You Are Cordially Invited...

It's been a while since I've stopped by the Cardboard Sea; with nearly a month left until the big day, all attention has been diverted to wedding prep.


What has occurred to me lately is that we've wound up throwing a very hands on wedding. While I'm sewing buntings and stressing about our music playlist and other small details here on the coast, my parents are hard at work prepping their Hundred Acre Woods for the celebration. In just a couple weeks I will return to the Western New York woods to finish the final projects and to finally get hitched.


Late last month I finished and distributed one of my largest projects thus far, the invitations.



As with other wedding preparation, I was curious to see what advice was available for the Mid Century bride concerning invitation selection.

Turns out, options for invitations were very limited and brides planning an extravagant or formal affair were expected to send out engraved invitations especially if they were throwing a wedding with a large guest list.


For small, more informal, gatherings a hand written note or phone call would suffice.

Marjorie also advises that brides should distribute their invitations two weeks before the wedding, or three weeks if guests are traveling from afar.

These days, brides are advised to distribute their invites six weeks in advance, even if they have sent out save the date cards.
Oh how times have changed.









While the simplicity of sending out sophisticated engraved invitations with a standard message and design is simple and alluring, the idea of having something completely unique and completely "us" won us over, just as it did with our save the date cards.


We ended up with a card style invite with a design quite close to the one below:

The front of the card is on the right, the back on the left. Before sending the design to print, I eliminated the "Join Us" and added some textured to the carved heart. After printing, the colors were much more earthy and subdued. While we used a different service for the save the date cards, we opted for Overnight Prints for the invitations because they allow for the upload of both the interior and exterior design of the card.



Through this whole design process I couldn't get the idea of ferns out of my head so I added them to the inside. For a little privacy, I've eliminated some of the text that was originally on the invite, and once again, the colors printed a little more muted than they appear here.

I'm pretty satisfied with how the invites turned out, and how well they were received by family and friends and those that they shared them with.

 

 

Included with the invite was our response card in postcard format. The backside of the card not only had our address on it, but also an area to request songs which has definitely been helpful during playlist construction.

 

 

 At the moment I'm still waiting for about half of our guests to return their response cards so I can provide a firm number for the caterer and baker. After experiencing things from this side of a wedding, never again will I drag my feet on returning an RSVP card- very frustrating!

 

There's still a lot to be done in the next month, including being reunited with my dress, which I am both nervous and excited about!

 

Despite the wedding chaos, I do hope to get some non-wedding related posts in soon.

 

Until then,

 

Happy Sailing