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I’ve kept you guys waiting a long time for these. (We had some problems with the USPS getting everything delivered in a timely fashion.) Without further ado, here are our save the dates! We designed them ourselves with custom calligraphy from Sparrow Nest Script, and they were letterpress printed by Nina at Tweedle Press in Rogers Park.
Hmmm…I wonder what could be in these boxes…
The unboxing! It pains me to blur them out.
Before I reveal the save the dates, I want to tease you with some of the inspiration behind them. Traditional invitations are typically on white paper with black calligraphy.
Image via Lunar Ink
I wanted to keep things traditional, but with a modern twist, and quickly fell in love with playful, modern calligraphy.
Before I reveal our save the dates, I wanted to post about the inspiration behind them.
I LOVE paper, so the wedding has been a great excuse for me to look at pretty stationery all the time and splurge on fancy paper I wouldn’t typically buy for myself. I’ve always loved letterpress and decided early on that I must have it for the wedding.
Letterpress printing is a printing technique in which ink is rolled over an individually cast die and then pressed into the paper. Letterpress was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1400s and is the oldest form of printing in existence.
Back in the day, the letterpress-printing process started by using wood or metal type. The printer would arrange the blocks to spell out the desired message. Remember the scene in Newsies where they do this?
I thought I’d give you guys a sneak peek of our save the dates, because I actually successfully DIY’ed something using only business-supply store items. I can’t help but be proud!
The save the dates are kind of loosely based on the idea of a surprise bag, with a variety of things in them. My fun idea of including candy and a noisemaker was shot down by how much more special postage costs, though, so it’s really an information card, a photo of us, and stickers.
I was inspired by Martha Stewart’s save-the-date stickers, so my first purchase at the business-supply store was a set of printable labels. They didn’t have any cute round ones, but I figured these would work just as well. I lost the receipt for these (my first purchase-tracking fail), but they were around $5.
Personal photos/screencaps
If you use Avery labels they actually have an online design program, which is how I created the stickers.
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Unique Wedding Favors
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Back in the fall I shared my DIY calligraphy for the save the dates and said that I planned to go “higher class” for the wedding invitations.
That’s right, I was going to buy a dip pen and ink and do REAL calligraphy.
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| I purchased all supplies, including 2 colors of ink at Utrecht |
I spent hours practicing, including all the exercises outlined in the book Mastering Copperplate Calligraphy: A Step-by-Step Manual. Yup, in the absence of any real curriculum in my life, I decided to become a student of calligraphy. Nerd alert.
Read more…
It’s been a week since we sent our invitations and we’ve been getting a steady stream of RSVPs back, so I think it’s safe to unveil them now for the hive!
Let me tell you, our invitations were a debacle and a half. Many moons ago we had bought a print-your-own box set from Michaels that included everything: invites, RSVP cards, thank you notes, and envelopes for each. They were very customizable, so we decided to mount the invitations and RSVP cards on colored paper to match our wedding colors. We would use double-sided tape to mount everything (I tried a sample one with a glue stick and it just didn’t turn out very well), and then tie the “package” of everything together with sage green ribbon. Easy, right?
Uh, apparently not.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
The RSVP cards in our mailbox and comments from friends confirm that our invitations are in our guests’ hands, so it’s time to share some pictures!
First of all, I have to comment on how amazing my local post office is. Up until about a year ago, my little city had its own mail sorting facility. Budget cuts prompted a closure and all mail started getting sent to Richmond (about an hour away) to be sorted. Locals were up in arms over the potential change in delivery time. I was pretty surprised when we mailed our Save the Date cards and a local friend had his in less than 24 hours. I remember thinking that the Richmond sorting facility must be super efficient!
When I went to double check the postage that we’d need for our invitations, I became privy to what’s really going on at my local post office. After I bought our stamps, the clerk quietly told me to separate out the local invitations from the rest so they could bypass Richmond and stay in town. Apparently, they’ve been doing some hand sorting at the post office since our local sorting facility closed. They aren’t supposed to do this, but it’s clearly more efficient and probably saves money since they don’t have as much mail to transport.
I dropped our invitations off around 1 PM on a Wednesday and many local guests received them on Thursday. My family in the northeast had invitations by Saturday, which is when the first responses arrived in our mailbox. I’m so happy with how quickly the USPS delivered everything.
Now, let me show off our invitations! You may remember the wonderful, affordable calligraphy that Elizabeth Bartucci did for us, but it’s so pretty that I can’t help sharing another picture of the envelopes.
Photo by Miss Mink
Last week, I shared the outside of our envelopes. We used cherry blossom centennial stamps on the envelopes as a nod to the region and our ties to Thomas Jefferson. For the return address, we used wrap around labels from Minted that had our first names on the back of them.
