- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee Blog
Well we’ve already received about a third of our responses back, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that all of our wedding invitations have safely arrived at their respective destinations.
We went semi-DIY with these bad boys, and even though we hit some bumps in the road, I absolutely love the final product. And so, without further ado…It’s time for some Coyote invitation porn!
We ran all of the envelopes through the printer (shhhh…I know this is bad etiquette, but I have horrible handwriting and a calligrapher just wasn’t in the budget). I went with the boring wedding cake stamps because nothing else really jumped out at me:
I sealed the outer envelope with an envelope moistener that I picked up from Staples for like a dollar. I gotta say, it was totally worth it to not lick 100 freakin’ envelopes:
Read more…
The invitations to our American wedding had already been picked out about a year before it would take place, but we majorly procrastinated on the German invitations. Then in January we got lucky—my brother sent out birth announcements for his cute daughter and had them printed by Apple in digital printing on pre-fab letterpress cards. What a genius printing idea!
Sadly, I couldn’t access these designs because they’re only available on iLife ’11 and my Mac is just a tad older than that, but BM P came to the rescue with her new Mac! Triple yay! So one evening after classes I dropped by her place with a bag of chips and we flipped through the iLife catalog…
These are the two best wedding-related designs in my opinion (we used a random photo of BM P as a stand-in):
{Screenshot by BM P}
Hive, we finally did it. We mailed out our wedding invitations.
With just slightly over two months until the wedding, it was time. Truth be told, the invitations were finished before I left for Africa, and I finished the calligraphy the week I got back. I was definitely sitting on these—they could have gone out two weeks ago. Now, it wasn’t that I was scared to send them because I was having second thoughts (don’t worry, I’m not!)—it was because we spent so.much.time on these invitations. Fiancee Eagle wanted to send them out weeks ago, but I wanted to cherish them by holding them hostage for just a little longer.
Just to create a visual, I’ll give you a little spoiler: we made 100 invitations and each invitation was a five piece letterpress suite. I calligraphied the inner and outer envelopes and individual names on the RSVP cards. Letterpressing over 500 pieces of paper and calligraphing that many envelopes easily took us over 50 hours. These were my babies—and I was so scared to send them out, possibly exposing them to the evil envelope-eating, mail-sorting machines.
So, Fiancee Eagle and I took some steps to calm my fears:
Since I’ve been unable to work for the past few weeks (broken bones), I’ve taken this time to work on wedding related projects (mainly our invitations)! I think I have the basic design done for the actual invites. I actually designed them a few months ago while I was working on the save the dates. What I designed back then was more of a “rough” (meaning it was designed without proper measurements or guides…it more or less was thrown together in the heat of a creative moment!). I’ve recently taken my “rough” and recreated the design, but with correct sizing and measurements. I am this close to being done with it!
The part of the invitation that is throwing me for a loop is the contents! What exactly should be included with the invitation? I searched the internet, Weddingbee, and my favorite stationery blog (Oh So Beautiful Paper) for some insight on the topic (and got distracted by some pretty paper in the process!). What I’ve discovered is that there is no concrete or correct answer. You can choose basically whatever you want to include! Some couples opt to have quite a few items and small cards included in their invitation package. I personally adore the look of a beefy invitation filled with lots of little paper goods to touch and discover.
Oh so pretty and fun! / Designed by Kiera and Jean-Pierre of J+K Papier / Image via Oh So Beautiful Paper
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
Welp, the RSVP deadline has come and gone and we still haven’t heard from 25 people (which is more like 50 if you add plus-ones and children and all that nonsense). Granted some of those people are family and wedding-party peeps that I know are coming, but still—you don’t send me an RSVP, I will stalk you.
I figure I’ll skip my tirade on how I worked really hard on the invites and RSVPs and pre-stamped everything so all guests would have to do is check a box and drop it off in the mail, yet this still seems to be too much to ask for. Grr.
Moving on: I’m actually pretty surprised at our total number so far. Back in October, I was having a mini freak-out at how rapidly our guest list was growing. We ultimately ended up inviting a total of 153 people (plus kids), with the hope of not ending up over 120 (for sake of both space and money).
