Thank you very much

After the shower, I knew that I would need to do something about thank you notes. Like most of our other wedding stationary, these thank you notes got dressed in nice red envelopes.

I didn't want to do anything to fancy or complicated, but I still wanted something that reflected me (i.e. was red) and was clearly for a shower. With the help of a little Microsoft Clip Art and my parent's super crazy awesome HP laser do everything machine, I (and my awesome maid of honor) came up with this:

(Yes, that is the same cardstock I used to make the wedding thank you notes.)

Using my handy dandy paper cutter, I simply cut the cardstock and folded the cards.


Voila! Fun red umbrella in a downpour thank you notes.

What are you doing for your shower thank you notes?

The importance of text

I saw this column/post about the font used by Barack Obama on the campaign trail, and it got me thinking about the reasons why we chose the font that we did. The point in the column is that the Obama campaign's use of the font "Gotham" is strategic, and that it evokes certain feelings that other fonts don't. Like this:

Image found here.

Comic Sans is too silly, Times Roman is too serious, but Gotham is just right. (Goldilocks, anyone?)

This got me thinking about our own fonts that we considered using for our wedding invitations (and other paper goods).

From top to bottom: Bickham Script Pro Semibold, Vladimir script, Penman Script, JaneAusten and Tagettes. All either standard on MS Windows, or available at dafont.com.

Tagettes just seemed perfect to us- not too loopy and formal, yet not too informal either. And a little bit of a vintage flair.

What fonts are you using in your wedding stationary?

Thank you notes

Way back before our invitations were finished, I found myself getting antsy one night to just take care of a wedding project.

I present to you the recipe for our simple but tasty thank you notes.

The Dahlia's Thank You Notes
1 stack of cardstock (I got ours from Office Max)
1 embosser*
1 paper cutter
envelopes (Ours are from Envelope Mall. They are leftover from our response card envelopes.)


The supplies

Directions:
Cut the paper in half:

Fold. Align your folded cardstock in the embosser. I used it one piece of cardstock as a guide, although there are probably more accurate ways to make sure your embossing is centered.


Press down on the embosser, and presto! One thank you note down.

A close up:

To make things even fancier, we've also taken to embossing the envelopes.

And that's it. Inexpensive, simple but elegant thank you notes.

What are you doing for your thank you notes?

(*author's note: Our embosser came from Wilshire Graphic Press. I got lucky and won it in a contest.)

Color!

In the process of designing our invitations (more on that to come, I promise!), I had some difficulties figuring out colors. I mean, I knew what colors I wanted, but was having a hard time getting what I saw on my computer screen to match with what came from the offset printer.

Cue The New Big Book of Color, which provides numerous designs along with the corresponding RGB (for your computer screen) and CMYK (for offest printing) colors used in the designs.

(available at Amazon)

I spent an hour or so at Barnes and Noble leafing through it, and marking down the RGB and CMYK colors that I thought would work for our invitations. It definitely helped get me on the right track.

What design books have you found helpful while planning your wedding?

STDs

When I first saw the abbreviation "STD" around wedding websites, I thought that people were a bit forward with their situation regarding HPV, herpes or syphilis.

Turns out a save-the-date (STD) in wedding world parlance is not about various diseases, but rather about a notice to send guests announcing your impending nuptials months before the wedding. In this day and age, it isn't enough to give people two months' notice of your event. No, you need to let them know four, six, eight, even twelve months in advance so they can "save the date."

The biggest secret about save the dates is that you don't actually need them. The thing is about them, if people don't already know when you are getting married six months out, how important is it for them to be there? And if they are good but forgetful friends, will a postcard in the mail do anything to help them remember?

And then it brings up the inevitable etiquette question- if you sent someone a save-the-date, can you not send them an invitation if you have some sort of falling out? The answer is, of course, no. You told them an invitation was coming, so you need to follow through with your word, and send the invite.

That said, I feel that there are circumstances where I could see that it might be beneficial to let people know ahead of time (i.e. more than two months out) about the details of your day. Getting married in NYC over New Year's? Or at a ski resort in Vermont over President's Day weekend? There are some times when technical details (read: booking flights/hotels) need to be taken care of more than two months in advance. But most save-the-dates that I have seen don't seem to include the necessary travel information.

