DIY Wedding Invitations

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**If you are a bride and looking for some completely customized wedding invitations, save the dates, or wedding day essentials (programs, menus, place cards, etc), I would love to work with you to create something you love! Feel free to contact me to get the ball rolling!**

Since I posted so much about my wedding and mentioned that I designed all of my own paperie, I had a few readers email me and ask what my invitations looked like. I shared my Custom Monogram and Save The Date a while back, but apparently never shared my invite!

I searched on a lot of online invitation printing sites to decide if there was a company I wanted to go with, but none of the designs felt just right. I was feeling kind of stressed about the time it would take to design it all myself, but finally my Mother In Law encouraged me to just go ahead and take a crack at it. So I did.

We incorporated a number of chalkboards into our wedding - for things like guestbook signs and signature drink menus - so I knew in advance that I wanted to emulate that with my invitation. 

I used our same monogram that was on the Save The Date and Engagement Party Invite, but instead of printing it in black and blue as I had before, I printed it in whites and grays. Since the invitation is the "big thing," I wanted to make it stand apart from the rest of my wedding paperie.

On the back of our invitation, we printed one of our favorite city shots from the day we got engaged. It was a kissing picture, which was kind of a foreshadowing of the "You may kiss the bride" moment.

I used that monogram on each piece of the invitation, from the Rehearsal Dinner invitation, to the RSVP card, to the extra "info" card we included.

We printed the cards on varying sizes, so that we could stack them and see many cards at once. Then, we each stack together with Oyster-Gray and White twine. The gray matched the color of my bridesmaids' dresses, so I thought it all came together perfectly and gave guests a good idea of what the style of our wedding would be.

While most of the invitation suite was on a chalkboard background, the RSVP card was printed with the same background as the back of our Save The Date and Engagement Party Invite. It is an old map of Chicago, which I made partly transparent so that it was only a light image.

We paired the RSVP cards with brown, recycled kraft paper envelopes (with a peel and stick, instead of a lick and stick closure!). We used the same kind of envelope for all of our wedding related mailings, as well as the envelope for our invitation, so it went together well!

We also had some custom stamps made for our RSVP envelope, with our custom monogram printed on them. It tied the envelope to the invitation suite perfectly!

Once everything was designed, proofed, and printed, I had an impromptu invitation stuffing party with my mom and my aunt!

**If you are a bride and looking for some completely customized wedding invitations, save the dates, or wedding day essentials (programs, menus, place cards, etc), I would love to work with you to create something you love! Feel free to contact me to get the ball rolling!**

DIY Save The Dates

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**FYI, I recently updated my website so that every image has an easy pin button! Just hover over any image on the page and a big red Pinterest "P" will show up on the bottom right hand of the image! Click on that to pin any images on this site, and they will link directly to the individual post that image comes from!**

Now that my "Save The Dates" are long received (and our invitations are out!), I'm finally sharing our Save The Date cards.

Because my fiance had a photographer lined up for a photo shoot right after we got engaged (literally - we went straight there!), we already had a bunch of great pictures of the two of us. I had shared some of the images on Facebook, but kept most of my favorites for use in things like Save The Dates, Wedding and shower invites, etc.

That meant that, when it came to designing our own Save The Date cards, we had a plethora of gorgeous pictures to choose from. But, we didn't even have to discuss it, because there was one picture that we were all drawn to.

I knew from the start that I wanted to design my own Save The Date. There's something about stock cards online that just puts me off, and I am so visually particular that I would probably be a designer's worst nightmare anyway, so hiring someone seemed out of the question. Since starting a consulting business, I'm now seasoned enough in Photoshop that I thought it was something I could do on my own.

I ended up going with a front that was very simple - this awesome picture of us kissing near the Kinzie Street Bridge, with some slightly transparent text on top of it.

The Front of our Save The Date card

If you read my post about designing my own wedding monogram, you might recall that we wanted "Vintage with a touch of modern." It is how I would describe our style, and it's the description my fiance says he used when designing my ring (they actually took some CAD designs for a more vintage looking ring and modernized and customized it to fit that description). I am equally drawn to weddings that are very vintage as well as weddings that are modern, so to choose just one or the other would have been difficult and left me feeling like something was missing. So, Justin and I decided on two typefaces to use on our wedding stationary. 

