the innards and gizzards

on the heels of my last post, lets see what two rounds of revisions has yielded in production shall we?

i know i didn't technically give birth to you, but you were still a labor of love! (please excuse the ugliness that i used to block out some info)

respondez sil vous plait!

chinese bakery cards and directions (yea sorry dudes, not everyone gets the chinese sweet stuff, only certain guests on the brides guestlist gets these, ie auntie lulu and uncle jack)

all bundled up with a double sided satin ribbon

ready for the mail!

the font for our names on the invitations is carpenter calligraphy by Laura and the envelopes were actually printed through my printer (man this is another story i will have to post later) with the font English... i thought they're pretty sweet lookin, what do YOU think? do i pass muster?

Wedding invitations at last

After a lot of hemming and hawing i decided to go with lucky orchid wedding invitations by Laura Hooper. The woman is a genius, not only is her calligraphy something awesome, her line of invitations are absolutely beautiful.

i didn't go the DIY route with this because, lets face it, i'm really just not that talented and to attempt such a huge project on my own is a disaster in the making. plan A was to order invitations on mygatsby.com because well i didn't want to spend a whole lot of money and the designs were very nice...but ultimately i wasn't happy with the paper quality, it wasn't as heavy as i would've liked and there was very little i can do to customize it to make it my own. so i gave myself a new budget and started looking up alternatives on thermographically printed wedding invitations on substantially weighted paper and Laura Hooper came to my rescue.

so without further ado, lets take you back a couple of months when i received THIS in the mail:

can this be?OMG! IT IS! IT IS! MY FREAKIN WEDDING INVITATIONS!

God it's like opening a present at Christmas! TEEHEEOMG OMG OMG!
It's even wrapped so prettily! Laura Hooper i love thee!

i know i know, you wanna see what this baby looks like dontcha? DONTCHA?

The Great Invitation Debate

aight, so maybe it isn't so much a debate, but more so a "more stress than i need to have" sort of situation...after days of hemming and hawing over what the heck this blasted thing is going to look like, i finally cracked...there really are just too many invitation designs and options out there, there are a billion different kinds of paper, like five different kinds of printing methods and then you have the sky is the limit in terms of design and look of the dang thing...in the end most guests will probably throw these guys away and or forget what they look like after the event anyway...seriously, i'm one of those people so i can't exactly point fingers at anyone haha...over the years and after countless invitations to various events wedding and non wedding a like... i can honestly say maybe 2 or 3 invitations i can actually recall from memory and even those are not in great detail...so why the heck was i stressing out over paper!?!?!? since chris doesn't particularly care about stationary, i decided i was just going to pick an invitation company and just pick a design that i liked and order these suckers...cuz seriously enough is enough...

in the end this is what i'm deciding on, i'm waiting for a sample of the paper and once i see it, feel it, know i love it...it is totally going into print! without further ado...i present to you the tse capuozzo wedding invitation version 1.0

the my gatsby serena invtation, the script is carpenter and the text is copperplate...

reply card, both pieces are in ivory cardstock with navy blue print color

now onto the dollars and cents of this guy... i tried to do research about affordable invitations out there, and i had set out with a 2 thousand dollar stationary budget for 175 invitations...it wasn't until i actually started to scout out invitations that that budget was WAY too high...so i lowered it to 1 thousand dollars for 200 invitations (yes my guestlist has grown since my initial foray into invitation searching) ... through my limited research that was a budget i can live with.. of course i like most other brides out there would prefer to spend the least amount possible without sacrificing quality... it was to my great surprise and pleasure when i happened across the mygatsby.com discount line...the invitaitons are thermographically printed, which was a requirement for me...ivory card stock...and navy blue flourish that will echo my wedding theme and colors...but can you believe it? the quote came out to less than $500!!!! i was over the moon, i was thrilled!!! my wedding invitation search seemed to come to happy ending after several weeks of moaning, groaning and dreading to look up wedding stationary... i'll update more on this when and after the whole process is done...but so far things are looking pretty darn good...what do you think?

How many types of pocketfolds are there?!??!!?

now that the favor situation has been settled, i find myself hemming and hawing over the invitations...and i keep coming back to the same thing, a pocketfold invitation. after much research, in order to create or get the fabulous paper confection i have in my head, it will either cost me a whole lotta money that i will no way in the world be able to afford, or i DIY it...i'm a self proclaimed DIY dummy, but in the name of wedding stationary perfection, i will brave these waters again (i mean i did manage the engagment invitations unscathed, the wedding invites might not be so bad)

but what many may or may not realize is that, there are a lot of different kinds of pocketfolds out there...so which one do i want to go with?

lets look at the options first shall we?

the ever popular gate fold:

usually i think of these babies when i think of pocketfolds, a flap will overlap the folder thus totally enclosing the whole invitation in, sealed off with a bellyband/ribbon, LOVE IT

then we have the single fold, which is what i like to think of as the slightly less elaborate step sibling to the gate fold:
honestly i kinda like this one, it's not as "formal" as the gate fold and should be easier to assemble and manipulate for the DIY-ers, plainly put it is a folder that folds closed with one fold...

next is the bloom fold:

this is pretty self explanatory, four flaps come closed together (think closing off a cardboard box by folding the flaps into each other) to form what should look like a bloom (to me it looks more like a pinwheel actually...), this is kinda what i would like to think of as the creative cousin to the traditional gate fold...artsy fun and probably more complicated than i'd like to ponder for someone of my DIY dumminess can handle.

and lastly i'd like to show you the jacket:

(source for all pocketfold images: mygatsby.com)

very simply, an open top envelope that will hold all that your invitation is...the more i think of this, the more i like it...to me this would probably be an easier DIY project than attempting any of the three i've mentioned above...but like many brides that covet pocketfold invitations, i'm still slightly more partial to the gate fold or the single fold...

i have a pretty good idea which one i will go with, but stay tuned to find out where this invitation odyssey will take me...in the meanwhile, which pocketfold do YOU covet?

The DIY dummie attempts her engagement invites... kinda...

so after we decided to have a chinese dinner for the engagement party, i started thinking about what this invitation is going to look like... and being since it's gonna be chinese dinner i wanted something that will reflect my culture and the event but at the same time have a modern and contemporary twist, after deciding on the elements i wanted, i turned everything over to L.

i got to admit i'm a very lucky girl to have a number of talented friends...my awesome friend L is one such friend...he's an amazing artist, graphically and classically (you know the good old fashioned kind with paper and pencil)...i digresss...so when he volunteered to design the engagement invitations i immediately jumped at the chance to have something truly unique done for my party! after going back and forth several times with the wording, this is what the jpeg version looked like:

The best part about this was that because L designed it for me, i was able to print these right off my laser printer on precut card stock/invitations i purchased at staples for 25 bucks...all together my first wedding project saved me mucho moola! SCORE! thank heaven for talented friends :-)

finished product printed on ivory cardstock:

thanks L! you did an AHHHHMAZING job, i love it and we received many compliments on them too!!