EAD: The Invitations

From Elizabeth Anne Designs:

They were only 2 weeks late with 2 months to go until the wedding but this weekend we finally finished and sent the invitations.

We wanted our invitations to be beautiful but practical. Much as we love letter pressed designs and intricate professional designs, we knew that our reasonably small budget couldn’t buy everything that we wanted. So we chose to spend money on beautiful and high quality cards and envelopes but cut the costs as the design elements were done by family members (although he is a Graphic Designer so we knew we were in safe hands) and we did the printing ourselves using M’s parents’ home printer.

Yes, the invitations do set the tone/theme of the wedding but this doesn’t mean that they have to be professionally made. The theme of our wedding is peacocks so I think this comes across through the invitations as the peacock motif ties each part together. The tone of our wedding is intended to be a semi-formal family gathering with lots of diy elements yet not at the expense of some luxury and details. I think (hope!) that this comes across as well.

Each envelope contained the invitation (4), a response card (6) and map (3) and was then hand addressed (1) and sealed with our peacock motif stamp (2) on the back. They were posted at the weekend so should begin arriving at our guests addresses today onwards.

Cost breakdown:

• Peacock Stamp from Baby Jewels - $21.00
• Black ink pad - £2.50
• 75 cream wove Smythson plain envelopes - £25.00 (bought with 20% discount)
• 100 cream wove Smythson correspondence cards - £16.00 (bought with 20% discount)
• Turquoise card - £4.00
• Guillotine* - £9.00
• Plus use of a printer and ink cartridge and 75 sheets white A4 paper which M’s parents already owned and did not charge us for.

So, excluding postage costs we spent £71.50 ($105) {so £1 ($1.50) per invitation} which I don’t think is too bad. And, if I say so myself, if you ignore the fact that there is no texture to the printing, they look professionally printed. I am so pleased we decided to use good quality paper and envelopes as that really reduces the home-made aspect.

Yet getting the invitations designed and finished ourselves wasn’t an easy task. It required lots of organisation and re-thinking of ideas until we settled on a design and method of printing which was workable. We had almost given up as the cards wouldn’t print landscape until I realised that they would print portrait and sister-in-law-to-be came to the rescue in pointing out how easy it was to rotate a pdf image clockwise, so it printed vertically but read horizontally. It gave M and I an opportunity to be creative and really work together as a team to get the invitations from an idea to a reality, far more so than if we had paid for a finished product. Overall, we were really pleased with the result; I hope our guests are too.

—

* By far one of the best equipment purchases we made. No more rulers whose edges are not straight and knives with blades that aren’t sharp. Plus, I can use it for card making in the future, perhaps even for our thank you cards (utilising the peacock stamp to continue our motif through to the end).

The Invitations (Part Five)

{All images from Author's personal collection}

After an epic story, we finally reach the final chapter...

The invitations are finished. And the ones we have addresses for have been posted. Hip hip hooray!

We managed the final push over the Easter Weekend with the aide of a decent home printer, a guillotine* and a team of M, my Mother-In-Law-to-be and my Grandmother-In-Law-to-be.

Each envelope contained one of each of images 3, 4 and 6 {with apologies for the crude de-personalisation} and was hand addressed and sealed with a peacock stamp.

We expect that they will start arriving on Thursday and Friday of this week so we should hopefully have a better idea of numbers soon. Now we just need to finalise a wedding list and hand it to my mother for monitoring.

*Highly recommended. One of the best £9 we have spent recently. Instead of hours spent with rulers that are never straight and knives which are never sharp enough, cutting up the response cards was easy-peasy.

The Invitations (Part Four)

{Images from Author's Personal Collection; Designs by Alex}

In what is now the fourth in a hopefully only five part series, the invitation story progresses.

Beautiful though they are, I see no need for secrecy. If you are a guest and happen to be reading this... does that happen?... then your invitation is nearly with you.

The designs have been finished. Stamps bought*. Maps are almost ready.

Just need to print and collate, address and post and then the only part left will be for people to open them and respond.

*We saved a whole £3 by buying them before 6 April 2009. Gotta make budget savings where you can people.

The Invitations (Part Three)

This girl's internal dilemmas continued. Having solved the tag issue thanks to Marie (for the suggestion) and her darling boy (for purchasing it), her thoughts turned once again to the invitations. She was so pleased with the support that she had received and realised that invitations were not a competition. She knew that, but she also loved beautiful things, in fact, she only wanted things for her wedding that were beautiful.

Still, it was more important that their best people came to the wedding, not whether the invitations were perfect. Besides Alex had done a fantastic job and as long as they had the correct information on and reached the correct people, their purpose would be fulfilled.

And accompanying the invitations and the RSVP cards (don't ask, yet) would be this map:

{Wedding Map (unfinished), originally uploaded by rachel-catherine}

Well, a finished version of this map. It will have place names and our names and the date and another reference to the wedsite/website. She just hoped people would see it for the handmade charm with which she intended it, not just wished she had photocopied part of a road map...

