Wedding Invitations - a whole new challenge!

Well, our wedding is quickly approaching, and it's almost time to mail out our invitations. :) From the beginning, I wanted to design the entire invitation from start to finish for a couple reasons. One being I love to design. No doubt about it. 2- It would be another opportunity for me to flex my creative muscles, taking on a new challenge. And naturally, anytime we take on a task, we learn something new. So this time, I'd learn even more about print design. The 3rd and biggest reason: Ryan and I have always been a completely unique couple and always will be. And we're definitely unique individuals (which I see as a good thing, for sure!) so having that said, I was highly doubtful we'd be able to find a template or pre-designed invitation that would suit us perfectly anyway. So there was no question about it- I wanted to design our invitations!! :)

2 months later.... I finally finished the designs. I did NOT think it would take me so long to come up with a concept but at the same time, all designers know that personal projects are always hardest and I guess I forgot about that along the way! It was pretty challenging for me to come up with just 1 idea that felt true to our personalities, that fell within our budget, and that I could expand on easily throughout all the pieces. The number of combinations one can concoct is INFINITE when it comes to just paper alone (especially when you're amped on customization like I am!), and then mixing designs in with whichever combination you come up with just complexes it more. So although I never fell short on ideas for the graphic design end of it, I definitely learned a lot about paper and print design from this process. which I'm now grateful for. :)

The paper source I ended up going with was Mountain Cow, which ultimately provided the widest variety I could find at the most affordable price I could find. I made my selections from their "Envelopements" line... the punny name might have had something to do with my immediate liking of them. :) All in all, it was a pretty smooth process once I found them. I even got the entire order within 5 days of ordering- pretty impressive with all the custom-sized card tocks I ordered.

Anyway, below is the winning design! I have to say that I got the concept from a piece by Mika78 and made some changes to it to match our colors, paper dimensions and personality a little more. And yeah, I know I said before that I didn't want to use anyone else's pre-designed template but the concept of this particular one was great, so I made it our own. :)

obviously I'm a visual person, so I drew up this handy-dandy illustration to see what different colors would look like together. It totally helped as I played around with all the swatches that mountain cow had to offer.

so here's our final paper selection and color scheme Ryan and I decided on:


outer envelope:


backflap of outer envelope:


the invitation!! (will be mounted onto the tan backing, by itself on the side withOUT pocket):


directions card, will be tucked into pocket, behind response card and response envelope (the map seriously took me forever... haha):


response card:


response envelope:


so there you have it, folks.

This week I also did some research on home-office printers since it was time for me to upgrade anyway; I needed to get a fax at some point for business, so I found a really awesome deal on an HP Officejet all-in-one. Printer, scanner, fax, copier, annnnd wedding invitation printer!! :) So now that I've got it all set up and tested (ran all kinds of envelopes and custom-sized papers through it.. and thank god- it took them like a champ!), next up will be printing everything out verrry carefully and then setting up round 2 of "wedding arts and crafts time" hopefully with my mom, sisters and Patti (Ryan's mom) to bring it all together.

Hope you guys like it!!