Emily and Joseph's Mackinac Island Wedding Invitations

I love Michigan. 

When I was 18, I went to Tennessee for college. When I graduated, I decided to postpone any real decisions about life by moving to North Carolina for a bit and then to Colorado. During those six years, I came to appreciate my home state in a way that I never had before. I love that I have childhood memories of heading up north to Frankfort where we would spend summers on the lake and winters snowmobiling. I love that I have memories of my brothers' hockey tournaments in the U.P. And most of all, I love that my husband and I have begun making our own memories in west Michigan, where we go for the weekend each year for our anniversary. 

So when brides come to me and have some kind of Michigan theme in their wedding, it's more meaningful than it would have been before I left Michigan for a while. What I'm finding is that whether you've moved to Chicago or NYC or Colorado or North Carolina, there's something about Michigan that you come to really appreciate.

This happened most recently with Emily, a bride who is getting married to her groom on Mackinac Island, with only their closest family and friends. We started out with these Save the Dates a few months ago and suddenly it was time to start designing the invitations. 

Here is what we came up with. 

I am not sure what I love the most about what Emily picked out. I knew immediately when she selected the papers she wanted that she was going to have a beautiful invitation. But then she picked out this vintage font and mentioned throwing a tandem bike in there and I was pretty much over the moon excited to see how things would look when everything was finished.

Sverige Script is the vintage font. Josefin Slab is the block font.

Another favorite thing about the invite is that Emily wanted one of the inserts to be "Top Ten Activities on Mackinac Island."

She also had an accommodations card since all of her guests are staying at the same resort.

And a sweet little RSVP.

Emily is such a kind, thoughtful bride and was ever so gracious to work with. I love that she and Joseph have decided to have the small, intimate wedding that they've always wanted. And I can only imagine that Mackinac Island will be the perfect place to have it. :)

Tonia and Eric's Pocket Fold Invitations

Y'ALL.

I love this invitation. I love all of my invitations (that sounds conceited, but honestly, I only print them and put them together...my brides are the ones with the exceptional tastes), but I really love this one. The colors. The patterned paper. The fonts the bride chose. Every little bit.

This here's a destination wedding invitation. For next year. Yep - you read it right. This bride is ON TOP OF THINGS. She wants to send the invitation out now so her guests have everything they need to start to save for and book their trip. This is extremely sweet and very considerate and when I met Tonia - AKA the bride - it all made sense. She is extremely sweet and very considerate. I liked her immediately.

Let's not even waste another second. Here are Tonia and Eric's destination wedding pocket folds.

Didn't I tell you? Great invitations, right? 

When I met with Tonia, she knew what she wanted. Her colors were (if you can't tell) red and Carolina blue (you know, the color of the Tar Heels logo - a random sports fact to impress my husband). 

She picked out a beautifully textured pocket envelope and matched it with a nice matte ecru paper for her invitation and inserts. We brought in a red and gold patterned paper to back the invitation itself and the RSVP card.

Her font is the ever loved Albemarle Swatch and we paired it with its sister font, Albemarle Demo.

Tonia included all of the details about the all inclusive where she and her fiancé will be married, the name of a travel agent, and group rate information. Since there was no wedding website, she wanted her guests to have everything they needed right there in front of them.

We finished the invitation off with a band with the initial of their soon-to-be-shared last name. 

The H was done in Albemarle Demo. We backed it with the same patterned paper that we used to back the invitation and the RSVP card.

And then it tucks nicely into the Carolina blue envelope. 

And this is what her guests saw in their mailboxes. A lovely invitation for what I can only assume will be a lovelier wedding.

On Thursday, I'll be back with an FAQ post on why custom wedding invitations cost what they do. See you then!

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

Janine and Cory's Save the Dates

When my husband and I first started dating about six and a half years ago, he invited me to one of his flag football games to meet his friends. He played with about a dozen other guys, so I figured there would be quite a few people that I'd meet at one time, which was mildly overwhelming for me since after college I decided I was a little less social than I had always thought.  After knowing Luke for a couple of months before officially dating, I knew that he was extremely outgoing, so I figured that in addition to his teammates, he might bring a few other friends to meet me.

I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.

I remember the evening like this:

I arrived at the game early (for me, most likely three minutes after the game started) and I brought reinforcements. My brother and a good friend of mine accompanied me.  Luke's sister was there, whom I knew from our youth group days. I felt better having them with me; they could be a buffer if things went wrong (I don't know what "going wrong" would have looked like, but it was important to me to guard against it).

We entered the arena and I just remember walking straight over to the bleachers and sitting down. I noticed that there was a large group of people in the bleachers to the left of me, but I didn't think anything of it. I figured that group was comprised of several different player's family members and friends that came to cheer them on.

Oh, no. I was wrong.

Those bleachers were filled with Luke's friends. Luke's friends took up a set of bleachers all by themselves. I had literally brought every person I could think of as reinforcements and that totaled two people. Luke had friends that weren't able to make it and he still had a bleacher full of people.

As I sat with my people, I began to notice that something was happening in the bleachers to the left. People began to realize that I was the girlfriend. Heads began to turn my way. I felt like I was on display. As I type this, I'm getting anxious just thinking about it.

Thankfully, the following took place.

I remember that three girls came out of the crowd. As they moved towards me, I recognized them as girls that Luke had been friends with for a while. They must have taken pity on me, seeing as my bleacher of friends was nothing in comparison to the size of Luke's (of course, this is not to minimize the quality of my bleacher :)).

These girls came over, introduced themselves, and sat down with me. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember that they immediately made me feel at ease. They asked questions and showed a genuine interest in my life. It was my first impression of Luke's friends and it was welcoming and comforting.  I've told this story several times throughout the years because it meant something to me. It was such a small gesture to walk over and say hi, but it had a lasting impact.

Janine was one of those girls. She has known Luke since elementary school and they're still good friends to this day. She and her fiancé live in Chicago and we've been able to visit them a couple of times over the past few years. When they got engaged last year, Janine contacted me to do Save the Dates for them.

I love the way they turned out.

Janine and Cory are getting married in Cancun in April. Janine really wanted the Save the Date to have a beach-y feel to it. We went with starfish and I think they worked out perfectly.

Luke and I are big fans of the destination wedding. Forcing us to take a vacation? If we have to...

I'm overly excited to introduce a new font. Dear Joe is what we used for the names.  It's free. Context Reprise Light (my fav) was used for the rest of the wording.

We used a beautiful aqua color for the backing of the invitation and a coral color for the envelopes. They fit together so well.

Since I shared my first impression of Janine, I feel led to end with my first impression of Cory.

We were at a mutual friend's wedding and Luke and I were chatting with Cory. The song 'I'm Sexy and I Know It' came on. Cory looks at us and says, "I'm sorry...I have to get out on the dance floor. This is my song."

I knew I liked him right then and there.

Congratulations, Janine and Cory!

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