This set of invitations I hold very near and dear to my heart. Not only was it a labor of love, but it was one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on. And of course, those wedding invitations were ours. Looking back at this experience, I remembered Charlie and I racking our brains night after night trying to make these invites “perfect.” There were a few bumps in the road here and there, but in the end we were so happy with the way they turned out!
As graphic designers, we were more than excited to churn these bad boys out. Way before they needed to be sent out (we’re talking years!) we were already discussing what type of invitation we were going to do. As time went on the design changed – we scrapped ideas, added new ones, started over completely, you name it! Lucky for us, Envelopments (we <3 them!!!) released the perfect color for our outer “pocket.” That rich teal was exactly what we were looking for, hallelujah! We wanted the invite to make a statement right when our guests opened up the envelope. On top of the texture and color, we added a belly band with a blind emboss of our wedding logo at the base. The band also acted as a holder for the tons of cards we had to hold on the inside.
No detail was overlooked with these invites. Every single detail was personalized, even the outer envelope got a beautiful patterned chocolate brown liner, a blind emboss of our logo, and carefully set typography for the return and mailing addresses.
On the back side of our pocket, we hand-adhered a chocolate brown pattern that matched the envelope liners to create a dual tone. This stage of the invitations was probably the most difficult and detailed of all. Since our invites was a custom size we spray mounted the brown stock to the teal cover, cut it so they would be flush to the edge, and scored/folded each one by hand. If we were off by even 1/8″ the rest of the invitation would not sit properly inside. This gave us a beautiful background for the white linen cards that would be mounted on top.
We knew we wanted to take advantage of every inch of the invite, so we got creative with the ideas.
We included a favorite bible verse to the left, our typography-inspired invite card in the middle, and the information/bridal party/sponsor/RSVP cards to the very right. In our culture, it’s a tradition to mention your wedding party and primary and secondary sponsors in the invitation. The only thing is, this was a huge dilemma to us! We didn’t want the invite to be too daunting but we also felt it was important to have the certain traditions in our culture. So, something had to give. We gave in and made 4 insert cards. I know, it’s a bit much but we still wanted it to look visually appealing while including all that information. It wasn’t an easy task, but we made it work – thank goodness! They were loosely binded by the RSVP envelope and held in place by our belly band.
The invite card was printed on a linen card stock and mounted on the beautiful teal that we used for the outside of the invite.
The information cards were printed on the same linen card stock and then mounted on a smooth chocolate card.
One of my favorite parts of this invite? OUR BELLY BAND! We wanted to give it more than functionality. We wanted to give it a little pizzazz! If you saw our save the date cards, we included a little pictogram to keep people intrigued about our cards. We decided to continue that concept in our invites and thought it was the absolute perfect place for our 2nd pictogram. Can you solve the puzzle?
As an invitation designer, I’d say this was the most difficult job I have done. It was so involved – the amount of work, the labor, the designing, the production planning, and the emotion. But in spite of all that, it is probably one of the pieces I’m most proud of. The hard work and time was well worth it after we saw the final product with our own eyes. Knowing that this piece was shared with our closest friends and family was truly a blessing and honor.
