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closePreparing for a wedding is like cooking a multi-course meal: It’s complicated, detailed and can turn out to be an amazing experience for family and friends.
In the excitement of planning the dress, decorations and reception, wedding invitations can be lost in the shuffle. But they are the appetizer of the meal: They set the tone for the rest of the event. What’s more, they may be the only part of a wedding some out of town guests will experience.
Invitations are the first opportunity most couples have to determine the style and feel of their wedding, says Cathie Haag, wedding planner and owner of Simply Wonderful Weddings in Bellingham. The look of the invitations can reflect not only the wedding colors, but also the personality and paradigm of the couple starting their lives together.
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MADE BY HAND
After 17 years as a calligrapher, Christy Schroeder, 37, says she’s seen a decline in her wedding work due to computers.
Schroeder says having invitations and envelopes done in calligraphy is a popular trend on the East Coast, but not so much in Whatcom County. Here, she notices an increasing use of do-it-yourself computer programs such as Photoshop. However, she says, an invitation written on handmade paper using extra detail like gold or silver ink adds an elegant touch and makes a lasting impression.
“The envelope is the very first thing your guests will see,” she notes.
Having wedding invitations and envelopes written by a calligrapher such as Schroeder is more expensive and takes longer than having them printed. Schroeder says she asks couples to allow one to two months for their invitations. She makes one master copy that can take up to 15 hours to complete and then takes it to the printer.
Although her wedding invitation work has declined in the past few years, Schroeder, who works from her home in Blaine, says she has seen more requests for other kinds of calligraphy, such as written wedding vows and monograms.
“What I try and do is keep this craft of calligraphy alive,” she says.
Haag says most couples incorporate the theme of their wedding into their invitations. For example, if a wedding is held outdoors, the invitations might have a nature theme.
Haag says she’s noticed more couples are making the invitations themselves. “More and more people are becoming computer-savvy,” she says. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Scrapbook make it easier for people to create their own invitations.
Casey Yeadon, 22, of Bellingham married husband Kevin in July 2007. She made her invitations herself, but distributed the workload by having friends and family come over to help. “I had an invitation-making party,” she says. With each person working a few hours, she finished in a single day.
DEFINITELY DOUBLE-CHECK
Michelle Nickols, 28, of Bellingham was lucky enough to have a crafty mother who wanted to contribute to her wedding. Nickols says her mother and aunt, who designed the writing and constructed the invitations themselves, spent more than 40 hours making the 350 invitations used for the July 2007 wedding.
Nickols says she also had a party where friends helped with the monumental task of addressing the invitations, but there were so many mistakes that the envelopes had to be re-addressed with premade labels.
Haag says errors on wedding invitations and envelopes are a common problem in the wedding process, and fixing them can be costly and time consuming.
“If you do it yourself, make sure you have more than one person proofread (the invitation),” she says.
Once invitations are sent to the printers and several hundred are printed, reprinting them may cost almost as much as the original price, Haag says, so double-checking is imperative.
Nickols found this out the hard way when her invites came back from the printer with the wrong RSVP date, an error she felt couldn’t be ignored. The shop didn’t recharge them for all the fees, but it still cost extra, she says.
Making your own invitations may seem more cost effective than paying a calligrapher or a printer to design them, but without careful shopping, prices can run high. Yeadon says her original estimate at Paper Zone would have cost $4 per invitation, more than $400 total for her 100 wedding invitations.
Haag says there are many ways to save money when making invitations. She says some couples use an RSVP Web site to cut the cost of return envelopes and increase efficiency, and others include RSVP postcards with the invitations, which cuts the cost of postage.
CORRESPONDING COLORS
Both Nickols and Yeadon were willing to pay a bit more since they wanted their invitations to reflect the mood of their weddings.
After visiting a wedding show in Seattle, Yeadon says she found an idea for her wedding invitations that fit her self-described classic and elegant theme.
“I really like the idea of calla lilies. I thought they were really elegant,” she says.
Since she could not find a picture of calla lilies for her wedding invitations, she had them done in her wedding colors, sage green and baby pink.
Printing invitations in corresponding colors is a popular trend, Haag says. White is a traditional color, but embellishments such as ribbon, multiple-piece invites and raised detail are becoming more common.
Nickols says she liked the idea of a fun invitation that reflected her personality and that of her husband, Ryan, but she also wanted them to incorporate elements of her faith. “Ryan and I really wanted it to be a day that was sincere and meaningful,” she says.
Nickols says her mother and Ryan’s mother met each other and had instant chemistry. They came up with an idea that was totally different from what she and Ryan had envisioned. However she says she didn’t mind letting her mother be the top chef on her invitations.
“It’s like one of the biggest days of their lives too,” she says.
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