August 14, 2007

• The Invitation Post

  Yesterday, I started receiving some of the RSVPs for our wedding, so I think it's safe to assume that most people have received their invitations in the mail. Sooo... here is the invitation post!

  Mr. Eggplant and I are by no means graphic designers, however we wanted to create our own invitations because we really wanted a cohesive look-and-feel with all the elements in our wedding. Our wed-site plays an integral part of the event, including hosting an elaborate online RSVP system that Brother Eggplant coded for me (more on that later). Mr. Eggplant works in marketing, so his one requirement was that all the pieces flow together seamlessly.

  Originally, I started with a color palette of pink, mint green, and ivory. But brown kept showing it's head as a base color, so we ended up with the colors below:

  

  The circles were printed on my inkjet and cut from 80lb cover stock using my handy dandy Fiskar's circle punch. I ordered a huge roll of 7/8 inch wide grosgrain ribbon from JKM Ribbon to close the invitation. JKM has affordable ribbon in bulk amounts, however if you order from them, give yourself three weeks since they only ship orders once a week.

  

  When our guests opened the pocketfold invitation, they saw a main invite card plus three tiered cards. All the floral graphics and fonts were identical to the ones used on our wed-site and were purchased from istockphoto.com.

  

  Our tiered cards tucked neatly in the pocket. Everything was printed on 80lb cover stock..

  

  Card #1: Main Invitation. The card was matted on metallic pink cardstock from Paper and More. I bought one pack and had them cut it to size.

  

  Card #1: Directions. I created this map using Adobe Illustrator. It was the first time I used that program, and I have to say... it's powerful tool, but not very intuitive for a first time user!

  

  The little church, parking, and fork/knife icons were downloaded from Microsoft Clip Art.

  

  Card #2: Reception. The reception card was simple and detailed the location and start of our dinner reception.

  

  Card #3: RSVP. Everyone received a unique invitation code that we created specifically for each party. For one couple, we used their dog's name. For another recently wed couple, their invitation code was their wedding date. We also used words from shared experiences or inside jokes. I liked the fact that all the passwords could be personalized to each party so that they knew we stopped to think of them individually.

  

  Envelopes. Our envelopes were soft white linen envelopes from Paper and More and I fed them one... by... one... through my trusty HP printer to print the return addresses.

  

  Addresses. By the time 150 envelopes had made their way through the printer, I did not have it in me to feed them again for the "to" addresses. Instead, I bought clear labels from Staples and created a mail merge on MS Word using our floral graphic.

  

  I had most of our guests' addresses on an excel worksheet pulled off of the wufoo form that we emailed in our save-the-dates. It was quite helpful to have solicited all the info during the beginning of our planning and I totally recommend wufoo as an easy way to gather information from people. You can create all types of forms, even a simple online RSVP form, should you decide to opt for web option.

  

  The fruits of our labor!! I'm SO glad these are out of our hands now.

  

  In closing, everything was done in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign because I wanted all the graphic elements to be in vector to ensure print quality. Out of all the graphic and layout programs, InDesign is my new best friend and I am using it to create EVERYTHING from our programs to our menu cards and favor tags. It is so intuitive and simple to use as a layout program. Plus, there are tools to create crop marks and such, which I used to prepare our file for printing. However, my friend who works in print told me that Photoshop files would work fine if they are at least 300dpi. To adhere all the pieces together, I simply used double-sided tape because it was the most affordable and easy to use adhesive available.

  There were many, many hours of labor and love involved, and lots of mistakes made in the process. But it was also loads of fun and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

  Thanks for reading!

  (Cost and resource breakdown to come.)

  • 2:59 pm
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