Oh, and for those of you that asked, this is the peacock image:-

{Peacock Image, originally uploaded by rachel-catherine}

And it's stamp brother which matches it will be used to 'seal' the backs of the envelopes and to create the thank you cards.

---

If you care to read about this again, in a slightly altered format(!), follow this link to Elizabeth Anne Designs...

---

Oh, and this may be my last post for a week or so. Having a minor operation tomorrow (diagnostic) but have been told to take two weeks off work. Hoping to be at least up and organising and maybe even blogging by next week, but we shall see...

The Invitations (Part Two)

{Image from Author's Personal Collection}

We really need to get the invitations sent out if we want to give our guests any time at all to respond. In fact, if we want any guests at all there we should really get a move on.

Alex (A1's boyfriend) and graphic designer e-mailed me the initial proofs last night. I love the font he has chosen for our names and we shall be able to replicate that throughout our wedding with the peacock image I had designed.

We have decided that we had better include a response card with the invitation: older generation guests who would most likely send a formal response anyway can use the card to indicate taxi requirements and younger generation guests can use it to RSVP as well.

The invitations will be black and white. Or, at least, they are at the moment. With possibly the peacocks painted blue depending on how it looks. Black and white is not the theme of the wedding. I can't decide whether I should try and get them printed out in blue (which is more our theme) or whether I should just get them done as simply as possible and get them sent out.

I keep looking at other bloggers' beautiful invitations and am torn. On the one hand I would have loved to have had invitations which truly represented our theme, were blue and letter pressed and so beautiful that they could be framed. But that wasn't in our budget, and neither is it really us, if we are totally honest. So something we could do ourselves (or, ask Alex to make for us) suits us (and our budget) better. I love the font of these, I love the peacocks (which you can't see, obviously, on the image above) but I am not in love with them. Do you need to love the invitation, or is something that does the job (well, I would say) absolutely sufficient.

T Minus 3 Months

I could scarcely believe it when I opened my desk diary this morning and realised that there were exactly three months to go until our wedding day. [More pressing in my mind is the fact that I have precisely 41 days until I am made redundant. With no job to go to. Yet I digress.]

This week we decided that hand-writing all our invitations was no longer practical. I had a go at the weekend and it just didn't look right. I couldn't get the calligraphy to look like I wanted and I don't have enough time to perfect it and then write it out 75 times. So we have started to look into other options. There is no money in the budget to get them printed professionally (i.e. letterpress, thermography etc) and, or perhaps but, regardless of budget I don't think that would suit the ethos of the wedding. So, home-made they will remain, just less home-made than writing them out myself.

Potential Brother-in-Law the graphic designer has already been asked/pleaded with to design the order of service and the posters so it made sense to ask him to do the invitation as well. I think it will just be text and our peacock motif, printed by computer printer onto the cards that I have already bought. With a map and an RSVP card, when we can agree the wording. Sending an invitation to our wedding, hosted by my parents, to several different generations of guests throws up more issues regarding the RSVP cards than one would have thought possible...

I have also made good inroads into "project diy bridesmaid present" (which I will photograph, write and then pre-upload for publishing whilst we are on our honeymoon so as not to ruin the surprise in the -admittedly unlikely- event that As 1 or 2 or T is reading). I have made two parts of their presents, commissioned a third and then will be adding another part when I have chosen it. I just hope that they like them...

The "great plate search" still continues, quite literally in fact as we have managed to purchase over 100 cups & saucers and tea plates. It is just the dinner plates which are harder to come by. We have also decided to purchase the cutlery for the occasion, as it seemed a pointless expense to spend £40 delivery hire charge on cutlery which we can buy from Ikea for less money. Afterwards all sisters and cousins who have houses/are off to university etc can have a set or twelve and the rest we shall donate to a homeless shelter or similar.

What's in a name...

Two weeks ago I hadn't given what I would be called when I am married any thought beyond whether to bother creating a double-barrelled name from M and my own. I had always assumed that I would become Mrs M's Surname and had never considered any other option.

I suppose I am quite a traditional sort of girl, both in values, expectations and activities that I pursue. I am an active member of my local Women's Institute group, I enjoy baking & sewing & making things. I value family life and my friends above a career, although interestingly because I have to have a job I have ended up/chosen to enter a male dominated profession. I believe in marriage for eternity. I also believe in equal rights for everyone to marry/enter civil partnerships. Yet I also believe men and women are different. I have no issues being female rather than male. I celebrate being female, yet do not feel threatened by men. I do not believe we are judged by our gender rather valued for our differences. I am not a feminist and I do not believe we are judged by our honorifics, which is why I had not given my title a second thought before now.

