Henri-Lee and Konrad are Married!

Good morning, folks! It's time for another addition of "It's so cold in Oregon, all I can think about is wanting to be somewhere tropical". So, with no further ado, I present to you a lovely wedding invitation suite that I designed and printed last spring for a couple who live and were married in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time that I began working with Henri-Lee and Konrad, I was actually working with another couple who was using their same wedding planner. The wedding planner's name is Alia Kennedy of Parasol Events in Honolulu, and she put me in touch with both lovely couples! We haven't actually met in person, but Alia is a true gem to work with, and I would highly recommend her if you are planning a destination wedding or a local wedding in Hawaii. When Alia contacted me about Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding, we didn't have much time to design and print a totally custom suite. I listened to what Henri-Lee was envisioning though and described another suite I was currently working on for another couple, who you recently read about here, and we decided that we could create a similar suite that was adapted to better reflect Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding without starting completely from scratch. You can see the four pieces in their invitation suite at the top of this post.

Henri-Lee and Konrad's suite included an A7 size invitation with corresponding envelope and a 4bar size reply card with corresponding envelope. The invitation was printed in three ink colors and the reply card was printed in one on Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton paper. The envelopes were pink and yellow, were both printed in one ink color, and came from Waste Not Paper Company. Here is their invitation by itself:

As Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding colors were pinks and yellows, we really wanted to somehow incorporate both and have a slightly tropical feeling to the suite. In order to do this, we adapted my birds in branches design to have the branches covered in pink plumeria flowers with four little yellow birdies on or flying up to it. If you haven't seen a plumeria in person, here is a photo of the real thing:

(source)

Plumerias are a tropical tree flower that come in a few different colors and are absolutely gorgeous! They smell amazing too! I actually have a small plumeria tree in my house that I brought back from Hawaii at one point. The tree is beautiful, but in the over 10 years that I've had it, it has never flowered. I'm thinking it might just be too cold here to do it, which is sad, but I'm still hopeful that one day it will. Anyway, back to the stationery!

We used a really gorgeous script font for the couples names and a classic serif typeface for the other invitation information. I absolutely love the way these crisp fonts and images combined with bright, cheerful ink colors really sink into the page! Gorgeous! The invitation was then paired with a coordinating yellow envelope and I letterpress printed their return address on the flap in chocolate brown ink.

For Henri-Lee and Konrad's reply card we went with a similar coordinating design motif, this time without the birds and in only one ink color to save them some money. The reply card was printed in chocolate brown ink and featured a place for guests to write their names, check whether or not they would be attending, and then select their meal choice for the reception.

For the reception entree choices, we used some cute little caricatures (something I do fairly often) to represent fish, beef and vegetarian. The reply cards were paired with a bright pink envelope and again printed with the couple's address in chocolate brown ink.

Isn't this suite so sweet and beautiful all at the same time?!?

Since Hawaii is a fairly expensive and not very easy location to get to, Henri-Lee and Konrad planned a small wedding. Now, let's say that you're planning a small wedding and you invite just your closest friends and family to the actual event, but you also want to inform other friends of your nuptials. How do you do it? Send out wedding announcements! A wedding announcement isn't an invitation to the event and it is typically sent out after the couple is already married, but it is a nice, formal way to inform friends whom you don't necessarily want to invite to the event, or who you know won't be able to attend, that you were married. This is what Henri-Lee and Konrad did shortly after their wedding! Here is the announcement:

For this piece HL wanted to continue with the same sort of design that we had used for the actual invitation, but change up the size just a little bit. There was quite a bit of wording on their announcement, so in order to accommodate that without making the card look cluttered, we chose a long and skinny T-Length size. This card measures 3.875"x9.25" and was printed in three ink colors: chocolate brown, yellow and pink. It was paired with a coordinating, white, T-length envelope from Waste Not Paper Company and the return address was printed on the flap of it in pink ink. Here are some details of the announcement and announcement envelope so you can see the pretty fonts, images, ink colors and impression a little closer:

Aren't these lovely?!? It's such a nice way to announce your wedding to all of the people you couldn't invite, or who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make it to your actual event.

Once again, working with Alia of Parasol Events on this was absolutely wonderful and our clients, Henri-Lee and Konrad, were really sweet! Congratulations Henri-Lee and Konrad and thanks again!

