Weddingbee Blog

As I may have mentioned in the past, I love paper products. Fonts, paper weight, colors, design—I love it all. It’s probably a good thing that I ended up in publishing, where I get to immerse myself in beautiful lovely books every day. End papers! Cover designs! Love.

{Calligraphy by Love, Jenna; Invites by Swiss Cottage Designs}

So, I knew that the invitations would be a high point for our wedding. They set the tone, the colors, the feel of the day, with their scrumptious typefaces and delicious paper textures. I couldn’t wait to jump in and get my hands dirty!

{Karin Soukup}

This little booklet is quite possibly the most exquisite invitation I have ever seen. Ever. So incredibly gorgeous - it really is a work of art. And I love the old-timey feel of the botanical images.

However, as much as I love paper products, I am not exactly a DIM type of gal. I don’t even own Photoshop, for Pete’s sake! I work in editorial, not production, and although I like to pretend I have a good eye towards design, I have never actually taken any sort of design classes. So. I decided right off the bat that I wouldn’t let something as big as our wedding invitations ride on my shoddy-at-best design skills.

I did, however, have loads of fun doing “research” for our invitations. Don’t you love how you can spend hours trawling through wedding blogs, wasting oodles of time staring at pictures of bouquets and invitations and table numbers, and call it research? Appreciate this time in your life, guys and gals.

{The Indigo Bunting}

Anyway, as I was doing my “research,” my inspiration started to coalesce into a fairly firm idea of what I wanted for our invites.

Let me just say right off the bat that I really, really wanted to have our invites done by the lovely and talented Anna Bond, at Rifle Paper Co. She is amazing, and her work is just gorgeous. It was exactly the type of style and feel that we were going for with our wedding. I even bought a custom portrait of Mr. CA and me through Rifle to include at our wedding. However, the invites were just too far out of our price range—even the more standard (non-customized) lines. We had a lot of back and forth about various options (they are SO great about trying to work within your budget, and with customizing things), but I ultimately decided that, although I wanted amazing invitations, I simply could not justify the cost for something that people will just toss. I mean, I know my mom and maybe one or two other guests will keep theirs, but still. Most will toss them in the recycling. Let’s be honest here, people.

{Rifle Paper Co.}

And, sadly enough, Mr. CA was also not a huge fan of the big florals in their designs (which I am obsessed with. He’s insane). So, that was a no-go.

I did, however, take away from their lovely designs a love for personalized portraits, cute animals, sleek designs, and beautiful typefaces. Their hand-lettering is just divine—if they put it on a font website for a million dollars, I might consider purchasing. Seriously. It’s that pretty.

{Rifle Paper Co.}

Mr. CA also thought that the Rifle invitations looked a bit less formal than he wanted for our invites. Although I loved their designs, I did agree with him—they have certainly nailed the whimsical, folksy designs. I do love them, but yes, I agreed that we needed something a bit more classic, and slightly more formal. Just slightly.

So, I moved on. Since I had my heart set on the Rifle invitations for so long, I sort of put invites out of my mind for a while. Let’s call it a brief mourning period.

Did you fall in love with invitation designs, or anything else wedding-related for that matter, only to determine that it was out of your budget? Are you still at peace with that decision, as I am?

What sorts of inspiration drove your invitations? Did you DIY, or throw up your hands and just say no?