.

alright.

at long last.
the moment you've all been waiting for.

our invitation post.

I've got my 80's itunes playlist going and a hot cup of tea brewing.

let's do this.


so about 4 weeks ago, ben and I discovered that we had done pretty much nothing regarding the inviting of people to our wedding.
we were down at my parent's in CT, staying with them for the weekend while we attended the wedding of one of ben's college roommates (btw, bartenders make g+t's much stronger than I usually make my own. a little discovery I made that saturday night at the reception..), and the conversation went down pretty much like this:

Mom: Have you guys given any thought to invitations? You only have a couple of months left.

Bethany: Nope.

Ben: We should do something, huh?

[Ben and Bethany look up letterpress invitations online, cause letterpress is wicked cool and we like paper.]

Ben: Holy. These aren't cheap, are they?

Bethany: And have you seen those estimated shipping dates? We don't have 4 weeks!

Ben: Hmmmm. Wanna make our own invitations?

Bethany: Yeah, ok! How hard could it be?


and thus the invitation-designing saga began.

Ben had the idea previously of making our own envelopes. ones that could be folded from a single sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper, and where we could print a map on the back.
so he went off to figure out how to fold the paper to make a cohesive and sturdy envelope.

I took it upon myself to draw the map.

it took longer to create the envelope than to draw the map.

but both looked kick-ass.
ben created the sheet so that when folded correctly (lots of trial and error) it looked like a vintage airmail envelope.

the envelope pre-folded

envelope folded. [ben couldn't remember my address, thus the hand delivered, gin bottle instead of stamps, invitation]

I drew the map of the location of the wedding.

since it's in northern NH, it pretty much went like this:
-road A
-road B
-a few buildings
-river
-wedding venue
-LOTS of trees

not the best scan, but there ya go.

using my mom's scanner/printer (and all her ink...) we printed about 120 of these babies.

and then we had to fold them.

that took a while...

while I had been finishing up the map, ben was creating the rsvp's based on an idea I had seen somewhere...

mad libs!

behold:

my mom's been reading them all out to me as they arrive at my parents house.
we've been getting a kick out of them.
we know a lot of creative people.
they are fabulous.

with the envelope/map and rsvp card sorted and out of the way, we just needed the actual invitation.

I was on it.

monday night.
4 hours.
bootleg photoshop.
booyah.

and printed on this fabulous watercolor paper we got at blicks:

forgive the non-edited photos. the bootleg photoshop finally caught up with me...

the back is also cool, but not nearly as so. something about having to be actually informative, or whatnot.

who said designing wedding invitations was hard?

and let's finish with some more pictorial eye candy.

oh wait! I almost forgot!
we also went all crazy with the stamps.
cause we can't do things, you know, the easy way.
it had to match the vintage airmail "theme" (in the roughest sense of the word) and it had to be cool.
none of this single stamp thing.
multiple stamps of smaller denominations!!
which meant bethany going to the post office.
to get many many stamps.
905 stamps to be exact.
and therefore meant some really funny looks from the guy working the deck at said post office...

("hi! I need some stamps."   "ok, how many?"   "142 one-cent stamps please"   "ok...well I'll have to go the back to get those..."   "wait! I have more. also 272 four-cent stamps and, actually, you know what? just take the list"   "......")

but, I will admit. they looked pretty freakin fantastic when all was said and done.

ok, now onto the eye candy!

back of the invitation

opening up the envelope

look! an invite!

laid out all pretty

all the pieces

 

and there ya go.
how to design, print and post all your wedding invitations in a week and a half.
with no prior planning what-so-ever.
cause that's how we roll.

.