The first, Raleway, is very modern. It is sans serif (or, as I call it, "without feet"), and is very clean looking. It's also the typeface I was drawn to a long time ago, when I started my blog and used it for my header.

The second, Modern No. 20, is a bit more vintage. It is a serif typeface ("with feet") and has a bit more of a vintage, country vibe to it. The most ironic part is that it has modern in its name, but we're using it as our more vintage font. 

The Back of our Save The Date card

On the back, we used our custom wedding monogram. In some shape or form, it is on every item in our wedding stationary suite - from the save the dates to the bachelorette party information. Here, we used it with light blue lettering to give the back of the Save The Date card a bit of color.

Because our wedding is the same weekend as Lollapalooza (yes, we are insane), we decided to put some hotel information on our Save The Date to encourage our guests to book their rooms early. We also added our own hash tag for twitter and instagram, because I do social media consulting, so it seemed like a crime to not have social media be a part of our big day!

And last but not least, information about our website. Yeah, we bought the domain name. Not sure what we'll use it for after the wedding, but I'm sure we'll find some fun stuff to fill it with!

What about you?

• How would you describe your style?
• Would you ever design your own Save The Date or Invitations? 

DIY Custom Wedding Monogram

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**FYI, I recently updated my website so that every image has an easy pin button! Just hover over any image on the page and a big red Pinterest "P" will show up on the bottom right hand of the image! Click on that to pin any images on this site, and they will link directly to the individual post that image comes from!**

A month or two ago, I started working on a custom wedding monogram. I wanted to make sure that there was something symbolic of us that marked every part of our wedding, from the Save The Dates to the Thank You Cards. Some tiny little ribbon of familiarity that ties everything together.

If you know me, though, you know that I am very particular about design, presentation, and visuals. It's something I'm passionate about, so I have a hard time handing it off, even to a professional. I also enjoy challenging myself to make things work, so I decided that I would be designing all of my wedding cards, paperie, and stationary on my own.

When I started looking around for Pinterest inspiration, I have to be honest and admit that I was not impressed. A lot of the monograms I found looked fake or mass produced. Definitely not something custom and grand.

(An early draft I was working on that didn't make the cut)

After a while, I found Wedding Chicks' templates and started playing around with this swirly design. Their template comes with just one letter inside, so I dumped it into Photoshopped and started cutting things away. I was liking it more and more, but still thought it was just too boring. Too tried-and-true. Too already-done-before.

So, I had to slow it down. This happens with me a lot. Sometimes, my creative juices just get flowing and I start working so fast-and-furious that I fail to stop, sit back, and evaluate what my goals really are. But, for my very own wedding, I knew I had to get it right.

I tried to brainstorm about the words I wanted to be associated with my wedding. After all, if this custom monogram is meant to embody the wedding in one visual cue, I needed to know what I was going for. I came up with a few phrases and words:

Classic, yet unique.

Grand, but not stuffy.

Vintage, with a touch of modern.

I know, a lot of those things don't seem to go together. But that's kind of what my wedding is all about. Combining rustic and vintage elements with modern spaces and city views. Taking something old and pairing it with something undeniably fresh and new. So, that's what I wanted to find.

I finally found an inspiring set of stationary that gave me an idea. I liked the idea of something that almost looked like a crest, with some embellishment around the sides, but still had a hard "border." And this is what I came up with:

(The winner!)

What do you think? I used a vintage looking "ring" to form the shape, which I was later told by a coworker reminds them of the look and feel of my engagement ring. Then, I used a slightly more modern font for our initials on the inside. Old meets new?  

Some of my Save The Dates are already in the mail (for close family and old friends who are coming to my Engagement Party this weekend), so you may have already seen this "crest" in action. I'm looking forward to sharing my Save The Dates with all of you, but for now, what do you think of the monogram?