Setting the Tone For The {BIG} Day & Coordination The Day Of

A wedding invitation is most likely the first glimpse a guest has into your Wedding Day. That invitation speaks to your personality, your taste and the overall ambiance of the event.

The costs of varying weights and textures of paper, different printing techniques, additional colors, envelopes and stamps are all elements to consider when choosing a design. Until I got into this, I was not aware of the extreme expense of thee Wedding Invitation.

I am lucky enough to work where I do, with whom I do... I worked with Kenji Bankhead, one of our fab designers and my friend, to create a custom design and layout that spoke perfectly to the tone of our BIG day.

I had a general idea of what I wanted before the process began. I knew I wanted classic black and white/ivory paper and printing, some sort of design either along the top or side and for an ivory paper to be mounted on black paper. We browsed through a million websites, visited a number of invitation boutiques and flipped through numerous design books to find a "pattern" that I wanted to include on the invitation. After tweaking the main layout a couple of times, our invitation had been created... a gorgeous damask-like pattern across the top and bottom, elegant type mixed with clean bold lettering and a spacious well-executed layout... ah! Now for paper and printing... I chose a light ivory medium-heavy weight Crane paper and envelopes to have the invitations printed on in letterpress. I was referred to Riley Florence, a cousin to another person I work with. He did an amazing job printing the invitations and envelopes.

They turned out beautiful and were just what I wanted (Mikey happened to like them as well, which was a total bonus)! Mikey and I both worked to mount the ivory paper onto a heavier-textured black piece... that was quite a task, but well worth it. We included a RSVP and reception card with the main invite... all together it looked gorgeous!

Now that I had given our guests a glimpse of our wedding day style, I extended the invite style to the Wedding Day accessories. For our Mass ceremony, we had a 4-page program, which Kenji also designed to match our invitations. In addition to readings and songs during the mass, we recongnized our Wedding Party and included a small note to our family and friends on the back. The piece turned out beautifully. You can also see here that our thank you cards matched the style too!

We not only got to drive away from St. Thomas More in this luxurious car, our Just Married sign matched! AH... the pleasure I get from things of this nature is simply intoxicating!!!

Last but not least. Feeling accomplished about tying this all together, I had one last thing... the entrance sign! Small touch, but highly recognizable by me. At the entrance of Willow Creek, a SMALL sign announced the event. Why have it on a plain piece of paper when it could match my invitations? Seems totally obvious, right? LOL.

I absolutely live for these kinds of small details. Having friends in the "business" totally helps too. Kenji is an amazing designer and we are currently working on a freelance project together. If you are ever in need of a designer, I highly reccommend him. Also- if you are looking to get anything letterpressed, Riley did a fantastic job.

Let the joys of Wedding planning begin!!!