Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been dying to talk about our invitations for a really, really, really long time now. But I’ve had to wait a bit so all of our friends and family around the US would have a chance of getting it in person before I ruin the surprise. Now that I’ve heard from most of the important people, I think it’s time.

This invitation has been a labor of love, or as Mrs. Unicycle put it best, what I mean is, it took freaking forever and I’m so happy that it is out of my house so I can stop staring at them. I am so thrilled with the final result. They really turned out better than I imagined in my head.

Big shoutouts to my fellow bees who have helped me so much in this process. Mrs. Eagle for her help with the letterpressing, Mrs. Archer for her doilies, Mrs. Bracelet and kbiceling for the calligraphy push. Thank you!

Okay let’s start from the beginning. When you open first open your mailbox, you will see this lovely metallic peach envelope, that we bought from Paper and More.

I wish you could get a sense of how gorgeous this envelope is in person. It’s a lovely creamy, shiny peachy color. On the front are our garden of love stamps (that I talked about previously) and your address. On the back is our address.

After you carefully open the envelope, you will see our envelope lining that was made to mimic the backing of our information cards.

Also, you will see our doily inner envelope that is wrapped up with pink and blue bakers twine. The inner envelope is one of my favorite parts of the invitations. A little label with each guests name is on top to let people know which direction is up. A little heart punch was used to punch the hole, because like Miss Lemur said, why use a circle, a heart would look so much better.

Once you get into the envelope, you’ll see a couple of different sheets.

Most important is our actual invitation itself, which was DIY letterpressed (with the L Letterpress kit) onto this gorgeously thick 200 lb paper. I’m very proud of the design that I created in Illustrator and I love all of the little details that are intertwined into it. I think I managed to capture the garden-esque feel of our wedding. I couldn’t get a good shot of the letterpressing, and it’s probably not as thick indented as many, but I still love it.

It always makes me a little sad when you can’t read the names on the invitation since the names are usually in an incredibly gorgeous font (I completely understand why, but it’s still a little bit sad). To give you an idea of what ours looked like, I made a special invitation, just for the ‘bee. (Btw, the fonts are Carolyna Pro Black and Copperplate Light small caps).

Next is our reply card. The front asks people if they’re coming. To try to reduce the number of unexpected RSVPs, I wrote in the number of seats reserved twice. On the back, I ask them to leave us a note. I hope people use the space as creatively and sweetly as Mrs. Archer’s or Mrs. Lioness’s guests. Our address is calligraphied into the return envelope as well.

Last is our information card. It has our website and password on it. Instead of blurring stuff out, I’m just going to show you a blank card. Imagine important and useful information on it.

All in all, I tried to keep it simple, with very few pieces (less to letterpress!).

Tada. The panda invitation. What do you think? Did anyone else diy their invitation too?