If you've had a long engagement, you've probably noticed that people don't really care much about your wedding after you announce your engagement. That's because there's nothing for them to do!< They're happy for you, but their lives continue on (as they should!)... until the invitation arrives. This is when people start to get excited. The phone calls start, the hotel plans are made and plane tickets are purchased, and if you have any crazy relatives, this is when they make themselves known. The pre-wedding marathon begins. In addition to making the wedding real for you, the invitations' arrival will make things more real for your guests, too. It's an incredibly exciting time, and I really did love every minute of it. Being engaged was so much more fun once everyone else (at least, everyone else on our invite list) could share it with us. And it started with these invitations.
We had no invitation suite, just these beautiful, simple invitations, and their inner and outer envelopes. After the wedding, we wanted our thank-you cards to be a sincere expression of our gratitude for the day and a reminder of our invitations (assuming they remembered; I know lots of people just throw them away!). We ordered matching notecards with our name on the front, so we could use them not only as thank-you cards but also all around correspondence cards in the future: notes, condolence, congratulations, etc., so that we can use them long after we finish our thank-you cards.
I still remember that it seemed like forever before the invitations arrived, and they were nearly perfect. I was less than thrilled with the design process (the company was very nice to work with but it seemed like we weren't always on the same page; I eventually just photoshopped the letters, sent it to them, and had it printed). But showing them to my husband the first time put it all in perspective:
These invitations, of course, are not about shades of pink and cursive and script and fonts; they’re the first announcement that my fiance and I intend to start a life together. Seeing [Mr. Oyster] hold the invitations in his hands and really get that for the first time was priceless, and everything else I’d been worrying about suddenly mattered much less.
We ordered them from the same vendor as our invitations. The cards, having only one line of text, were much easier to design. Here you can see them with the pattern that continues onto the back of the card (at left), and our original invitation in the background there. Once again, I used our crop-a-dile (described here) to fix up those corners (although Smock can do this for you if, unlike us, you remember to specify it beforehand!).
Looking back on my wedding planning, one vendor I really enjoyed working with was Paper and Chocolate, which is where I ordered my invitations and notecards. I intially walked by the place while dating an ex-boyfriend (scandalous!). You know the kind, one of those commitment-scared ones you have to apologize to any time a wedding commercial comes on television. Anyway, the place looked beautiful and had a wedding dress in the window to advertise their invitation services. We walked by, and I pretended not to look at it. But in my head I thought, "If I ever get engaged..." and a few years later, I did... though not to him of course! And so it was my first stop for invitations. The people there are very nice (especially their resident etiquette guru, Frances) and will help you with every step of the process.
In case you didn't know, I'm a romantic at heart and I love pretty things. It's always fun to go there -- lots of exquisite papers, photo albums, frames, etc., and a separate little room for ordering stuff -- and then on the way out, you can pick up some wonderful chocolates. If you're a Dallas bride, I highly recommend taking your mom or your best friend with you for lunch at Breadwinner's next door, followed by looking at some beautiful invitations, and then you can get some chocolate to relieve wedding planning stress.
There are few better ways to spend an afternoon. None of these people asked me to say that -- visiting this store was truly a highlight of wedding planning. I still visit them to buy their chocolate, which always makes a wonderful gift.
I love the cards, and I love the fact that ordering them meant more pretty boxes from Smock (ours is the turquoise one seen here and above, but you can now buy them separately):
If our invitations were the first announcement of our intentions, these notecards, with our joint last name on the front there, are another tangible representation of our marriage, and their arrival signaled to me the end of our "wedding" experience. I'll admit that this does make me a bit sad. It's nice to have our thank-you notes done, though, and I'm happy that we'll have little reminders of our wedding to use all year long.
*Image of boxes from ohsobeautifulpaper.com.
