Wedding Invites

Reaching back into the depths of some of the first photos taken for this blog that never got posted, I figured I would finally share with you the wedding invites in honor of our 2nd anniversary today.  But first, some flashbacks.

I may be slightly bias, but I think it may have been the most amazing wedding ever.  Just sayin'.

So back to those invites.  I had a few things I was pretty passionate about for the wedding and the wedding invitations were one of them.  I really love the look of impression letterpress, but didn't really love the thought of how much they would cost to get them done professionally.  My friend, Kristen, and I had been wanting to take a class for some time and it provided us a good excuse to learn from the hipsters in Portland.  The class was awesome and they provide you with all the tools after completion, you just provide the paper.  Find more info here.  Also amazing is the selection of beautiful paper in Portland.  I got giant bulk sheets of Crane's Lettra from Kelly Paper right around the corner from the IPRC and cut them on the huge paper cutter they provided there as well.  Very convenient.  ALSO around the corner was a shop that specialized in the photopolymer plates that I needed to create to imprint the images on the paper.  It looks like that place is no longer in business, but the other place I was considering still is...you can find more info here.  I simply created my layouts in Photoshop and emailed them over as image files.  They were ready for me in a few days to pick up.  So cool.

The only thing that wasn't working in my favor was the actual act of getting the letterpress to work for me with my invites.  I even got the assistance of some of the teachers, but no luck.  I wasn't able to get an imprint or the ink would get too smudged.  Frustrated because I was moving in only a few weeks and knew I was running out of time, I found this option online.  It was a lifesaver!  I was able to take it to Utah and work there on my own time.  I also now own everything for future projects such as thank you's and Christmas cards.  

So after much trail and tribulation, I finally got in the groove and churned out hundreds of these babies.  And not just one color, but two colors on some, which required realigning the paper perfectly after the first ink color dried and pressing again.  Double chance of failure.  Many, many, many hours later, I was satisfied and the invitations were promptly sent out in hand calligraphed envelopes (another class was also taken for this purpose).  I also created bridge stamps and ordered them from Zazzle.  Then sent all the completed invitations in a box to the Bridal Veil, Oregon postmaster who then promptly hand stamped them with their adorable Bridal Veil stamp and mailed them out officially.  Yes.  I am that crazy.  But it was worth it.  If only I'd taken pictures of the envelopes for you and hadn't packed away the one I have in a moving box...sigh.

All right fine!  Enough yapping!  Here they are...

The seating assignment cards were each pressed with a different Portland bridge and the names were written in calligraphy (well my wannabe calligraphy anyway). 

My amazing husband built that suspension bridge (yes, really, those black ribbon suspension cables aren't just for looks) while I was home for one of my bridal showers.  What an insane treat I came home to...love that guy.

Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane as much as I did!