invite breakdown

So, if you were sent an invite in the mail you probably already have seen all this stuff but humor me, okay? Maybe you'll learn something?

--Oh, and if you didn't get an invite in the mail, or you can't come, stay tuned for a special way we want you to be involved in the wedding...coming soon!--

So first we designed the invites...our main inspiration were vintage vaudeville and circus posters...something that conveyed an event that was fun but, at the same time, totally epic.

image source

image source

We made a mock up with the fonts we had on hand just to decide positioning, ratios, spacing, etc., then we downloaded probably a hundred or so fonts and then just got to playing, and this is what we came up with. (All the design was done in Photoshop...I know it's not as clean as other programs but it's what I know)
We printed the reception information on the back to cut down on paper waste

There was much debate about the reception information. Could we dictate the kind of costumes people wear? We're not requiring costumes for the reception, but I also didn't want people dressed like slutty nurses or grotesque monsters. I wouldn't really want that at any Halloween party I would throw, let alone my wedding. I think we found a nice (and very "us") way to say what needed to be said, and also imply that maybe you should save it for the reception...at least, if you're an adult.

Putting the registry information on there is a MAJOR no-no etiquette wise, and I understand why that rule exists. Yeah, it's kind of tacky. However, for really casual invitations, I don't think it's quite as bad. We received an invitation to a wedding last winter that had a little note on the back "the couple is registered at target but they also really enjoy shopping at world market and whole foods." We ended up getting them something from Target, but it was kind of nice to know another option and I did actually consider going to whole foods and making them like a huge basket of cheeses or something. Also, since most of our guests are from out of town, they don't know that every couple that gets married in Omaha is registered at Target. It seems so obvious to us, but I didn't want there to be confusion.
And, well, I am really tacky and I broke etiquette all over the place. So...meh.

We also wanted to include a map with the reception information both for out of town guests (pretty much all of our families) and for in town guests that have maybe never been to the Scoular before. It also let them know how close they would be to their hotel, in case they were worried about long commutes. Greg made up the grid of streets (including the hotel's logo, nice touch Greg!) and I used pictures of the venues to make paintings that guests can refer to if they're confused about which building is which (they're not very clearly marked).

Here's a close up of the painting of our ceremony venue...I recreated the building in the most basic shapes possible to make it easy to print and easy to read on a small invitation.
Once the invite design was finished we had it printed on plain kraft paper at Kinkos (classy wedding over here!) and they cut it for us as well at no charge.

This is where the "pain in the ass" part of invitations began happening.

Unfortunately the image was a little smaller than half a sheet of paper, leaving an awkward little blank edge on the side. We went back through and re-cut about a quarter of an inch off each invite (total pain in the ass #1).
Neither of us has very pretty handwriting, so we typed our addresses in a pretty font and printed it onto white labels. But I bought the wrong size and we had to go back and buy new ones (total pain in the ass #2) which they couldn't print on at Kinkos (total pain in the ass #3) so we had to drive all the way out to Walmart in the middle of the night to buy new ink for our own printer to print them ourselves (total pains in the ass #4 and #5).
To fancy up the labels a little bit we bought a corner punch that both tied them into the oldish timey theme of our invites and made them look a little less like...you know...labels. Unfortunately (there's that word again) the corners had to be square to fit in the embosser/puncher and the labels' corners were rounded. So we cut the sides off the labels and punched them (pain in the ass #6)
Here's how the labels turned out...click the picture to really see the embossing (it's subtle, but very pretty in person)

We bought beautiful dark purple envelopes from the Eames Furniture collection on envelope mall, since all the orange options we scoped out were either too bright, too small, or too expensive...and, I mean, Eames furniture! Makes envelopes! Weird!
The envelopes have a very long pointed closure called a "euro flap" that makes them all classy stuff. The glue on this fancy classy flap doesn't extend all the way down to the end of the point. Which means they don't close all the way like normal envelopes. Meaning we went out at four in the morning to find appropriate seals (pain in the ass #7) but luckily there were very pretty ones that went with our palette.

We stayed up all night stuffing these babies, but despite the seven (or more, I may have forgotten them) pains in the ass...they're gorgeous. We love them. Everyone who has seen them has loved them. They're very "us."


Oh, and they cost about twenty five cents per invite. Sha. Bam.

