Formal Invitations Part 2: Directions to Mohican

My dad is the one who suggested we include directions to Mohican in the invitation. I figured most people have GPS in their cars now and can punch in the address, but I also know that some of the roads are a little confusing right as you get close to the park, so I decided to go for it.

I wanted something that was a similar shape and would pair well with my unusual-shaped invites:

Perfect! But the pink had to go. Ugh.

I ultimately went with the peach/mint combo. From there the directions cards came together much more easily than the invites. Since I didn't have a ton of room to put turn-by-turn directions, I uploaded a more thorough version to the website for further reference. Or, people can input the address into their GPS and use our directions more as a guide.

Formal Invitations Part 1

I wasn't blogging much in the last two weeks, because I was in crunch time to get my invites finished and sent. Round 1 is out, and I'm already receiving enthusiastic responses back (hooray!). Round 2 will go out if/when we get some people declining. There were so many people we loved and wanted to include, but we have really strict limitations on space for our venue, and are held fast to exactly 150 invitees. I hope they understand that they aren't necessarily second-fiddle in our eyes, we just have giant families!

Enough explanation, on to the main event!

As you may or may not know from my other posts, I started with vintage soap and perfume labels, edited out text, messed with color, and added my own text back in. They were a labor of love. For the invite itself, I was drawn to this label in particular:

From there, I tweaked the heck out of the colors, until I achieved something like this:

But then, of course, was the issue of wording. I knew I wanted the top to say "Together with our Families" since this is a family effort, and I knew I didn't want proper titles or middle names to imply our casual setting. From there, I came up with the following wording:

For the curious, I alternated Jugend WF and Lullaby. The fancy type for our names and the Shakespeare quote are KellyAnn Gothic. 

The quote is from Henry VI (Act 4, Scene 6) by Shakespeare. I enjoy how the quote seems to imply a wedding ceremony if you take it out of context (it's about politics and the fate of the government). So then the tough part was trying to place it all in the invites to create a pleasing aesthetic.

Looked too sparse in the orange middle section.

Better, but I missed having the Shakespeare in there.

It ended up coming down to the two above, I went with the second one, because I decided we needed to have the address for Mohican on there and not just on the directions card. I had to cut the line "Dinner, a jam session, and merriment to follow." But oh well. You win some, you lose some. I could have spent many more hours tweaking everything, but I'm quite happy with how they turned out.

Invite Suite: RSVP Cards

In deciding to design and print my own invites, I knew it would be a lot of work, but I didn't expect the process I have gone through (the countless hours, and I'm not even done yet!). Case in point: the RSVP cards. Just a simple little card with which to reply and tell us you're coming, right?

Well, you know me. I have about 3 different designs mocked up with multiple fonts. You have to play around to see what works (or, at least, I do, since I'm not a trained graphic designer and I need to see different combinations to know what will look best).

Here is one such version. This was the starting point, a vintage french soap label with the text removed.

Which I then took and made a "backside" which extended the open space for text:

Then I had to settle on RSVP wording. I don't want to simply have a "yes" and "no," so I looked up all sorts of different ways to word the card. Some were overly cutesy ("I'll be there with bells on" and "Can't make it, but heard there will be people wearing bells"), some were silly ("I'll be there come rain or come shine!" "Sorry, out of umbrellas and sunscreen.") and others were stupid (many of them). 

Since the wedding is so vintage themed, I wanted something classic without being boring, and a little elegant. I settled on using "in body" for yes and "in spirit" for no. I like it.

So, then it was time to play with fonts.

...And several versions later, it was getting frustrating. I then decided the images needed something even more visual, so I thought putting a little divider or image between the two sections would help:

They're definitely cute. But the diamond seems a little out of place with the rest of the image. So then I went for background images, which consisted of three steps:

1) Dig up my old letterpress image files from briarpress.org
2) Open them up individually in GIMP (freeware photoshop-type program), add an alpha channel, select all the white in the image, then clear to make a transparent background.
3) Add the transparent image as a new layer to the RSVP card, and edit the opacity of the image to make it lighter and put it behind the text.

The result of all this was that I ended up with two that I liked:

What do you think? I think both are pretty great, it's just tough deciding. Perhaps once the other pieces fall into place, one will look better with the other elements. 

I know it's weird to design such a small part of the paper goods first, but I was just drawn to this image and it screamed RSVP card to me for some reason. I couldn't tell you why. This isn't to say these are the RSVP cards, end of story. By the time the invites are done I might go with something completely different.

Note to all fellow brides: DIY IS HARD. Just so you know. I am undertaking all this because I am stubborn and it's a labor of love, but don't think it isn't insane of me.

Love of Typeface

After seeing the results of the font-design contest on Design Sponge, I was so in love with the peacock font by Sommer Sheffield that I vowed to track it down. This meant opening an account at veer.com.

I know, right?

I don't mind, though, because I got 10 free veer credits that I can use to get a font if I so choose. No sign of the peacock font, though. Bummer. I guess I assumed it would be on there, since they sponsored the competition. I hope I can track the font down.

Did I mention I love fonts? I have way more on my computer than I'd care to admit. I get many of them from dafont.com. They're rather wonderful.

Anyways, back to Veer. They let you make a little album of saved favorites, and even demo each font with a little line of type. Here's the contents of my album thus far:

Do you sense a theme?

Fonts=pretty. I like to look! I've barely scratched the surface at Veer, but I'm sure I'll while away plenty more hours looking through their wares.