Save the Date: Kara & Steve are Getting Married!

Let me say up front that I LOVE it, when couples looking for custom letterpress stationery contact me well in advance of their wedding date! The more you plan ahead, the more time we will have to come up with something totally awesome, and totally "you".

Seattle couple, Kara and Steve, are getting married in late August of 2010 in Kara's hometown of Billings, Montana, and Kara contacted me originally back in April of this year asking about custom letterpress printing for her wedding. We began talking about designs for her Save-the-Date cards in July and we finished them up and shipped them to her so she could send them out to her guests about eleven months prior to her wedding. I have to give her mad props for planning way ahead - that's awesome!

Right before I began working on Kara and Steve's designs, Kara sent me a fabulous and very detailed description of different things she liked and what she already has planned for her wedding next August. Kara wrote:

"[Our wedding] will be at my parents' home; they have a country-type house on 20 acres. We'll have the ceremony in the backyard in the early evening and then the reception will be in one of those huge white tents, probably 40' x 120', and will last late into the night. Overall, we want our wedding to have an elegant, romantic, chic feel. Our colors are aubergine and blush pink, with accent colors of lime green, brown, and ivory. In our reception tent, we want the tables to have aubergine lamour (satin-like finish) tablecloths and dark wood chivari chairs, and to have lots and lots of votive candles on the tables. For flowers, I love peonies, magnolias, ranunculus, anemones, orchids and hydrangeas..."

When discussing what she wanted for her stationery, I found out that Kara loved the idea of a super-thick paper that would really show off the letterpress impressions well. She really wanted something that was fresh and modern, but with a touch of romance and whimsy, all the while incorporating elements of her and Steve's personality and the colors and style that they would have for their upcoming wedding. You can see in the photo at the top of this post, and in the ones below what we came up with.

Kara and Steve's Save the Date's are a very modern monarch size card (which measures 3.75"x7.25") printed on Crane Lettra 220 lb. 100% cotton duplex paper in Ecru. The duplex paper is twice as thick as the regular Crane Lettra paper and handles deep letterpress impressions very well. We decided to go with the warm Ecru color, rather than a standard white or off-white shade, to lend a slightly more rustic, traditional and warm touch to an otherwise, very modern design. This save-the-date is also very unique in that it is double-sided. You can see both sides and the envelope in the photo at the top of the post.

For one of the sides we decided to do a repeating, blind-embossed pattern of Kara and Steve's wedding date, written several different ways, as well as their names, and the phrase "Save the Date" in a modern, san-serif font all over the entire side of the card. This created a really interesting visual and tactile "texture" on the surface of each card. Click on the photo below to see the detail better!

Then, on top of the pattern I letterpress printed the words "Save the Date" in Kara's actual handwriting in a dark aubergine ink. In order to do this, Kara wrote out the words she wanted on a piece of paper several times until she got it to look the way she wanted it to. Then she scanned the handwriting, e-mailed it to me, I converted it into a vector image, and then created a letterpress printing plate from it! Pretty neat, don't you think? Here is a detail image of Kara's handwritten "Save the Date" as well as of the blind-embossing:

On the other side, we continued to print with the same Aubergine ink and utilized Kara's handwriting and the fonts I used on the reverse side for the blind embossing to print the actual information. Check it out:

Kara wrote her and Steve's names for the design on the top of the card and then below them, we printed their full names, the date, place and their website info. The layout and style is very modern and I absolutely love the way that Kara's writing extending off the edges of each sheet looks so fresh and stylish, yet timeless and personal all at the same time!

In order to incorporate another one of their wedding colors into the Save-the-Date, Kara chose a light green, monarch-size envelope from Green Paper Company to pair with her cards. The shade of green is called "Balsam Fir" and we letterpress printed their return address in aubergine ink on the flap.

Kara asked me to blur a fairly significant portion of their address, but you can still get an idea of where the address was situated and what the color and shape of the envelope was like from the above photo. Everything about these cards turned out beautifully. They are so unique and I can't wait to see where we decide to go for their actual invitations!

In other news, I would like to wish a very happy wedding day to a Eugene, Oregon couple I printed wedding invitations for who are getting married in Cannon Beach, Oregon today! Congratulations Leia & Tyler! I haven't shown off their stationery on this blog yet, but I will very soon, so keep an eye on this blog if you want to see it!