I bring to you our solution: An email with a link to a wedding website containing all the necessary travel information. Sending email is free! And there are plenty of websites, such as ewedding, tgwedding and mywedding that offer free templates and hosting.

Now, I recognize that not everyone is technologically savvy in this day and age. So what if you need to send some information to Great Aunt Mildred so she can make sure not to schedule a deluxe motorcoach tour of the nation's capital during that point in time?

"Great Aunt Mildred, the senior tour can wait- I'm getting married!"

Seniortours offers tours for the nation's retirees.

You should either call her, or if you don't want to hear about her latest bout of rheumatism, you can send a save the date. Something along the lines of these:

French Vintage Save the Date from Wedding Paper Divas

Invitations- they are more than a piece of paper

To follow up last week's post, I continue the discussion of invitations. Perhaps Wednesdays will be a discussion of all things paper?

By June, we still had no idea about invitations, other than that we wanted dark paper with light text. My Gatsby had some good options, with a burgundy paper and silver text. Their Jane invitation would fit into our budget. You could get 125 invitations, complete with response cards, for about $200. But somehow, it lacked that bit of pizazz, that bit of flair. They were, in a word, boring.

Now, I know that they needn't be boring.

But their options for burgundy paper with light text were limited to silver or gold. I really wanted white or light colored text. And Calvin did too.

Cue the opposite of boring: Indian Wedding Card. There is a whole thread on indiebride about ordering through this company, and although there are things to watch out for, there are some amazing deals.

Like these blue ones, for $.85/set, including printing.


These lovely cream colored ones, complete with jewels, for $1.25/set.

Gorgeous deep purple for $.85/set.

Or red with a tassle for $.85/set.

All include printing of two inserts. RSVP cards, thank you cards, and the like are also available. Shipping is expensive- somewhere between $50-$100, but given how cheap the cards are in the first place, it is an extremely good deal.

Unfortunately for Calvin and I, none of the invitations exactly go with the mood/vibe/atmosphere of our wedding and reception, so it was back to the drawing board.

Invitiations- just a piece of paper?

When this whole wedding business stopped being a discussion between Calvin and I and started becoming reality, Calvin's mom, Mrs. O'Keefe, started suggesting invitation ideas.

This was two weeks after we got engaged. Two weeks! How was I, how were we, supposed to know what type of invitations we wanted? We didn't even know anything else about the wedding at that point in time!

But Mrs. O'Keefe started the wheels turning in my head. Invitations. Huh. We should start thinking about those. At this point, we didn't even have a date. Nonetheless, when we were out shopping at the mall, I brought Calvin in to Papyrus. There was a display board of different types of invitations, one of which were these.

Absolutely beautiful. And awesome. Little did I know that they were engraved invitations from Crane's, which meant that not only were they amazing, they were also freaking expensive. Like sell our first child to pay for them expensive. And wedding invitations are not a priority for us. I love amazing paper as much as the next person, but for us, there are other places that are a bigger priority. Like food, booze and a band.

So then I turned to the next place- Hollander's. Like Paper Source, only better, in many ways. It is independently owned. They make many of their own papers in the basement of the store. Besides, Calvin used to live around the corner from them.

Most importantly of all, they do letterpress printing! And their prices are extremely reasonable- $175 for the custom plate and printing, or $115 if you print them yourself. The paper they recommend you use is Arturo Stationary. The total for 100 invitations, envelopes, response cards and envelopes would end up being roughly $500- they give you a discount (not on their website) if you are printing with more than one plate. And it would be more like $350 if you are local, and are willing to print them yourself.

Which Calvin and I are more than capable of doing.

Unfortunately, not only was the price of the invitations a bit out of our budget, it turns out that letterpress does not work well if you want to have light text on a dark card. The next option, thermography, has the same problems with light and dark. While silver or gold ink would work, there is a part of me that finds it really cheesy. And textured text (either raised or pressed) was really important to me, for some reason. What to do? What to do?

Like anything else, this meant going back to the drawing board, and looking over previously examined places.