At the core of it, I’m a designer. I also love photography and wanted to include photos of us in as many aspects of our wedding as possible. Because of this, I always knew that I’d be designing and making my invitations from scratch. There were some gorgeous letterpress designs that I loved, and then I started drooling over Gocco designs (still drooling), but in the end I decided to go without the Gocco and do the printing part either at Kinkos or on our home printer. (Speaking of Gocco, has anyone tried the new Yudu printer?)

After doing lots of research, hunting around Pearl Paint, buying lots of samples, and drawing various designs, I came up with the following two prototypes:

Option 1

Option 2

Deciding which one to go with was a really hard decision. I liked both of them. In the end, I let KT decide. He chose option 2, but because he chose that one, I started favoring option 1… Anyway, we went with option 2.

I bought the brown card pre-folded from Paper Source (if you can buy your paper pre-folded, it certainly saves some time!). I also bought matching envelopes. Being square, I acknowledged that they would cost more to send, but I really like the square look, so I just had to deal with the additional expense.

The cardstock came from two different companies – Blue Dot Paper Shop and Paper and More. Blue Dot has smaller quantities available, they’re faster at shipping, their packaging on samples is great, but their prices work out a bit more expensive and they have limited color and sizes available in the papers I was looking for. Paper and More have a bigger range of colors and sizes, but shipping takes longer, and the quantities are typically packs of 100. The white card is “Pearlecent Metallic” in champaign/quartz (depending on the site you go with). The brown card on option 1 is plain brown cardstock from P&M.

I bought the green handmade paper from Pearl Paint in Canal St., New York. Immediately I was drawn to it! I bought 6 sheets, but only needed 3 of them for the invitations (i ended up using the green paper on all my wedding elements). I wanted to keep a rough edge on the paper, so the trick to tearing it is to use a small paint brush and water. Dip the brush in the water and drag it along the paper where you want it to tear. Then carefully tear it and let it dry.

120 green paper strips

A friend of mine took our second batch of engagement shots while we were in New York in May 2008.* I sent my favorites to Mpix.com and had them print them at “mini” size on black and white paper. A mini sheet contains 8 copies of the picture and costs .88c each sheet. At $5, shipping was a bit of a killer (they have changed their shipping prices now), but if you are getting a lot, or are looking for really professional looking shots, then it’s worth paying the extra money.

*We had 3 sets of engagement photos… more on that later!

Have you thought about specific elements you want to include in your invitation design? I’d love to hear/see your ideas!