Leia & Tyler are Married!

Happy Valentines weekend, folks! I'm so sorry that I was a bad, well at least, absentee blogger this past week. Needless to say, with the spring wedding season picking up, and my near-total liberation from crutches this week, it's been a little busy around here. To make up for my absence from the virtual world this past week, I'd like to share with you some stationery for one of my favorite weddings from this past fall. As I've said before, I get to work with a lot of really creative, wonderful and awesome people throughout the year, but every now and again I get to work with a couple, family or individual who is just all-out fantastic. Leia and Tyler were one such couple.

Leia & Tyler were married this past October in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Cannon Beach is a pretty, little, Pacific-coast town, just west of Portland, with gorgeous beaches and a very notable natural landmark: Haystack Rock. When Leia, Tyler and I first met, they weren't sure what they wanted to do for their invitations, but after looking at several examples from past clients, both were drawn to this invitation that I printed for a Portland, Oregon couple, just a few months before. Tyler said he liked it because the invitation looked like a ticket to the wedding, which, if you think about it, really is what a wedding invitation is. Both Tyler and Leia also loved the fact that the invitation I linked to above featured a stylized, yet, photo-realistic image of the Cascade mountains. We figured we could incorporate this same idea, but into something that was more Cannon Beach-y.

Leia and Tyler's invitation suite is featured all together in the photo above. The suite included a monarch size (3.75"x7.25") wedding invitation and corresponding light green envelope, a monarch size map/directions card, a 4bar size reply card, with corresponding evergreen-colored envelope and a 3.5" coaster rehearsal dinner invitation. Here is the invitation by itself:

Leia & Tyler loved the style of the invitation from the suite I linked to above so much that we decided to go with pretty much the same idea for their invitation, with a few modifications to make it their own. Tyler and Leia sent me several photos of Cannon Beach to create a background for their invitation from and the one you see above, letterpress printed in a very light green ink, with Haystack Rock in the upper right and the beach and ocean stretching out in the foreground, is the image we chose. I love how realistic, yet very flat and stylistic, using a photo like this looks letterpress printed. We basically flattened the photograph out until it was only two colors, with the details of the beach dropping away in the front and the silhouette of Haystack Rock and other details left in the background. The light green part of the invitation that was printed was pressed down (de-bossed) slightly, from the letterpress process, which caused the white areas (Haystack Rock and other details) to become slightly raised. Check it out:

The texture of this, was totally awesome! To complete the design, we utilized a darker green ink for the evergreen tree on the right hand side of the design, as well as for Leia & Tyler's names, and a chocolate brown ink for the rest of the text.

This invitation was paired with a light green, 30% Post-consumer recycled envelope from Green Paper Company that had their return address letterpress printed on the flap.

Leia & Tyler's reply card was a 4bar size (measuring 3.5"x4.875") and was printed in one ink color: the darker of the two greens from their invitation. Layout-wise, we continued with a very similar style from their invitation. I used the same serif-typeface and we re-used the evergreen tree on the left-hand side.

Leia and Tyler were holding a welcome picnic in Ecola State Park the day before their wedding, so they included options on their reply card for people to indicate which event(s) they planned to attend. This card was paired with a darker green 100% post-consumer recycled envelope, also from Green Paper Company, and had Leia's parent's address printed on the front in chocolate brown ink.

Leia and Tyler's directions card was also printed in a single ink color: chocolate brown and was a monarch shape, just like their invitation.

The directions card featured directions from the Portland airport to Cannon Beach, as well as information about their picnic and accommodations. When I showed Leia and Tyler samples of other invitations I had done in the past, both really liked the hand drawn maps that we had done for several of our invitation suites. For this card, Tyler hand drew the map himself, and let me tell you: it turned out adorable.

I love how Tyler incorporated several cute little drawings of Cannon Beach landmarks into his map. Some of these included Haystack rock, a wooden fisherman that is outside one of the hotels, a puffin (apparently there are a lot of puffin statues and images in Cannon Beach) and a heart on the beach where their ceremony was to take place. Pretty adorable, if I do say so myself.

Last, but certainly not least, was a rehearsal dinner invitation. Leia and Tyler wanted to do something fun and unique for their rehearsal dinner invite and for this, we chose to do a coaster. (Yes, an actual coaster!)

These coasters are 3.5" round, thick coaster stock and were printed with the green tree motif once again, and Leia & Tyler's rehearsal dinner invitation information in chocolate brown ink. I love how we made the text wrap around the shape of the coaster and I love how unique and original this is. I've done coasters for Save-the-Date cards and as actual coasters to put drinks on for receptions before, but this was my first coaster-reheasal-dinner-invitation. Pretty cool, don't you think?!?

Since doing their invitations, Leia and Tyler and I have become pretty good friends. Tyler is an architect and helped me with some minor house problems over the summer, and has also been helping me a bit in my shop since I broke my leg this past January. Both he and Leia are just really cool people, all around. I've done some other work for them since their invitations, including some favors for their wedding, and thank you cards just recently, which I will show off in my next post. Leia and Tyler also sent me several photos from their wedding, that I will show off here too! Check back soon!

Thanks so much Leia & Tyler. You guys are awesome!