Monday, March 24, 2014

Our Wedding Invitations : personal // northeast, tx wedding and lifestyle photographer

Heeeey, friends! So it's been forever since I've blogged. I must admit I was always one of those people who looked at frazzled brides and was like, "Yeah, if you would've prepared better..." or "Just chill out and enjoy yourself!" or "My goodness, she is waaay too up tight/anxious/emotional/unfocused/distracted/etc." and thought that when it was my turn to step up to the bride plate, I would handle it so.much.better.
Ha.
I make me laugh.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
So! Here I am! Drowning in my wedding planning! Sure, it's fun, frilly, pretty, exciting, surreal, overwhelming, scary, hard, stretching, sanctifying, losing-tons-of-sleep, painfully wonderful....yeah, way too many adjectives to wrap my tired brain around. Maybe this wouldn't be quite so difficult if I wasn't so indecisive.
*Cringe*
I make me cry.
Weep. Sob. Bawl.
I obviously don't want to be the Bridezilla type but people have been begging me to be more assertive and just call the shots already! Whatever I say goes! I'm honestly not good at any of it. But! In the end, I'm not overly worried. As I was sitting at the table today, still hand addressing invitations, it gave me chills to think that this is all really happening. I'm inviting friends and family to come watch me marry Trevor. Too many thoughts to tell. Heart full.
Moving on! Something I've always, always, always loved and wanted when it came time to me planning my own wedding was hand addressed wedding invitations. That was something I didn't have to be indecisive about. I didn't quite know how tedious it would be, but I truly don't regret it. Putting the first batch in the mail, I felt a twinge of what mothers that send their children off to their first day of school must feel. ;) I put so much into them, it was a bit sad to see them go. The mailman actually came to gather the mail right before I dumped them in. He brought out a big bin and told me to "Just drop 'em in!" I gingerly began to rest them gently into the bin in groups of 5. He kinda chuckled and said, "Really...just drop 'em in!" I nervously smiled back at him and bravely raised the groups from 5 to 10. He tried not to seem irritated as he said, "You know, these are going to be through a lot by the time they're delivered. Sorting, mail trucks, stamping...the works!" (and one last time) "Just go ahead and drop 'em off in here!" By this time I only had a few left...so I gathered them like the last handful of pixie dust left in the world and sprinkled them in softly. The man smirked and walked away to his truck. I might've gotten slightly attached to them. Maybe...a little.

Which is why, before I left the house to send them away, I wanted to document them to share with all of you. :)

(And! Fun Fact! The Skinners that you see above just got maaaarried last weekend and I shot their wedding. :) SUCH a joyful gorgeous day that I can't wait to share with y'all. Aaand I'll be shooting another wedding this weekend as well! So for all of you who thought I fell off the face of the working photography world...ha, I'm back baby. ;) To whet your appetite, here's a preview of Colin +Tori's loveliness....

I know it's hard to move on after that, but heeere we go....
Each detail was very important to me. I wanted them to be as cost effective and as pretty as they could be. Instead of buying specialty envelopes, I got plain white ones and glued in glitter gold inserts to each one using the cheapest gold glitter scrapbook paper I could find. My mother and grandmother graciously cut out the triangles and I glued them all in. {Trevor did one or two for fun. ;)} 


I was picky about having pretty stamps instead of just the standard ones. These weren't any more expensive...they just looked better. ;)

And for sealing! We bought a heart-hole-punch and punched these out of all different shades of green paint sample swatches. :) Good thing those are free. ;)

Instead of full size wedding invitations, I got postcard size and saved A TON! Like...they were a third of the price of normal sized invites. It was totally completely worth it. And because I ordered 250 they threw in the white envelopes for only $11!!
For the one side of the invitation I really wanted a good picture of us so that if people wanted to keep it or put it on their refrigerator, they could! Without it having all the wedding info all over it. And those fonts...ha! I guess that was another thing I was picky about...good fonts. I scoured the whole internet it seemed before I found some that I liked. I wanted hand calligraphed fonts...several different ones that all corresponded. I was happy to find several by Emily Conners. :) My future mother-in-law laughed when she heard about my grand search and teasingly called me a font snob. ;)

Designing the double-sided invitations and RSVPs was quite an adventure on Photoshop. In the end, I knew the main elements I wanted were "Green, glitter gold, watercolor, good fonts, and elegant but still fun."


When it came to hand-addressing, I wanted them, again, to be very elegant but not overly formal. So I played around and personalized them as much as possible...Some have Mr. + Mrs., some I wrote out their names, I tried to include the names of the children if it was at all possible to fit them on the envelope...if not I just said "+ family." For some I added little embellishments to disguise my lack of skill at perfectly spacing things. ;) They are very amateur, very hand-done, and very imperfect. And yet I loved them. :)

I can whole-heartedly say I'm no calligraphy expert. I was literally winging it. But these were fantastic to work with!

I used the .05 to write them. The Brush to fill in to make it look more like it was done with a calligraphy nib. (Ha. Fake it til you make it.) And then the .01 was for the fine details like the "Kindly deliver to" and any other detail work that the Brush was not precise enough for.

And last, the map! Trevor and I are getting married on my Aunt and Uncle's land out in the country so we knew our guests would need a little extra navigation down the back roads. My mother did the sketch, I took a picture of it, and edited the rest on Photoshop! :) I love the "E.H. Shepard's illustrated map from Winnie the Pooh" feel that it ended up with. When Trevor saw it he immediately said, "It reminds me of you. Of stuff that you really love. It's very you." YES! Exactly what I love to hear. I'm so excited that my guests will be receiving things that show them a little part of me and what I like. :)

And just to show closer detail...I edited an image I found on Pinterest so that it would look more like my dress and Trevor's suit...and so it would look more like me and him in general. The finished product was quite a proud moment for me. ;)

*Sigh*
Let's face it. I'm a font snob and a self taught Photoshop nerd.
And I'm getting married in less than 7 weeks. LESS THAN 7!

~Through Christ's Love