Emily & Stephen are Married!

(Photo courtesy of Emily G Photography)

Happy Friday, everybody! It's been kind of cold, rainy, and wintery in Western Oregon today, so I thought I would share with you a really bright and cheery wedding invitation suite I printed earlier this summer for a very cute couple who were married in Portland, Oregon in late September. Emily and Stephen are good friends of mine. Shortly after college I met both of them while we all worked at the same University bookstore. Emily and I worked in the graphic design/marketing department and Stephen was working in IT. I can remember talking to Emily constantly about how one day I was going to quit doing design for marketing and advertising and open up my very own letterpress shop (she and I used to have our desks about three feet from each other after all). At that point, she and Stephen had recently started dating, so it was really fun when she got in touch with me earlier this year about letterpress printing her wedding invitations, and it was really fun in September to get to go to their wedding!!

Anyway, being the über-talented designer that she is, Emily designed her invitations herself! Check them out:

Emily and Stephen's invitation suite included an A7 size invitation and envelope and an A2 size RSVP postcard. They were printed in two ink colors on Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton paper and came with a coordinating white envelope from Waste Not Paper company. Emily and Stephen also had me print some really cute, matching wedding coasters for their reception as well!

Emily's stationery as well as her wedding, was bright, cheery and colorful. They had their ceremony and reception in Portland, Oregon at the McMennamin's Kennedy School - an old-fashioned school house that has been converted into a hotel/restaurant/bar/event space. I love how she was able to incorporate so many pretty colors into everything from her invitations to her reception without the whole thing being overwhelming. Here is her invitation by itself:

Emily chose to print her invitation in deep red and light pink inks. I love the fun and whimsical floral pattern she designed which adorned all of the pieces.

Their reception coasters were printed in the same ink colors with their names and the wedding date and some of the cute floral pattern. These are a 4" round coaster, which is perfect for beer, cocktail, wine and other beverage glasses!

I wish I had taken some photos of how cute these looked at the reception, but, I actually forgot to bring my real camera to their wedding and the only photos I have were taken with a cell phone (and they weren't very good ones). Let me tell you though, they were super-cute!

Here is the coordinating Waste Not Paper invitation envelope that Emily picked out:

We used a very pretty reddish-purple ink to print the return address on the flap. Then, for their reply cards, Emily chose to do a postcard to save on reply card envelope printing and postage. We used the same reddish-purple ink on this card as well as a bright and cheery yellow!

I absolutely love how Emily and Stephen's personality and sense of humor shines through on the reply card. Take a look at their accepts/regrets options: "Sure" and "Nah...". Aren't they just too cute?!? I think they're just about as cute as the couple they were created for. Here are some photos from Emily and Stephen's big day, taken by Portland-based wedding and portrait photographer Emily G.

(All Wedding Photos courtesy of Emily G Photography)

If you'd like to see more photos from their wedding, check them out on their photographer's blog, here.

Congratulations Emily & Stephen!

Save the Date: Theresa & Dermot Are Getting Married!

Check out these awesome Save-the-Date coasters I finished last week for a couple in New York City! Theresa & Dermot wanted to do something a little unique and different for their Save-the-Date cards for their upcoming July 2010 wedding, so rather than having us print a standard card and envelope, she chose to have us print her Save-the-Dates as coasters with matching envelopes! I think this is a stellar idea for any party, wedding or otherwise!

Theresa and Dermot's Save-the-Date coasters were letterpress printed on 4" square coaster stock with two ink colors: turquoise and a greenish-yellow "lime" hue (think the inside fruity part of the lime, not the skin). We used a playful and lovely script font for their names and their wedding date and a tall and skinny serif font for the rest of the text. The date was framed within a very decorative 1920's-ish looking flourish-y border that Theresa found, and the rest of the coaster was dotted with stars!

I have been looking for square envelopes for a while that are smaller than 5.5" and I finally found some! These coordinating cream-colored, linen envelopes from Envelloper Inc., fit our 4" coasters perfectly!

They feature a European pointed flap and were just big enough for us to letterpress print Theresa & Dermot's return address on the back.

Pretty cool, don't you think?!? Thanks again and congratulations Theresa & Dermot!