One aspect of weddings that I hadn’t TRULY appreciated {to the extent that I do now} prior to being engaged was paper goods. I definitely enjoyed gawking over pretties on Style Me Pretty and Southern Weddings blogs (as well as Pinterest), but they weren’t something I figured would be much of a priority for our own wedding. It pained me to think of putting in a ton of time, energy, thought, and money into something that people would open up, skim over, and toss out. {It still does, to a degree.}
You can now officially call me a convert. Once again my Wedding Fairy Godmother helped me transform my wedding priorities and helped me believe my most beyond-reach dreams could come true — I, too, could be a bride with gorgeous papers!
For our save-the-dates, we knew in advance what we wanted. We took engagement pictures with Brett Price specifically to include as our graphic for our save-the-dates. Once we had those in hand, we got on OvernightPrints.com and did a little graphic designing (via simple software TextEdit and Preview) and created these STD postcards! It only cost about $60 to order and ship the postcards from Overnight (we got 200 – 100 high-quality and 100 lower quality, to cut costs), and we only had to pay for $0.32 stamps to mail them to our friends and family!
{Front of our STD postcards!}
{And the back — see the return address and wedding website written down the middle?}
Our invites were higher priority but still low-budget.. We originally looked at Etsy and online retailers (like Minted, Wedding Paper Divas, etc) and tried to see what pretty things we could get for a small budget. Our favorite was this Etsy invite, created by EdenWeddingStudio.
We liked a combination of calligraphy and classic serif typefaces, something gender-neutral, natural-esque, color-customizable, and a little barnsy or with a slight nod to equestrian style.
And then Hillary {from Brocade Designs} rocked my world. She took all the {stunningly gorgeous amazing perfect} stationery designs I adored and pinned and created the suite of my dreams. All of the incredible invitation sets and paper goods I’ve ever drooled over and felt would always be unrealistic and unattainable for me, and made a custom set that was perfectly, gorgeously OURS. I must say, the whole “gender neutral” goal we originally took got scrapped pretty early on {there is no denying our invites are most DEFINITELY feminine}, but GEEZ. Our end result is STUNNING.
She gave me several different options to choose from, initially {all going along with our color scheme of pink, green, and taupe}. We narrowed it down to our favorite; chose the swoon-worthy envelopes, backing papers, and inserts; tweaked the colors a bit… and magic happened. I got all the printed materials on a Saturday night and set up shop on Sunday to assemble everything with bridesmaids who were in town for my Lilly Pulitzer-themed shower. We ended up running out of glue dots, glue runners, and stamps pretty early-on {word of advice to brides: BUY IN BULK!}, but a good chunk got done. I spent another several few days (and late nights) finishing up {frequently going BACK to Wal-Mart/Hobby Lobby/Michael’s/JoAnn’s to get more supplies} assembly and getting a little jazzy with my bindings. A few trips to the post office {or five!} later and they were printed, assembled, bound, stamped, sealed, hand-canceled by yours truly, and sent on their merry way to friends and family across the country!
{Invite assembly pic! Tried to make it small and B&W so there are no spoilers!!!! ;) }
I am so totally content with how they turned out from start to finish! I even have a little shadow-box at home with a full set on display {set against a green seersucker background – so appropriate!}. Dreamy!
~ Kelly
Looking for your own dreamy invitations? Besides Brocade Designs‘ full-scale event design offerings, two of our fabulous StudioWed stationers are Amber Housley and Buchanan Ink! Need the special touch of calligraphy on your invitation set? Call up Hardink Calligraphy and see her beautiful work! Send an email to me at kelly@studiowed.net to set up a meeting with any of the above at your convenience! :)