Sometimes I love this wedding stuff.

ACHIEVED!: Invitations

Or, "snail mail: quite quick, actually"

So after an all nighter of printing invites,buying labels, stuffing envelopes, buying DIFFERENT labels, going to Wal-Mart at midnight to buy ink, going to Kinko's at 4 a.m. to buy seals, individually cutting and stamping each label and reprinting all the labels I inevitably ruined through my own spelling mistakes....invitations are OUT.

They were out on Saturday morning, actually, but I have been sleeping off the aforementioned all nighter. And tomorrow (promises promises) I will show what they looked like and how we made them because I think they are pretty damn spectacular.

I just wanted to make a quick post to say

1.) HOLY COW WE HAVE RSVPs TO THIS WEDDING ALREADY (AHHHHHHH!)

and

2) if you are a guest of the Hallowedding and you are now reading this blog because I (or my mother or whoever) sent you this way after you got your invitation...um, hi? Welcome. Apologies in advance for the inevitable profanity.


Now if you'll excuse me I have a very early show tomorrow with about twenty Iowan preschoolers. I need my rest.



(RSVPs you guys!! It is SO ON.)

french paper: breakin' my heart

As I have hinted, we are designing our own invitations. They will be done and mailed out next week! Designing your own invitations is easy and fun if you know your way around a photoshop (if you don't, ask a friend who does as a wedding present to you...totally worth it!) You get to decide absolutely everything...and you get to pick the paper.

My love of paper could be considered...excessive. I've spent hours looking at paper. And my very very favorite place is French Paper. Their website is beautiful, it's easy to find what you want, and it's really not that expensive for fancy-pants paper. They divide their site sort of by the mood of the paper, and my favorite section is the dur-o-tone paper: "rugged, hard working sheets." This is where the kraft paper is, that dark brown speckled paper they use to wrap packages and we use to make patterns in the costume shop. We have decided to go with this kind of paper, mostly because it is cheap and goes really nicely with the vaudvillian aspect (our wedding invitations have a vaudvillian/circus theme. That's normal, right?) If we hadn't chosen to go with kraft paper, I was lusting after the dur-o-tone butcher orange, which is smoky and warm and makes me go all fluttery, and can be seen to the left.
It's basically just orange kraft paper, and we wanted to get the invites printed before they would be able to get our paper to us, and it just didn't end up working out. So we're going with kraft, which means yes, our invitations are brown and industrial looking, and yes, I'm okay with that, in fact I think they look pretty boss.

But that is not the heartbreak--the pain is in the fact that french paper offers envelopes in the beloved orange butcher paper, but they only offer them in A6 and A7--which, to those of you not obsessed with paper and wedding invitations, are not big enough to hold the half sheet invitations we have designed. So no pretty orange envelopes for me.

But I think we need color in the envelope because the kraft paper is so stark, so I'm searching out some rare A8 envelopes that will have punch and pizzazz and still be here by the beginning of next week.

Impossible you say? Maybe, but I have to try!

At the moment the only orange options I am finding are BRIGHT orange. Heinous orange. Astrobright orange. It's not pretty. But as soon as I find our envelopes, we will have these suckas OUT the DOOR, and I can post more about our process.

teaser trailer

blogger wouldn't let me post pictures yesterday, but I wanted to give a little sneak peek of the invitations that are currently occupying our wedding plan time. Oh yes, you are excited.

Do Your Part

Sorry, I just had to post this. I think this is the first video invite I've ever seen, and it's certainly the first YouTube invite I've ever seen. But it really is a pretty smart idea, and it's beautifully executed. It doesn't hurt that these are two very funny people, the groom hailing from Hard N' Phirm and the bride from Respecto Montalban.

The only X-factor is how you make sure that only the right people see it, I suppose, and that you don't get monstrous guys in LOLcats shirts showing up for cake and the chance to be near a woman.

Anyhow, enjoy the video. And watch for the ending. And leave some feedback! If you've got fun ideas in this vein, let us know. It could be up our alley, potentially. We are wedding bloggers, after all.

On a more serious note, our friend/professor/mentor Paul summed up my feelings on the Omaha shootings very truthfully in his most recent blog entry. You can find it here. It's smart talk and apparently a good chunk of the Omaha press is going this way. Glad to hear it.