Chris & Cesia Wedding Invitation

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If you ask a designer (at least girl designers) what they enjoy designing most, most of them will say wedding invitations. Just ask a designer you know. For me, I like designing them because it’s print (I love print design), I get an excuse to do something a little more formal, the wording is already laid out for me (I’m terrible with creative text) and it’s a great way to get my creative juices flowing.

A couple months ago, my engaged cousin asked me if I’d design their wedding invitations, of course I was just thrilled to. I had a lot of fun working on these, and I’m so excited to share the design with you.

Chris & Cesia have a lot of family and friends; they printed and sent out 700 invitations. 700! So of course the cost of printing was definitely something to we had to consider. While brainstorming and discussing the design, they decided that they really liked the invitations I designed for my own wedding nearly four years ago. I feel like I’ve grown a lot since designing those, but it is flattering that someone liked the design I did so long ago!

Here’s a little bit of info about the creative process and the invitations themselves:

  • A10 Envelopes & Invitation – I formatted the invitations to fit A10 envelopes; they are very inexpensive and you can find them in almost every color!
  • Black and white digital printing – We kept the printing cheap, but used good-quality 110lb cream uncoated cover so it didn’t feel cheap.
  • Custom Stamp – Getting this custom stamp made cost about $35, and added a whole lot of color and variety to the invitations. This is also a great way to add a touch of your wedding to anything (i.e. favors, envelopes, centerpieces, thank yous, place cards, etc)!
  • Sewn Invitation – This added a bit of variety and structure to the invite and kept the invitation and photo together. Additionally, it allowed us to include and hide registry information.
  • Photograph – While I don’t shoot engagements, I did take theirs. They were so easy to photograph! It was really nice to have full control of the quality and styling of the photograph.
  • Fonts – I used Quicksand for the invitation text and my own handwriting for their names.

There you have it. Chris & Cesia were SO incredibly easy going and fun to work with on these invitations. Now I’ve got to work on getting the rest of my cousins married. ;)

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    1. alexismaia says:

      Beautiful! This is a great example of how design is about problem solving and coming up with a beautiful solution no matter what the restrictions.

      700! WOW!

    2. lovely! the custom stamp is such a GREAT cost-saving idea.

      did you hand-stamp and hand-sew those 700? please tell me you got some help! :) i designed our christmas card a year ago and hand-sew the card to a fabric. i had to do about 40 of them and i was grumbling a bit at the time, lol.

    3. Melissa says:

      Ivana,

      I didn’t hand-stamp any of them, I left it all up to my cousin’s family to do. I’m pretty sure they had a big party to get them ready to send out, because it only took them 2 days to print and send.

      And no, they didn’t hand-sew the invitations, that was all done with a sewing machine. Can you imagine how long that would take for 700? I would have to be checked into a mental institution if I had to do that.

      When I sewed my wedding invitations four years ago, it took me about 20 minutes to sew 300 invites. Not long at all.

    4. abby says:

      they are beautiful!! nice job.

    5. tvmom says:

      you have amazing handwriting!

      also, what did their stamp look like?

    6. Melissa says:

      TV Mom,

      Thank you! Here’s a little bit more info on the stamp itself:

      I went through McGee’s Stamp & Trophy to get a rubber stamp made. It’s not like those fancy ones that you see in scrapbooking stores that’s clear with an acrylic mount. It’s like an old school stamp with a large wooden handle.

      The stamp is the brown, red & yellow design on the invitation. My favorite part about the stamp on the invitation is how irregular each impression is, it gives the invitation a very organic feel.

    7. Autumn says:

      I really love the simplicity and the colors–tasteful and elegant, but in a sweet and simple way.

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