Real Invitations – Cynthia + Michael, Part 2

Cyd’s wedding ceremony programs were a true labor of love — with a beautiful result! — deserving of a post all their own.  Plus they were inspired in part by my own wedding ceremony programs, so I just had to give Cyd’s lovely blue and kraft paper programs a bit of extra love!

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From Cyd: For our ceremony programs, I was inspired by your cute pocket-sized ceremony programs and the lovely programs you featured by Erin Jang which had kraft paper pages and gocco’d covers.

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These were easily the most time consuming of my DIY projects – I designed them and laid them out myself in InDesign.  Every cover was individually cut, scored, lined on the inside with the same paper as our envelope liners, and then hand bound (we’re talking old school book binding with a needle and thread here) with blue and white striped baker’s twine.

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The pages were kraft paper, which was a material I introduced with the envelopes of our Bookmark the Dates (DIY bookmarks as I’m a literature buff and my husband is an English teacher) and later incorporated in several areas throughout our event.

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I gocco’d both the front and back covers, picking up on the flourish from our invitations, and used Paper Source cardstock in Lake for the actual covers.

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They were immensely time-consuming, but guests loved them and very few were left behind. I can’t say I’ll be making any more miniature books anytime soon, but I sure did love the way these turned out!

Beautiful!  Don’t you all just love the mix of craft paper and that gorgeous lake blue?  You can read more about Cyd’s wedding over on The Sweetest Occassion or on her column on Elizabeth Anne Designs.  Oh, and for those of you curious about the script font used in Cyd’s programs, it’s called Burgues and can be found at Veer.  Thanks so much, Cyd, for sharing your lovely programs and gorgeous wedding invitations with us!

{all photos by Oh So Beautiful Paper}

Carrie + Barrett’s Wood Veneer Mountain Wedding Invitations

Today’s real invitations come from the fantastic design duo of Bird and Banner, who created an amazing set of wood veneer wedding invitations (and ceremony programs, menus, favor labels, and table numbers) for Carrie and Barrett for their Jackson Hole, Wyoming wedding last year.  This suite is one of my favorites from the Bird and Banner portfolio, largely for its wonderful mix of different materials and typography styles.  Erin and Nicole, the talented ladies behind Bird and Banner, stopped by to describe the creative process behind these lovely pink and brown wedding invitations, so I’ll turn things over to them!

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From Erin and Nicole: Neither Carrie nor Barrett are from Jackson Hole but the couple had shared many special times there.  They knew it was the perfect place to celebrate their wedding.  Held at the Crescent Ranch, the inspiration was rustic yet elegant which included a formal BBQ menu and a fiddler band.

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Because it was a destination wedding Carrie and Barrett wanted to highlight the location in their invitations as much as possible.  This led us to explore using new materials and formats that would help introduce their guests to the location.

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Our initial idea was a muslin bag filled with wooden postcards.

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We loved the idea of mixing Carrie’s palatte of bright pink and brown with wood.  Working with language describing the location, we planned to use a mix of type styles.

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Unfortunately the design started to look like a “Most Wanted” poster!  So we scaled back, and then everything came together.

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Carrie and Barrett had a full weekend of festivities planned so we also created an itinerary for guests that included hand drawn illustrations of the various Jackson Hole event locations, including the arch in the town square where they got engaged.

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From the bride, Carrie: Erin and Nicole from Bird and Banner are so amazingly creative; I never had to reiterate the feel/mood we wanted to convey to our guests more than once.  Awesome!  The itinerary, invitations, packaging, etc., are what I was most proud of in the wedding planning process — even though they did all the work, they made me feel like we were a team in creating the PERFECT presentation.

So, so lovely — and a beautiful mix of rustic and modern design elements that create the perfect invitation for a wedding in Jackson Hole.  I love the attention to detail throughout the invitation, from the line illustrations to the tiny hearts and border details.  Thanks so much to Carrie, and of course to Nicole + Erin from Bird and Banner, for stopping by to share these gorgeous wedding invitations today!

{image credits: reception photos by Carrie Patterson, all others via Bird and Banner}

Danielle + Greg’s Vintage Cinema-Inspired Wedding Invitations

So last week was all about music-inspired invitations, and this week I’ve got some totally awesome real wedding invitations inspired by foreign cinema!  Kathryn featured Danielle and Greg’s wedding a few months back, and I was so smitten with her vintage cinema inspiration that I asked Danielle, the talented designer behind Tallu-lah, if she’d be willing to share her invitations and paper ephemera in greater detail.  Lucky for us, Danielle was more than willing to oblige, so let’s get right to it!

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Danielle and Greg’s foreign cinema invitation theme was inspired in part by their wedding venue and in part by their shared love of vintage lettering and illustrations.  With these two ideas they started the creation of a vintage movie themed event:

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From Danielle: Since we’re both in the wedding industry — I work as an event planner for Samantha Smith Productions and Greg is a wedding photographer — we knew we wanted something unique and fun.  After a year and a half of being engaged and looking at venues all over the United States and Mexico, we finally found a place very close to our personalities and home, Foreign Cinema.  More then just one of the best-known restaurants in the city, the venue includes an outside courtyard where movies are shown drive-in-speaker style and a modern art gallery.  The décor is industrial chic meets Northern California.

