Meghan and Kenny's Pocket Folds

It is usually advisable that brides come to me about six months before their wedding date. This gives me time to meet with the bride, design the invitation, order the product, print everything, assemble everything, and get the product back to the bride with some time to spare before their invites need to go out.

This blog post is proof that even if you're working with a smaller time frame, everything can still come out just the way you imagined it.  

Meghan called me over the 4th of July weekend. She was getting married in October and she needed to get her invitations done...and quickly. We decided on a time to meet and began the process right away. 

Luckily, her and her fiance, Kenny, were a breeze to work with. They looked through my prototypes, decided on a pocket fold invitation (who doesn't love a good pocket fold?), and I got to work on their invitations. 

No need for any more talk...here's the finished invitation suite.

(I must say, I'm completely in love with the 5x5 pocketfolds.)

Meghan and Kenny wanted to use purple in their invitations, but not too much of it. We decided just to add a few pops of it here and there.

We backed the main invitation with a plain purple...I mean, Majestic, to use the proper name of the color. :) We decided to back the RSVP card with a patterned paper.

This RSVP card was a winner. Meghan actually texted me after they had sent the invites out and said that the general consensus was that people loved the RSVP card the most. Those little cards are small but mighty, I tell you.

And look at that...everything folds up perfectly right into the envelope. I just love how practical these invites are.

I'm actually working on Meghan and Kenny's programs right now so I'll be back in a few weeks blogging about those!

And I'll be back tomorrow with a second blog post for the week (can you handle this much excitement?!) about how I did on my August Fun List. Let me just say, 'keep designing invites' was definitely crossed off. :)

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post. 

Dale and Kaitlin's Wedding Suite

When I first decided to advertise with The Knot, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I have a ton of brides contacting me in the first week? Would I just have one or two brides emailing me a month? Would any of them even work out? I had no clue. 

To my surprise, within the first week of officially being listed on The Knot I was meeting with a bride, Kaitlin, and her mom for an October wedding. They were great. They calmed any of the fears I had that meeting with complete strangers would be really weird or creepy or just plain awkward. They were none of the above...in fact, they were down to earth, calm, and I could tell they were going to throw one heck of a wedding.

As it came time to start designing the invites, Kaitlin basically gave me a leaf graphic that she wanted to use and then let me go to work.  Here's what we came up with.

So, I love the colors and the fonts, but my absolute favorite thing about this invitation is what you see when you turn it around...

Is this not the most fabulous thing ever? When you turn the invite around, you have a pocket that fits all of the pieces of your invite. Everything is right there. So compact. I am a firm believer that everything (I'm talking in life in general) should have a place, so this invitation is right up my alley.

The RSVP card...don't you just want to attend this wedding? I'll have the Filet, please.

Kaitlin has set the tone for all of the brides that have found me from The Knot so far. They are so kind, down-to-earth, and they all have excellent style. More of that to come in the next few weeks.

But before I say good-bye, here's the progress that I've made on my August Fun List. I only have one more week to get everything done (yikes), but I am pretty happy with the progress so far. Some things are in still progress (I have been learning a word a day, reading, relaxing, swimming in the parents' pool, and playing with my nephews and niece, but I'm waiting until the end of the month to cross those off) but many have been accomplished and therefore are completely crossed off.

The most notable things that were crossed off this week involved me heading down to the south to celebrate a friend's marriage. More on that later, too...

Reception Weekends

This past weekend, my brother Jeff and his new wife Ashley traveled to Michigan so we could celebrate their wedding here. You might remember that they got married in Virginia in May. Well, we wanted to have a small celebration for them up here in Michigan, too. And naturally, my mother hired me to do the invitations. :)

Here they are. Simple, printed on a piece of white card stock, and made ever so beautiful with the lovely picture Jeff and Ashley let me borrow (credit goes to Mike Topham Photography).

Please note that I (kind of - there has to be an easier way than what I did) figured out how to blur out the address. A big thanks to my cousin Rachelle for introducing me to Picasa when I was wallowing in self pity about not having Photoshop.  

To top off the reception festivities, I used this idea from Pinterest:

Only I made it my very own by combining the two cards into one:

I had a blast with my family this weekend and I'm super excited that the wedding reception fun continues this next weekend when I fly down to ATL for this lady's wedding reception. I'll be back next week to show off the programs I made for that spectacular event. Try to contain your excitement until then... :)

But I can't end this blog post without taking a look at how things are progressing on my August Fun List. Here it is with many more items crossed off:

Yay! As the August continues on (way too fast...), I think I'll show off some of the things I've been doing from the list (specifically the pinterest inspired idea that turned into several pinterest inspired ideas). 

I have some classy (and I do mean classy) projects coming up in the next few weeks that I'm really excited about. Here's a little sneak peak:

I hope everyone is enjoying the rest of their summer and that it's not going by too fast for you!

My August Fun List

Oh, July. I will miss you. You represent everything that is good about summer. Cookouts. Warm weather. Laying out by the pool. Beach getaways (What am I talking about? I didn't go on one.). Things that are red, white, and blue. Lots and lots of good grilled food. 

And now it's August. Seriously. How fast did July pass by?

When I realized that August was pretty much almost here, I immediately thought of all of the things that I haven't done yet. I decided it was time to regroup and make sure that the things that I want to get done actually do get done.

So here is my Summer Fun List, more accurately titled my August Fun List. Only things that I actually want to do made it on the list (yes, de-cluttering practically my entire house excites me to no end!).

So as a way to hold myself accountable, I will post this at the bottom of my August posts, with things crossed out to show what I've done that week. I'm super excited about it and I would encourage anyone else to make their own August Fun List!

In other news, today is my 2nd anniversary with my man (yay!). We were going to dress up and celebrate by having a romantic dinner at an Italian restaurant, but last night I realized that the night class that I thought I was teaching on Tuesday was actually tonight (complete scheduling fail). So we're postponing our romantic Italian dinner to another night instead and we'll just have to settle for celebrating our anniversary in Saugatuck, Michigan this weekend. It is there that I hope to cross off my August Fun List watching that amazing Michigan sunset on Lake Michigan.

In honor of our anniversary, I thought I'd share our own wedding invitations...the invites that started this here crazy invitation business. I did half of them myself, after being inspired by a wedding invitation I had received at least two years prior, and enlisted the help of a girl who did custom invitations to finish things off for me. 

After the wedding, I put together this shadowbox of our invitations. I really loved our invites and I wanted to display them in a fun way. I would fully recommend this method to any bride out there who had a pocketfold invitation. If you make sure to reserve two of them for yourself, you'll be able to do your own shadowbox.

The girl who helped me with these invites designed the flower pattern and we used that to make the bands that held the invitation together. The pink ribbon was a last minute thing. It was either cut every single ribbon so that it was only showing on the inside or let it show on the outside. I can't even imagine how much time it would have added on to cut all that ribbon...we quickly opted for the less time consuming option.

This actual invite was printed on velum and we used tiny brads to attach it to the card stock. Since I was taking a picture through the shadowbox glass, I thought I'd show a better version below. It was one of my favorites from our engagement session.

Notice that our arms make an M...for marriage, you know. :)  

Happy, happy anniversary to my man!