From the Desk of... Emily

Introducing the first real Office Bride, Emily, from MD, USA!


"Our wedding invitations were designed by fiance's sister, based on a crappy little Paintbrush drawing I emailed her. She did a wonderful job, as you can clearly see.

The invitations use our color scheme of burgundy, black and slate blue as main colors, as well as off-white and silver as accent colors. In addition it also showcases our "themes", which are astronomy and cats. Fiance and I are both astronomers, and we're getting married at the Arecibo Observatory -- and a photo of the radiotelescope can be seen faded in the clouds at the bottom of the invite. The moon and lots of random little stars are also a really nice touch. And we have two cats, and our cake topper will be two kitties), so it was really nice to have two kitties silhouetted there in the invite. The fonts used were Freebooter Script and Centabel Book.

We had five insert cards -- "Information", "Map", "Directions", "RSVP" and "Reception", in order from tallest to shortest. They were designed to be staggered, so that the titles are visible when the cards are arranged by size. In the "Information" card we included info about a reserved block of rooms at the hotel, transportation from the ceremony to the reception sites, and the URL to our wedding website, along with the password to enter it. For the "Map" card, I took a screenshot off Google Maps and then traced over it in Keynote and exported it to a PNG file to then send to FSIL to include in the card. For RSVP we decided to not do the usual mail-back RSVP card, but rather wrote in an email address we created exclusively for dealing with wedding stuff and our phone number and gave guests the option to email or call us to let us know if they're coming to the wedding.


After FSIL finished designing the invitations, she emailed us all the files and we took them to FedEx Office for printing. We had them printed on 80lb cardstock in an off-white color called "natural". We got them back the next day and the printing job was fantastic.

The invitations and insert cards were then mounted on pocketfolds that I ordered from Cards and Pockets.I used the Signature Pocketfold (5x7) in "Black Tie" color (matte finish black), and had "Chili" colored invitation mats mounted on them (to go under the invitation, for a layered look).

I also ordered some custom-cut cardstock in "Chili" color to make belly bands. I had them cut the cardstock in strips 2 inches wide by 11 inches long, then I used a bone folder to score and fold them to size. Then I printed up some name cards (in the same 80lb "natural" cardstock from FedEx Office; 2.5 inches tall by 3 inches wide, and rounded the corners with a corner-rounder punch thingie) to put on top of the belly bands.

The finished invitations were then stuffed into envelopes that I also got from Cards & Pockets, in color "Hydrangea". Before stuffing I ran the envelopes through our inkjet printer and printed the addresses in them, along with a wedding bells dingbat on the top-left corner of the destination address. I also printed our return address on the back flap of the envelope, in smaller font size. To finish it off, we used a wedding cake stamp.

It was quite a lot of work to assemble the invitations into the pocketfolds and envelopes, but totally worth it. We've already started to receive RSVPs and so far everyone has loved the invitations!"

From the Desk of Emily.