Weddingbee Blog

Mail merge was the bane of my existence this weekend. I know it might seem ridiculous that a computer-savvy(ish) person from the computer generation who has worked in an office-setting for 5+ years (ew, really?) didn’t know how to use mail merge already- but- er… I didn’t?

I knew immediately this would be an annoying freaking task, mostly because many things involving Excel/Word give me a migraine. I somehow ALWAYS miss one teeny little thing in a formula or miss a measly step in a step-by-step guide, therefore screwing myself over, shouting into the computer’s ear-less face, and having to start over.

Let me start by saying we decided not to pay for a calligrapher, and decided to go with making clear labels for the envelopes for a few lame reasons. One, I could not justify the cost of paying someone to write pretty on my envelopes when that envelope is going to end up right in the trash. I wish I could justify it because I love all things pretty paper/stationery/swirly handwriting, but I come from a world where I could never see the value in it. Two, I was going to attempt some form of calligraphy, but when I sent Mr. P a cell-phone photo of my grandest attempt, he responded (and I quote), “it looks like my 6 year old cousin wrote that.” Um, thanks. Negative five points for him! And, lastly, I am the Queen of Procrastination and we are short on time here people!

Anywho, Mr. P and I headed over to my parents after work on Friday night (since our printer has a horrendous tick—literally.
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Very Highly Recommended

These vendors went above and beyond anything we would have expected.

Fine Invitations (Paper goods)- Including invitation package, programs and our place cards. We were so happy with all of our paper goods and they were incredibly flexible. We may have procrastinated a little with our program and in the end they stayed back and Mr. Teaspoon collected them the evening before the wedding.

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We were putting some assets together for a campaign, and someone asked me what the Weddingbee font was.

I knew I could ask Mrs. Bee via email, but I know she’s busy being a mom of two (!!!) and blogging away over at Hellobee lately, so I thought I’d take a stab at finding it myself.

I searched a few font libraries, in “comic” and “curly” sections to no avail. Then, I stumbled across Fonts.com’s identify fonts by sight.
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I shared with you all in my last blog that I designed my rehearsal dinner invitations in Adobe Illustrator and ordered them through Vistaprint. I felt comfortable using Vistaprint since we’re just having a rehearsal BBQ and the invitations don’t need to be super fancy. Plus, I had used them for my Save-The-Dates, and I was impressed with the quality of the paper, for the price.

We went from this design:

To this printed product (plus I rounded the corners):
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Any minute now someone will be opening their mailbox, (not their e-mail box either, their real live mail box) and they will see this:

Of course the stamps will be canceled and the address won’t be blurred out (I hope!).

In case you cannot tell, this is a super-secret-bees-only-sneak-peak at our invitations—full pictures and how-to coming soon!
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Having my Lil Sis/MOH home for the holidays was a real blessing for wedding planning, especially in the invitations and “paper stuff” departments. Just hours after she landed in Puerto Rico (at 2:00 AM), she pulled me into her room to show me the work she had done on the wedding invitations.

From the inspiration pictures I had sent her, she came up with these two variations for general shape/concept.

*Design 1 / *Design 2

I was instantly smitten with Design 1, so on her handy dandy laptop Lil Sis/MOH starting designing away the rest of the invite. She added the wording I had decided on, tweaked the colors a bit, and searched for hours for the perfect fonts.

The next morning when I woke up she showed me the product of her hard work.

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I left off my Illustrator tutorial with showing you all how to make a background and edit vector shapes that you can find online. I know that this is all “heavy” learning—but I promise, if you stick to it, it becomes easier and you eventually get the hang of it.

Now, starting up where we left off… we had just finished the background, and placed the squiggly background image on top of it.

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I was browsing Dafont.com the other day when I realized just how many amazingly fun fonts there are! Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a use for most of them, but decided to download a bunch just for funsies. (P.S. there is most definitely a Harry Potter font that I now have downloaded—totally using it for invitations to a H.P. themed party!) Anyhoo, I got to screwing around and after a few minutes I had created this cute little story about me and Mr Elk.

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One of the things I put on the backburner is our Ketubah. For those unfamiliar, a Ketubah, in essence, is a Jewish marriage contract. It’s the religious equivalent of that marriage license you wait on line for at city hall. Bonus points for there being no line to get this one!

With the invention of that thing called the interwebs there are now something along the lines of 209,323,095 resources available to find and purchase Ketubahs. There are tons of variations done by many different types of artists.

There’s the traditional:

Image via Ketubah.com

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All right, now that Bossyboots’ and my wedding invitations are in our guests’ hot little hands, it’s time do some revealing around here!

Creating these invitations was a heckuvalotta work, but I’m happy with them. Of course, there are endless ways I see that I could have designed them in different ways, but at a certain point, you have to step back and send those dang files to the printer!

Let’s get to it… you may recognize a few elements that have evolved out of my original wedding invitation design. I’ve learned how to use Illustrator since 2009, and I have to say designing in Adobe is much easier than MacGyvering in Word!

The entire suite was bundled in a belly band… this is what our guests saw when they pulled the invitation out of the envelope:

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Wedding programs are sooooo pretty. I have found tons that I have drawn inspiration from, such as…

This one…

Picture via Style Me Pretty

Mmmhmmm. Yep, this one too.

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After working with my Lil Boa on a couple of drafts for the invites, I started hunting down the paper I would use for them.

Cue Cards & Pockets—I loved their large selection of colors and immediately ordered a couple of free samples to get to see the colors up close.

*Personal Pic

I ordered six samples in white, light purple, and dark purple in both the shimmer and matte types of paper. My actual selections were: matte (Snow White, Grape, and Purple) and shimmer (Crystal, Amethyst, and Violette). I would like to pick one white shade, one light purple shade, and one deep purple shade.

Matte shades are on the left and shimmer on the right.

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I’m lucky enough to have the very talented Lil Boa for a sister, since she happens to be studying advertising and has to take graphic design classes as part of her degree. This wonderful human being graciously offered to do our wedding invitations and all other paper-related stuff. We worked on the invites long distance, me being in Puerto Rico and her all the way in NYC, but by using Skype’s share screen we managed to rock it out. Our first step in invitation creation was finding a starting point—pictures of invites I liked—so she could have an idea of what to do. I sent her these:

Image via Mrs.Duckling on Weddingbee

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Or, “How I asked my grrrls to be my bridesmaidz.” I knew I wanted to send them something crafty and cutesy in the mail because I’d filed away all sorts of ideas when I was but a girlfriend (before I was someone’s fian-SAY).

Image via Once Wed / Project created by Anna Bond of Rifle Design

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Ever since my Vistaprint STD post, I have been getting lots of messages from hive members asking me how I used Adobe Illustrator to design my invitations. Learning how to use Adobe Illustrator was NOT easy, mostly because I taught myself. I learned how to use it for work to make figures for academic publications, but the same skill-set works for wedding stationery design.

Now, first things first: Adobe Illustrator is expensive. It comes in a package called “Creative Suite 5″ (or CS5 for short). It includes things like Photoshop and InDesign as well. Right now, it is listed on the Adobe website for $1299 USD. Yikes. I purchased my CS5 Design Standard for around $200 at the University I attend, with an education discount. If you’re in the market to purchase CS5, try to use this discount. It literally saves you hundreds of dollars. But: the website does offer a free 30 day trial. So: if you can teach yourself how to use Illustrator and design your invitations in under 30 days - you can avoid purchasing it.

The most important thing to understand about Illustrator is that it is a vector-based design program.
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