{recap} wedding invite - final product

let me preface this post by saying - a majority of the photos were taken by me... and i'm terrible at detail shots - so i apologize for the blurry, out of focus ones! =)

ok so here's the final product - this pic was actually shot by a friend at one of my bridal showers - thanks shayn - keep up the good work!

back to my photos again - here's the belly band my sis-in-law slaved away on - 2" by 12" creates this look - then i layered the 1"x 1" blue square (which has the gold gocco'd sand dollar) on top of the ivory 2"x 2" square to "close" the band off.

once you slide the belly band off - it reveals the inside of our pockets - lined with my favorite paisley paper - the invitation piece sits on the left (with gocco'd gold sand dollars again) - and all of the info cards and rsvp postcard are in the pocket to the right (again lined with my favorite paisley paper).

here's a shot of the ceremony & reception card... duh =)

direction card - again tying in our sand dollar motif 

here's the front of our rsvp postcard

and the back - it was really fun to get responses and song requests back from our guests!

finally after all the hard work, they're ready to be shipped out to all our wedding guests! i really loved the Louis Comfort Tiffany stamps we used - they worked well with our overall color scheme!

and here our invitations are immortalized by our wonderful photographer -

 MemoriesbyMichael.com

hope you enjoyed seeing some of what went into DIY'ing your own invitation suite, it's A LOT of hard work - but if you have help from family and friends you too can DIY your dream invitations! 

next up - i'll be deconstructing my inspiration board - showing you my inspiration photo and the real life wedding photo, it should be fun!

b

{recap} wedding invite workshop

well... to start off the wedding recaps, i think i should begin with our invites - since they did inspire a great deal of the details that stood out on our wedding day.

after designing and printing the invites - which were partially printed by a family friend, then the sandollar details were gocco'd by me - we had a family assembly party consisting of my parents, my brother and sis-in-law, myself and my hubby (then fiance). each person more of less to charge of a "station" ...

here's what we had to tackle that day:

-emboss address on all envelope flaps

-crease and close belly bands

-xyron paisley pocket liners & all invitation pieces

-adhesive main paisley liner and flap liner

-gocco all sandollar details

-adhesive invites into pocket folders

-insert all the detail cards into pockets

-apply postage stamps to rsvp postcards

... that was pretty much it! sounds easy right? well take a look at the process and you decide, but in my opinion this was a labor of love that took upwards of 10 hours to complete!

here are my bro and sis-in-law: he's embossing our envelope flaps 

and here lisa is using the sample belly band that's taped to the mat to line up the crease marks for each band

even my now hubs got involved - J worked the xyron machine to make the pocket folder lining into stickers, making them easier/quicker to stick the lining on. and that's me standing gocco'ing the sandollars!

mom and J watching me work the kinks outta lining the pocket folders

in the pic below - my nephew showing off something and if you look at my gocco screen you can see the various sizes of sandollars awaiting their turn to be gocco'd

mr. b .... in the zone - our family is full of perfectionist, especially him, so those embossed envelopes were perfectly squared thanks to the mat, some blue tape, and repeat - repeat - repeat

here you can see the grid my bro set up to use to emboss all the envelopes and in the next pic my mom testing it out

two perfectionist - my dad and bro - go figure, racing to see how many they could line in 10 minutes! boys operate so differently from women

taking a break to play a lil' wii bowling...

no longer is it light outside and the girls of course are still working on affixing the lining and the actual invite pieces to the pocketfolders 

later that night i continued lining pocket folders and backing the invites to the liner...

first i put in the part that sits behind the invite, then the flap had to be attached

i made sure to run my bone folder over all the liner to smooth it down and make sure there were no ripples

last up was to stick on each invitation piece which had previously been xxyron'd to create a stick backing so i could easily stick them all in to their own pocket folders.

next up i'll show you the final results of all the pieces assembled and ready to be sent out to our guests!

it's so hard to believe we were making these almost a year ago in May! wow!

after 6 months of marriage...

i'm finally going to start the journey of posting about our wedding details!  i figure i should introduce all the various elements by showing you my inspiration and the reality at our wedding... kind like a before and after.

boy do i have lots in store... here's an overview of the journey we're about to take to recap the wedding:

- paper goods: invites, programs, escort cards, valet tags, and menu cards...

- flowers: ceremony, reception, diy floral elements, and our personal flowers of course...

- personalization: diy centerpieces, personal touches, decor, jewelry, and accessories....

- random: the cake, photography, music, and my advice to future brides....

i'll leave you with my original inspiration board i had created months in advance of our wedding... and you can determine if we hit the mark!

any other newlyweds having a hard time catching up on blogging (or anything else for that matter) the way they used to while feverishly planning your wedding?