Ok, we had to officially invite people to our wedding.
But how were we going to do that?
With some sort of game theme, obviously!
My first idea was to have clue sort of cards made up,
with us as the suspects and the rings as the weapon
and the wedding venue as the place.
I wanted them to come in a little envelope
so people would open it up and that stuff would fall out.
Then I found out that would be rather expensive.
So I went to plan b, designing the invite myself.
We decided on a monopoly style board,
with some goofy but also official sounding text.
Our friends Zack and Elise,
who got married in the summer of 2013,
right after Danny and I met,
lent us two great books,
One of which was the knot.com guide to weddings.
This was immensely helpful.
It was such a great reference book.
I found lots of great examples there
for how to set up our invites,
especially the hairy parts,
like how to write my mother and father’s names.
They have the same last name,
but they are no longer married.
To avoid confusion, their names had to go on separate lines,
instead of on the same line like Danny’s parents had.
Little things like that.
I drew it all up, inked it all out,
and was really proud of it.
This is one picture of the process;
can’t find one of the finished product!
And then, a few days later, I didn’t like it.
This is typical for an artist, but not that typical for me.
I generally really like the things I make.
But I wasn’t feeling this for our invite.
For one, it really featured monopoly.
I didn’t want people thinking it was JUST a monopoly themed wedding.
And for two, I don’t know.
It just didn’t feel right.
So I scrapped it and moved on to something else.
I knew I wanted it to be card related and game related,
but vague enough that we weren’t attached to a particular game if that makes sense.
I thought back on our clue idea,
and decided to just draw the cards myself!
I drew Danny, myself, some generic rings,
and a generic park.
Sketches!
Final colored in version!
I colored them in (three different colors of microns had to come together to make the color of my hair!) and then scanned them into the computer and did the rest of the lettering there.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get the resolution of the picture large enough to print, so I had to write the words out by hand in real life and scan the image at a higher resolution.
Cut up cards
I ended up writing with a gel pen on some dark paper and scanning it directly in. Here’s what the fronts looked like; I use one for a bookmark in my Get To Work Book!
I did the same thing on the back. I knew I wanted something that would be a bit more personal and colorful, so I had the idea to color in the letters of some of the words. And I knew we had to have our Lego people on there too!
The black and white version of lettering, ready to be colored. Some stuff is cut off, like our phone numbers!
So the invites were ordered as postcards here
and I ordered envelopes separately.
When they came I was surprised to find out that I had ordered glossy on both sides.
I was certain that this was a disaster for my coloring in idea, but we actually used these markers which color in well on glossy things.
You have to let them sit for a little bit so they don’t smudge, but that was easy.
Colored in!
I don’t know why I say we, it was all me.
Danny was actually back in NY at the time.
This was the time that we were getting things ready for the wedding, moving, and I was finishing up the school year with my job. Yeah, a little bit busy. The coloring came as a welcome relief from doing other stuff.
So I got going. I addressed all the envelopes and we sent one per couple, but one for each child in a family. Usually we could stuff them all in the same envelope. I did that because I know how cool it is to get mail when you’re a kid, and we had 100 of them, so why not.
The back of the envelope.
You can see the front in the next picture 🙂
For the addresses, I made an epic Google Sheets spreadsheet with the names, addresses, and if they RSVP’d or not. This came in handy because Danny could access it back in NY and input things too. We sent out around 60 invitations I believe.
All done! Invites in the mail!
It was quite an ordeal,
but I’m glad we went the homemade way.
My cousin said when she got the invite in the mail she was so happy to see that it was “so Kathy Ellen.”
So I think I did the job well.
Next week we’ll talk about those
little toppers and our unity heart!
Thanks for reading along!
KE