I am also driven by etiquette. I like to know the correct ways to address people and I still send hand-written thank you letters to anyone who invites us to stay with them, addressed as per correct form, unless I know specifically they choose another form of address (although thinking about it, I don't think I do know anyone that doesn't). I send e-mail thank you messages after suppers, parties etc but those never involve titles, so don't count. On a form I always tick Miss, as I do not consider myself to Mrs (yet) or Ms. To me, Ms is used by divorced women and single women hiding their marital status and I am neither. I stress that is to *me* because it is a personal viewpoint of an arbitrary word, not a slight on divorced or single women.

I then read this post by A Practical Wedding and then Cate's post on Project Subrosa and realised that to some women my age, whether they are known by Mrs or Ms is something they have given a great deal of thought. I understand that there are women to whom it is important that they are not recognised for their marital status, that they believe as Mr does not identify anything particular about a man, other than he is a man, so therefore women should have a suitable title to identify them as female but say nothing further. They choose to use Ms in this instance.

Reading all these viewpoints didn't change my mind rather actually clarified for me that I will choose to use the title Mrs when we are married. I do not see Mrs as indicating that I belong to my husband, as if I am chattel. He knows and I know that we belong to each other and our collective family name of Mr and Mrs HisSurname will indicate that to each other and everyone else. If anything I look forward to being a family unit with a shared surname rather than two individuals who happen to live in the same building. In the same light, I look forward to being Mrs HisFirstName HisSurname as I am confident being my own person yet proud of being his wife. It is also traditional and I enjoy following tradition.

Indeed, that is how we shall be addressing our wedding invitations, to Mr and Mrs John Smith. Unless I know that a female friend has a preference for Ms, I shall be addressing couples who are not married on separate lines as Miss Jane Brown and Mr John Smith or the other way round if we know the man better (I think that is the only deviation from traditional etiquette we shall use). The invitations will also come from Mr and Mrs MyFather'sFirstName TheirSurname despite the fact that my father is a Dr as this is a social occasion and therefore academic titles are not appropriate. Apart from the Chaplain. We shall address him as The Reverend FirstName Surname.

The Invitations (part one)

...

We are writing our invitations ourselves and I do not like the idea of adding anything other than the traditional wording to the invitation itself. We may add an RSVP card but I am not sure. We certainly won't be including anything about presents (especially not anything with the line your presence is present enough and certainly not "We are happy to accept your presence on our day as a gift in itself" which is the wording one wedding advisor thought was acceptable. 'Happy to accept' - are you insane, how rude would that sound?) and we most definitely won't be including an A-Z of weddings (yes, someone I know received one. Guess what sentence was listed against 'P'...).

So, what we are probably going to include is an A4 map which I have drawn/calligraphied (somewhat in the style of Laura Hooper but much more relevant to us) and have included on there for further details please see our wedding website. On that website there is a brief reference to presents as we are not stupid enough to think that people won't think about presents. It's a wedding. It's customary to bring a present. What we have said is that we want people to feel comfortable rather than obliged and that there is a list of sorts with my mother if people would like an insight into our tastes and needs.

Map completed we now need to start the task of writing and painting the invitations themselves. Once they are finished I shall attempt to photograph them and show you. I may even try and scan the map if I am able to do so without giving away the location of the wedding...

...

Invitations and other ways to stress

Despite being told, repeatedly, that our invitations will set the tone and theme for our wedding M and I have decided to go for simple and plain. We have bought some beautiful correspondence cards in plain off-white. We are going to write the details on ourselves with a calligraphy pen. We are going to make a stamp with a peacock feather on it for the corners and then we are going to pop them into plain blue envelopes and post them.

Not that I think this is the 'easy' way out, no, not at all. Hand-writing invitations to 120 guests (approx 75 invitations) will still take some time but it is simple and beautiful and does not involve glue.

I don't like glue. Things do not look neat or chic when they are glued (unless you are incredibly good at glue-ing, are incredibly patient and do not scream loudly when things invariably **** up.

I can do calligraphy... I can do calligraphy under pressure (75 name plates the night before my boy's brother's wedding). I can address envelopes. It will be fine. Just as long as I do not read wedding p0rn and have a similar conversation to this (but about invitations):

PeacockFeathers: (watching a wedding show and in a worried tone of voice) "Do you think I should have got a pouffier dress?"

BestFriend: (also watching wedding show, looking horrified) "what?"

P: "Do you think it's boring having a long slim straight dress?"

BF: "But you love your dress, it looks great. It's simple. Your style is simple."

P: "But do you think M will want to see me in something more, I don't know, bigger?"

BF: "No. Your dress is great. Stop stressing."

P: "But..."

BF: (firmly, ending conversation) "your dress is beautiful. Be quiet".


Aaaahhh. I no longer know if I stand by any of my choices. Maybe I do want frothy and detailed. Maybe I should stop looking at facebook weddings and wedding blogs.... I think I need a cup of tea and to worry about things in the right order. Like the fact that the wedding is 9 months last Saturday and the save-the-date e-mails still have not gone out...