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Once they settled on their vintage cinema theme and wedding venue, it was time to get to work on their Save the Dates.  To give their guests their first glimpse into the cinema theme of the wedding, Danielle and Greg created a Save the Date in the style of a movie poster:

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We created the look and feel and Hatch Show Print of Tennessee made it come to life though old vintage images and the process of letterpress printing.  We used words on the save the date to give guests the feel that they would be coming to a show.

Danielle’s designs for Tallu-lah are all letterpress printed, and she knew she wanted the wedding invitations to be letterpressed too.  For the invitation design, Danielle and Greg turned to Hello!Lucky to help bring their vintage cinema inspiration to life:

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The rest of the paper goods (invitations, playbill, ceremony programs, cocktail napkins, seating cards/tickets, menu, reception cards and parting gifts, Poco Dolce candy boxes, thank you cards) were created by both Danielle and Eunice Moyle of Hello!Lucky.

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I asked Eunice if she would take on the project of designing for us, I couldn’t think of anyone better to ask — she was the perfect designer for the project and was already a great business friend living in the same town as me, San Francisco.  She out-did herself, they were perfect!

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Once designed, my stationery company, Tallu-lah, printed the invites on over-sized, extra thick paper and included special details like a hand drawn map of San Francisco by calligrapher Mo Seder, a list of the top 10 things to do in San Francisco, hand stamped RSVP envelopes, and customized postage stamps – all assembled in a glassine sleeve packaged in a star-studded lined and letterpressed envelope.

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Other vintage movie items were added into the wedding like truffled popcorn before the ceremony and “hooray flags” for each guest to wave when Danielle and Greg walked back down the aisle at the end of the ceremony:

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I love that Danielle and Greg carried their cinema theme through to the escort cards – which were designed to look like vintage movie tickets and then hung for guests to find on their way to the reception:

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Danielle and Greg printed cocktail napkins to match the flow of their wedding, from the ceremony (“The Show”) in the outside courtyard, to the cocktail reception (“Intermission”) to the dinner and after-party (“The Final Act- It’s A Wrap!”) in two separate lounges – one for Mr. Piché and another Mrs. Piché – that the newlyweds created:

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Mr. Piché’s lounge (in the courtyard) is where our guests could watch “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” on cozy furniture and snack on movie treats from the “concession stand” or mini cones with salted caramel and lavender ice cream (Ed note: yum!) – while singing along to the live music of Syd and Matt York. For guests wanting to dance, Mrs. Pichés lounge (in the art gallery) offered a hip local DJ, as well as the opportunity to watch “Grease” and try treats from the dessert bar including a wedding cake covered in 300 truffles, Poco Dolce chocolate tastings accompanied with port, and an array of French macarons baked by the chef.

The vintage cinema theme was also incorporated into these reception cards, which were provided on each dinner table and contained both the menu and details for each lounge:

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As a final touch, favors from Poco Dolce chocolates packaged in a little paper box printed with the saying all old movies end with “And they lived happily ever after.  The End.”  Such a nice touch!

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Do you all love Danielle’s invitations and wedding stationery as much as I do?  I love the foreign cinema theme – and both Danielle and Hello!Lucky did an amazing job in translating the inspiration into a beautiful design.  For more photos from Danielle and Greg’s wedding, be sure to check out their feature on Snippet and Ink right here – and a huge thanks to Danielle for sharing her wedding stationery with us!

Happy Weekend!

Hello again everyone!  Do you all have fun plans for the weekend?  I'm actually looking forward to taking it easy this weekend – well, that and the National Book Festival on Saturday.  It's one of my favorite DC annual events and it looks like the organizers have got a bunch of really great authors lined up this year.  In the meantime…

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…here are a few of my favorite links from this week:

That's it for me this week – I'll see you all back here again on Monday!

{image credits: Flowertoss Photography via Snippet & Ink}

Heather + Josh’s Botanical Wedding Stationery

Today over at EAD I’m posting about Heather and Josh’s lilac-inspired wedding, and I’ve got a few additional photos of their paper ephemera to share with you!

Heather and Josh were married at the totally awesome venue of a botanical garden, and I love the way they incorporated floral and botanical themes throughout the wedding – from the lilacs in the bouquet and centerpieces to the queen anne’s lace and dandelions used in the wedding paper ephemera:

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Heather DIY’d most of the paper elements throughout her wedding, from a recipe book as favors to a Quaker marriage certificate!

From Heather:  We did a recipe book of family recipes as the favor, which I designed and printed along with the ceremony programs.

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Our placecards were on plantable paper that we stamped using a rubber stamp from Paper Source and then hand wrote the names and table information.

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We did a quaker marriage certificate as a guest book that my Mom hand painted and I designed in Photoshop and had printed on canvas.

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I also love the queen anne’s lace details in Heather’s Save the Dates and invitation:

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Heather was inspired in part by the lilacs that I used in my wedding last year – and I’m so happy that she (and her fab wedding photographers, Lindsey and April from Sweet Monday Photography) sent over the photos from her wedding to show how she incorporated the lilac and botanical themes in her own way.  You can see more photos from Heather + Josh’s lilac-inspired wedding right here and over at EAD.

{photos courtesy of Sweet Monday Photography}