Here comes the fun part: as each RSVP rolls in, I have been keeping track of them in Google docs.
Today I came home to a very exciting delivery from the mailman:
Our bridal-shower invitation!
It was very cute. We each got a separate invitation addressed to us individually. I’m a little bit crazy on saving wedding stuff for a scrapbook project I have planned, so having two copies between us is great!
The invitation came in a very classy, light pastel green Crane & Co. envelope:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Sure, the Kentucky Derby was last week and we all got to watch a bunch of horses run around in circles and see some ladies wearing crazy hats…
Image via ABC News
…But the main event was the official mailing of the Coyote invitations. Woooohoooo! I went the semi-DIY route with mine, and yes, they came out beautiful—but holy cannoli I was ready to just start a bonfire with them in the backyard after some unfortunate shenanigans.
Read more…
Mr. Dragon and I are making our own wedding invitations. I sourced out a few pre-made options and realized it would be way, way, way less expensive for us to do it ourselves, and it isn’t really a huge project to tackle because of our small guest list. We’re going to keep it simple with a panel invitation, an information card, and an RSVP card; no pocketfolds or anything like that.
The biggest hurdle, aside from coming up with an actual design, was finding paper! We made an ill-fated trip to Walmart that proved we’d have to buy online, because an invitation suite made out of printer paper and that pastel yellow copy paper probably wouldn’t be very beautiful.
I tried out a few of the usual haunts—Paper-Source and Cards and Pockets—and the prices were reasonable but the shipping was insane. Like, half the cost of the entire order kind of insane. I’ve been lucky to avoid duty charges on all of my cross-border wedding purchases so far, but there’s always a chance of that, too. So, I started searching for Canadian paper websites, and I’m here to tell my fellow Canuck brides that I’ve discovered two that are awesome.
First up is Paper Garden, an Ontario-based company. Their website isn’t designed in a particularly flashy way, but they have a huge selection. They’ll send you a free sample of six 1”x1” paper chips of your selection, which I ordered and received promptly.
Personal photos
Along with that, they sent a bunch of 3.5”x5” samples, some of which were larger pieces of the chips I ordered, and some of which I’m assuming they picked because they went with the colour scheme.
When it came to the envelopes that housed our save the dates, I knew I wanted envelope liners. Only problem? I wasn’t going to spend the money to buy pre-made ones (far too expensive for this DIY bride, plus by doing it myself I could actually pick what paper I wanted to use). Mr. Beanstalk and I went to Paper-Source and picked out a really cute orange paper with white polka dots all over it, very fun and cheery. We bought a roll of the paper in gift-wrap form so we had plenty to use.
Next I went online and did a bit of research and watched a few YouTube videos and figured out what to do. During this research I discovered that Paper-Source actually sells envelope-liner kits! I totally would have bought one had I known, because the kit comes with different size templates to use for tracing. I had to use a ruler and cut my stencil out, old-school style!
Photo liners. What a great place to showcase a couple’s love story in photos! / Image via Martha Stewart Weddings
Hive, I feel bad. I teased you with our invites over a month ago and then…just kind of forgot about them. Well, our RSVP date has come and gone, so I figured I better get a move on with the reveal!
If you remember our “teaser” pic was something like this:
The monogram portion was the only piece of the invitation I DIY’ed. And I must admit, I am so glad that I didn’t take on more. Assembling them as they were was quite a task all on its own!
To design my invitation suite, I contacted Medley Designs on Etsy to hand draw an image of the Wren Building where we will be getting married! They did such a fantastic job. I cannot speak highly enough of their work. Here is a closeup of the artwork!
Now that all the wedding invitations are sent and delivered properly (I think), I had another batch of envelopes that I was waiting to mail out…the rehearsal-dinner invites!
Funny story…I knew I would be writing this post today and seriously had a nightmare last night about how everyone hated them and thought they were gross and dumb. That was sad.
