our wedding invitations

I am a self-confessed super stationery and graphic design geek. I love nothing more than designing beautiful notes, prints, cards and what not. Hours of entertainment can be had by me in photoshop and some creative juices flowing. Some brides-to-be are most excited about the dress, some about the flowers. Me? For me it was the stationery.

One night about a year ago, just after becoming engaged, I had a severe case of insomnia. I was tossing and turning in bed in the cottage staring out the glass doors across the dam (oh how I miss you sweet little cottage). Ideas of vintage illustrations, cursive fonts and different paper weights swirled in my mind. I got up, padded softly through the cottage to my computer, careful not to wake a restful Mr M and a snoozing Tessa in her little kennel on the back porch. I switched on my mac and got designing what would become our wedding stationery, I sat there for hours just by the light of my screen until dawn broke.

So without further adieu, I give you our invitation suite...

As you will know, our wedding is a celebration of all things rural, natural, agriculture, nature, livestock, country charm and rustic elegance = us. 

We knew we would have to be including a few cards in with our invites - things like a map, a reply card for our guests to easily RSVP, some information about a brunch we wanted to hold the following morning and accommodation details, as well as a gift registry card. A pocketfold seemed the logical choice, but after searching high and low I could not find for the life of me a kraft card A5 version (although I did find very similar but they were more of just a beige/tan paper, not my much coveted recycled kraft card!) After ruling out using an ivory one I took it upon myself to make them. Why yes I am quite bananas - I made all 75 of them (plus extra ones and more extras for ones that I stuffed up). 

I wanted a thick, luxurious, yummy ivory card for the invites and inserts. I headed straight to my favourite paper shop in Melbourne, Paper Point on Church Street in Richmond. Once upon a time I frequented here when I lived in the city and designed lots of pretty little things for pretty little people. Armed with a few samples Mr M and I trialled lots of different settings on my trusty home printer until we were confident that we had the right weight and stipple of card. These photos, on my monitor at least, read a bit more white than they are in real life, they're really creeeammmy!

The illustrations were purchased from various sources, mostly istock.com though and mostly were black and white - I tweaked them all in photoshop to give a sepia feel to match our coffee coloured lettering. I made the little chapel and marquee illustrations used on our map myself. After a giant search for the perfect tree we found the old knotted oak with feathery leaves and fell in love. Our map sports a Hereford, our information card some stalks of wheat, our gift registry card a cute pig and our reply card a beautiful Border Collie just like my Lily. 

The fonts chosen were Centaur for the majority of text, in all capitals and widely spaced, with Kunstler Script for our names, our guests names and 'Brindabella'. The perfect mix of classic and easy to read with elegant calligraphy. I thought if you don't use a calligraphy font for a wedding, when will you? :)

Our pocketfolds are wrapped in stretch lace bands to close them, which slide off. I then tied all with twine in a little bow. I wanted to create a layered ivory on kraft on ivory on kraft look. The pretty lace a rough twine were the perfect mix of rustic and elegant.

* For privacy reasons I have blurred a lot of the information on the actual invitations and inserts, I hope you get the sense and feel for them though.

A3 kraft card used for pocketfolds: Papermarc, Burwood Road in Hawthorn

Invites and inserts thick card: Rives Design in cream, Paper Point, Church Street in Richmond

Stretch ivory lace: Mary not Martha on Etsy

Twine: local bargain store

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella