On Rethinking the Wisdom of DIY Invitations

Our bride-to-be holds steady...

By Sara Cardace

Well, we've finally settled on a design for our save-the-dates, and the paper (ivory, seeded) and envelopes (chocolate brown) are in! John did an amazing job mocking up an old-timey ticket motif and I think they are super-cute. Of course, the whole thing has taken almost an entire extra month to make happen (we're now officially sending them out well after the six month mark) so I'm thinking it might have been smarter just to go buy a bunch of the cute ready-made ones they sell at any of the million stationers in Manhattan. Oh well--live, learn, etc.

Now all I have to do is spend every night this week addressing all the envelopes--I'm pretty anal about handwriting and think it's best not to let John near a silver paint pen--and then do a big mail drop early next week. I'm very, very excited to cross this one off my list. And while the whole process has made me a bit apprehensive about doing the official invitations ourselves, I have to admit that there's something really fun and personal about all the time and energy John and I put into the save-the-dates.

And actually, one of the alternate ideas John came up with for our save-the-dates is so good that I'm really dying to use it for our invitations when the time comes...

A little background: We are huge fans of this indie band The Holdsteady. Like, super-fans. As we get older we have been going out to shows less and less, and the Holdsteady is probably the only band that can get us out of the house, out to a mobbed, overwhelming New York venue, and still get us dancing and singing along like idiots. Love the Holdsteady. Love!

When we moved into a new apartment a few months back, we realized we had basically nothing to put on the walls--our old trendy-neighborhood hovel was teensy-tiny--and so we started researching posters/art/etc. We found this amazing out-of-print Holdsteady poster with which we became instantly obsessed (see it here) and spent the next month trying to track one down on Ebay, through the label, through all the online retailers...alas, there was none to be found. (While I'm on the topic, if anyone can find us a print of that poster I promise you will be well-rewarded for your time!)

Still, we love the image of the black silhouettes and pink-heart background, and John was able to come up with a similar design on his own, and I'm sort of obsessed with using it as a motif on our invitations. I'm thinking that you could put a small version of the image at the bottom of a thick piece of ivory cardstock, with the text above it and vellum paper over the whole thing to make it look a little more wedding-y. And then we could recreate the image somehow on all the other bits and bobs we have to include in the invitation packets.

Am I insane?

(Ps.--many thanks to the readers who chimed in with thoughts about our seed-paper ticket idea! Fingers crossed that it will all work out and we don't have to go back to the drawing board...)