Anyhoo, the closer the wedding date gets, the more VIP guests (you know…bridal party and family and whatnot) have been asking us when they need to be in town for any wedding-related festivities. I’ve been telling everyone what they need to know over the phone or email, but I still get questions and concerns and all those fun things that come along with it. Of course I could have just sent everyone one big informative email (which I’m still going to do), but I felt compelled to get all artsy-craftsy again and whip up some kind of “formal” invitation.
I wanted something simple, fun, and that was able to make use of some of the leftover and unused invitation supplies that I still had lying around. You know, like the 40 sheets of card stock I bought from Michaels right after I got engaged, not realizing until later that they were ultimately the wrong color for the invites. #notthinking
For some reason, I became hellbent on writing and using my very own cute little poem that would include all the details…easy peasy, right? Well, obviously not—have YOU ever tried writing a (sensible) poem for a rehearsal dinner? (If so…I envy you and you can disregard this.) Once I started running around asking Foxy what rhymed with “rehearsal” and “crab” (blab? drab? flab?), I figured I should maybe Google it (and by Google it, I mean Weddingbee it). Of course you guys had something already whipped up and easy enough to adapt to our specific situation. And so that’s what I did.
So what exactly does a poem + some card stock + washi tape + more sparkly paper equal?
Finally! It’s time for the Fox invitation reveal!
I resent the envelopes that were returned to me early last week, and I know that at least my mom got hers already, so I think we’re finally good on all that post-office nonsense. About damn time.
So let’s start with the envelopes (that you’ve all seen plenty of already). As I opted for a square invitation, I needed a six-inch square envelope to send those babies out in. Good to note: square envelopes automatically cost 20 cents more to mail.
Then there was the issue of addressing them. To make a long story short, I didn’t want to use labels, couldn’t afford to hire someone to write them all fancy-like, and I am much too lazy to learn calligraphy (unlike some fabulous other bees!). The next best thing was to print the addresses straight onto the envelopes. However, since I opted for the fancy, shimmery envelopes…the ink basically didn’t dry. I tried waiting three days to touch it, tried spraying it with artist fixative, but nothing seemed to work for me.
Okay hive, I have dragged this out long enough. As we rapidly approach the RSVP deadline, I think it is safe to say that our guests have seen the invitations (hopefully!) so the time has come to share them with you!
Without further ado, our invitations:
They are hand-illustrated by yours-truly with major editing help from Mr. Dalmatian and MOH K and major assembling help from Mama Dalmatian.
Read more…
While fancy paper and a paper cutter were getting me good first drafts of our invitations, they just weren’t getting me where I wanted to go. So I scrapped all my scrap paper, and went a whole new direction. Now, before I show you Invitations 3.0 (a.k.a. the final product!), let me show you some of the gorgeous invitations that served as inspiration to get me there.
First and foremost, like many other brides, I fell completely head over heels when my eye caught sight of the custom invitations that Rifle Paper Company offers. Ready to drool? Here you go:
 |
| Image via Events On Cloud Nine / Photo by Entwined Studio / Invitation by Rifle Paper Company |
Ever since the moment we got engaged—oh, who am I kidding? Even before we were engaged, there was one thing that I knew for sure: I wanted to make EVERYTHING for our wedding! I have always loved crafting. From sewing to painting to scrapbooking, you name the craft, I love it. So when we initially visited our venue and I saw that invitations were a part of the all-inclusive package, one of my very first questions for them was, “Can we remove the invitations from the package?” Being the awesome and flexible venue that they are, the answer was “Of course!” And thus, one of the big-ticket items on my DIY list has been to make our invitations.
On one of my many trips to Paper Source (which happens to be right next to Anthropologie in Nashville—my wallet hates this plaza), I got swept away into their wonderful world of specialty paper. I purchased a few individual sheets to play around with, put my paper cutter to good use, and came up with a few different options.
My first draft used pink and gold papers with a lace belly band and a flower stamp (which I would have done in gold but I didn’t have gold ink at the time I made the mock-up), along with a floral envelope liner.
| Visit our sister sites | eHarmony Online Dating |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
