Welcome back to our guest blogger, Freddy, who has been keeping us up to date on all sorts of fun wedding planning details!
***
Hello again everyone!
In this post I’d like to delve into the good, the bad, and the ugly moments of wedding DIY. Some brides are born to DIY, some aren’t. I think I fall somewhere in between, with some of my projects working out and others ending in dismal failure.
The first (and most involved) project I decided to undertake was our invitation suite. I knew that I wanted something classic, simple, and above all, letterpressed. Ohhhh, letterpress. It was something I’d told myself was so superfluous, but as soon as I received a few samples in the mail I was convinced that I simply had to have it. Letterpress wasn’t exactly in our budget, so to cut costs I decided to design everything myself. I began by looking for the perfect font, and quickly settled on the popular Burgues Script. (If you’re looking for some beautiful wedding fonts, Snippet & Ink has a great post on the 50 best wedding fonts here). Even though I was already somewhat familiar with Adobe Illustrator, it took a lot of trial and error before I came up with a design I was completely satisfied with. To letterpress the three-piece suite, I worked with the talented and extremely sweet Kristin Walker over at Twin Ravens Press. Here’s the finished product:
If you are considering letterpress invitations, do yourself a favor and go to Kristin’s website. She is seriously talented and so, so nice. The work she did for us was so amazing that I convinced my ever-obliging fiancé that we also needed to letterpress our wedding programs. So worth it. Check these babies out:
One project that I completed just a few days ago was our guestbook. I didn’t think I even wanted a guestbook until I came across this awesome idea on Pinterest:
Adorable, right?
To make this, I purchased two of the largest white frames IKEA had to offer, and 150 4-bar envelopes from Paper Source. I printed and cut cards to go inside the envelopes, some blank and some prompted. I am always the person who has no idea what to write in others’ guestbooks at weddings, so I figured I’d make a few prompted cards for those guests who share my writer’s block. These cards say things like “What is your favorite memory from tonight?”, “Where do you see us in 25 years?”, “What is the best advice for a happy marriage?”, and “What should we do for our first anniversary?”.
Now that I’ve patted myself on the back a little bit, I’ll let you in on one of my DIY fails. I was convinced early on in my planning that if given enough time and the right supplies, I could teach myself the art of swoosh-y, swirl-y, swoon-worthy calligraphy. I gave myself over a month before our invitations had to be sent out to practice and perfect my writing.
Looking back, I really shouldn’t have chosen this as a project. In high school, I was the girl whose teachers frequently had to call her in after a test to read them her illegible answers. So naturally, this DIY experience was awful, and I very quickly came to realize that no amount of practice would yield the results I was hoping for. Lesson learned: wedding professionals are able to make a living from their talents for a reason. I’ll save you guys the agony of having to look upon my atrocious penmanship and instead show you the work of the wonderful calligrapher that I wound up hiring to do our envelopes and escort cards:
Calligraphy by Carmela Mazzarulli
I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying to DIY their calligraphy, as I’m sure there are few out there whose chicken scratch is worse than mine. However, I advise that you have lots of time and even more patience.
***
Freddy's wedding was this past weekend, so we can't wait to see photos of the wedding and will be sure to have her back for another recap. Congratulations to the beautiful bride and her new hubby from all of us here at Hitched!
