on them for the U.S. cards, but we are pretty sure people from Brazil or Switzerland will have to let us know personally rather than telling my mother (in a language she doesn’t understand) that they are coming. I’m leaning toward a paper/envelope approach so we can do three versions of the RSVP card and just send out what’s appropriate and only have the main invitation be trilingual.

Decisions, decisions. Next up is getting costs on things. We will also have to look and see if it is worth it to send the invitations as a pack to the U.S. for my mother to send out, as she says it’s traditional that the bride’s family should post them. But since we are designing and printing them here, I’m not sure it’s worth it. (Because how can I check them to see what they look like and put them together myself any other way??) So we have to check on postage to different countries from both the U.S. and Swiss land.

**All photos are personal unless noted.**