Our Wedding Invitation Suite
Beautiful photos by our wonderful photographer Photography Anthology
Hi friends- i’m here today with another post in my series recapping our wedding day! I’m sharing with you all of the details of our day, down to the nitty gritty, my reflections on the entire experience. Today, i’m so excited to take you through the process of creating one of my favorite elements of our wedding - our invitation suite!
Like I mentioned in my previous post about our Save the Dates - this element of our wedding is significant to me, not only because of all of the hard work that went into it (from many people), but also because it was designed with the help of my best friend and maid of honor, Hannah. She is so exceptionally talented, and though wedding invitations aren’t her usual medium, i’m so happy that she agreed to work with me on these, and even more thankful that her designs were given as a wedding present to us! (You can check out Hannah’s whimsical illustrations on her site here: hannahbessross.com. She even has a store where you can purchase prints and various other handmade goods!)
Hannah and I began the process by gathering inspiration. I made a private pinterest board and invited her to it. This ended up being one of the best decisions of the process, because we could remotely gather ideas, pull elements from other suites we loved, and communicate about every little detail, all while living in different states! I knew right away that I wanted a custom crest illustration that could be used throughout the suite. Hannah used inspiration from other wedding details, and from our story together to create the crest. One our Save the Dates, she illustrated two little love birds at the very top of our crest that were based on the gold metal birds we used for our cake topper (and now use as decor in our home!). She used florals and greenery that we knew would be reflected in our florals for the day, specifically lilies and phlox - that area very sentimental and special to both me and Mark. A version of the crest and other illustrations were used on each part of our suite.
Hannah also created an illustration of our venue, The Beverly Mansion for inside of the main envelope. I had seen others do this something similar to this, but never in this style and I really love the way that it turned out!
Once I knew that Hannah’s illustrations were going to be a focal point for the suite, I was able to decide on a simple, elegant layout for the informative text. I searched around for the perfect corresponding fonts, and ended up using two that I licensed from Creative Market. The next part was honestly the most difficult for me, as I had to figure out what wording we wanted to use (there are so many different options out there!) and how to lay out all of the information in a way that was both easy to understand and aesthetically pleasing. While I did most of the grunt work, it was so great to have Hannah to look things over and make edits and suggestions - especially since I don’t have much experience with designing with text in this way.
Once all of the elements of the suite were designed, I had them printed by the wonderful Alaina of CheerUp Press. This was sort of a last minute decision, as I was originally planning to print these myself, but decided that the extra cost of letterpress and a nice, thick, beautiful paper was worth it! Although it ended up being a bit more costly than i’d originally thought, I’m so glad that we went through with it, because the quality, dimension and texture really made all of the difference in person! Alaina is such a talented designer and creative - so if you’re looking for someone to work with whether it be printing or a full suite design (even non-wedding related projects) i’d highly recommend her services.
The last element of our invitations were the envelopes. I always knew that I wanted hand-lettered elements for my wedding day, so we worked with Kerry of Calligraphy by Keri to do both our Save the Date and Invitation envelope addressing, as well as our place cards for the reception. I was looking for more of a timeless style of lettering, and Keri specializes in those more traditional techniques. She did such a beautiful job, and is an amazing person - she definitely became a friend during the process, and is someone i’ll always be glad my path crossed with.
The envelopes themselves were ordered from LCI Paper - specifically the Merlot color with Euroflap in size A9 for the Save the Dates, and A7 for the invitations. When looking for envelopes, they were definitely the company with the most colors to choose from! Before printing, Alaina was able to color match perfectly with LCI to make sure our ink and envelopes matched!
Last but not least is one of my very favorite details: vintage stamps! Though it did take me a bit of time and a few trips to the post office to figure out exactly how many stamps I needed per envelope to get each item shipped, it ended up being such a special touch. I spent a couple of evenings searching for the perfect stamps for our invites, and ended up buying the vast majority from Vintage Postage Shop. If you’re looking for vintage stamps of any kind- Etsy is going to be your best friend! I chose each of the the stamps myself, but many Etsy sellers will help you curate stamps for any project you’re working on! This is one of those things for our wedding that it seemed like no one understood my obsession with when I first explained the idea but everyone loved when everything was together!
The process of designing and compiling all of the elements of our wedding invitations was admittedly one of the more challenging elements of planning our wedding - but it’s also one of the parts that I will treasure forever, because I know how much hard work went into them from both myself, and my many talented helpers! There are so many easier routes to go when deciding on wedding invitations but, if you’re creatively inclined like I am, I encourage you to consider doing some of it yourself - not only does it help cut costs, but it makes those details that much more special after all is said and done!