Read more…
One week ago, we did this:
I can hardly believe that our wedding invites are off into the great yonder. For so long I have been thinking, planning, and obsessing over these invitations. Now they have run along to their proper places on our guests refrigerators, mail bins, or wherever it is they keep such things.
Before I show off these beauties, I have to properly cite the designer.
If all you knew about me was that one of my favorite stores is Hobby Lobby and one of my favorite websites to browse is Etsy, you might think I was a pretty crafty woman…FALSE.
As much as I love to look at homemade art, furniture, decor, etc., I suck at actually making anything. But when it comes to putting together elements of our wedding I really want to try and break my streak of being craft challenged. Thanks to a million wedding magazines and blogs, I have come up with a list of DIY projects for our wedding I am pretty sure I can do. (With some help here and there.)
1. Our Love Story Chalkboard Timeline. I am obsessed with this thing. I love the idea of paying homage to all the important dates throughout our 10-year history. Plus, what is more fun than a chalkboard in a pretty frame?
Image via Delightfully Engaged / Photo by Ashley Photographer
2. Photo Display. Our venue has a really gorgeous 100-year-old clothesline that I knew would be perfect for a photo display. It will have to be lightweight, so I am planning on making something along the lines of this:
I love stationery. When I was a little girl, I had pen pals to whom I wrote letters on personalized The Little Mermaid stationery. (You know you’re jealous.) I spent my first communion money on an entire desk drawer full of stationery.
Now that we live in the email age, you’d think my love of paper would have waned. You’d be wrong.
My favorite gift for my 23rd birthday was a boxed set of Vera Bradley stationery, and I recently bought myself these AMAZING Kate Spade notepads.
Photo credit: Kate Spade New York
I have even converted Mr. T into somewhat of a paper snob who only shops for birthday cards at the nearby artisan stationery store.
Needless to say, I am incredibly excited about wedding paper. I’m even more excited about designing our wedding paper than I am about buying my dress.
There’s just one problem.
Hive, I’m here to tell you that while I may pretend to be crafty and creative, most of the time I fail miserably. Want to see my latest failed attempt?
These are supposed to be my bridesmaids, each in their chosen color dress, for use on my programs. Luckily for me I showed these monstrosities to my friend Audrey (who happens to be the love of my dogs’ lives and my brother’s girlfriend). Hi, Audrey!! Anyhoo, Audrey recognized that I desperately needed help, and ever so graciously offered to redesign my ladies. Her effort proved way more than successful:
I seriously love monograms. I think they are a great way to tie all of your stationery together and they’re so easy to make! Perhaps even a little too easy. I swear I made a million different designs (similar to Miss Hawk) and then decided that I hated all of them.
Hate it.
Hive, I never thought I would get excited over stamps. I know there are some cute stamps that are used for weddings out there, but none of them really excited me when I was getting our invitations ready. I looked at the custom-stamp option, but didn’t feel very motivated to create any for our invitations. Well, thank goodness I wasn’t quick to buy stamps because I found out about these beauties a week ago, right here on the Weddingbee boards.
From USPS.com
The Cherry Blossom Centennial stamp debuted on Saturday, and I was quick to snap up six sheets of them for our wedding invitations. Mailing our invitation requires two 45-cent postage stamps, so the fact that the cherry-blossom design spreads across two stamps is perfect. The added bonus was that the colors would look nice with our invitation design and the image included the Jefferson Memorial. Thomas Jefferson, if you didn’t know, lived here in Charlottesville.
Just like every other bride on the paper board (which I frequent!), I’m obsessed with all things paper. Invitations, menus, programs, save the dates…these are all music to my ears. I caved and decided that since we’re having a black-tie wedding we should have fancy letterpress invitations (and decided to DIY them). I sold my soul to the devil and we completed 100 five-piece letterpress invitation suites in a three-day weekend. Clearly I’m into paper. Along with letterpress, I also knew that I wanted to have an inner and outer envelope. Fiancee Eagle? Not so much.
To inner, or not to inner? / Image via Breathe Upon
Fiancee Eagle tried to argue that it was a waste of paper, but after I reminded her that all pieces of our invitation suite, including the envelopes, were cotton paper (and super GREEN!), she rolled her eyes and knew I’d won. Inner and outer envelopes for the Eagles!
I just love how “fancy” double envelopes make wedding invitations feel. After every single paper (550 sheets later…) we letterpressed, Fiancee Eagle was BEAMING with excitement/pride and kept saying “These look SO NICE and FANCY!!” I feel like the envelope(s) will really help further the “These are nice invitations!” feeling that people will hopefully have when opening them. It’s pretty old school (I’ve never received a wedding invitation with a double envelope), but I think it works for our invitation aesthetic and overall wedding feel.
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