Thursday, August 27, 2009

To the post office...

After months of work with the creative wizards at Printable Press and Mercurio Brothers, our invitations finally went in the mail on Tuesday -- just a day shy of two months prior to the wedding.


It turns out that, in addition to his many other talents, Mr. Barefoot is something of a calligraphy prodigy. That is, he picked up my calligraphy pen, screwed around for awhile, and ended up addressing all the envelopes in better style than I could ever muster! I had to address a few stragglers, for whom I was lacking addresses on Sunday, and was not able to match his artistic flair. I love uncovering these hidden talents! (He also makes a mean eggplant Parmesan - never my favorite dish, but much more inviting in his rendition.)

After visiting three different post offices to get enough King and Queen of Heart stamps for our invitations -- which coordinated nicely with the sage green envelopes from Paper Source (with 30% post-consumer waste, yay!) --
into the mailbox they went.

And our first RSVP was today! This thing is becoming real. People are going to show up ready to party!

I remember the invitations I got to weddings right after college: an outer envelope, an inner envelope, tissue, vellum, response cards, reception cards, map cards... paper everywhere. We wanted our invitation to be much simpler, while still beautiful and conveying the necessary information.

So, two pieces of paper: the invitation and the map card. That's it. The double-sided map and direction card (to help people find our obscure location), also directs guests to our wedding website, where they can indicate their response for all the wedding weekend activities. The web responses should also be easier to track.




I love the way Kimi, of Printable Press, coordinated both sides of the map card with our invitation, which was based on this.
And yet feels completely our own, in shades of brown and green. (Can you see those lovely deep imprints from the letterpress?)

Both Printable Press and Mercurio Brothers were great to work with. They were patient through several rounds of revisions, were responsive throughout the process and completed everything in a timely manner (or even earlier than promised.)

Letterpress at Mercurio Brothers is half or less the cost of other places - an added bonus was being able to easily drop by on my way to and from campus to check proofs in person. However, all ordering is done via the web, so even if you don't live down the street from Mercurio Brothers, it's worth checking out.

6 comments:

Eco Yogini said...

they are beautiful! I love that they were printed on both sides- fantastic idea :)
And Mr. Barefoot's calligraphy is AWESOME :)

Anonymous said...

I LOVE the green and brown! They look awesome. And getting RSVPs was one of my very favourite parts of the process. Savour them. :)

Color Me Green said...

yeah i just got one of those inner-outer envelope vellum reception card invites and my bf thought it was silly. go you with the internet rsvps!

donna said...

so exciting~! i love that "this is really happening" moment when you get the first rsvp.
and kudos to your man on the calligraphy. hot damn, that looks good!

mandy said...

So exciting! We're on the same calendar as you - invites went out Monday, and my dude did the addressing too!

Ours were just half sheets of cardstock paper that were perforated so the bottom half can be mailed back postcard-style. We are LOVING getting our little RSVPs back! :)

Unknown said...

You sent your invitations out 2 months prior? I thought one month was the accepted time.