I wrote before about our my save the date failure…I mentally committed to a concept that ended up not working out. We went back to the drawing board and picked something completely different…but I love what we made!

Here’s the inspiration:

(Photo via Oh So Beautiful Paper / save the date and photo by Antiquaria)

Here’s our interpretation:

Here’s what we did.

Instead of stamping, like the inspiration, I printed directly on white watercolor paper. This turned out to be a bit trickier than anticipated. It’s easy to print on watercolor paper on a regular printer, but it’s not as crisp as I wanted. Most of the normal printing places (Kinkos, Staples) wouldn’t print on watercolor because there’s a concern that it would mess up their printers. So I had to call around to specialty printers to find someone who would. I finally did and it wasn’t expensive (like $35 for about 75 STDs, plus they sent them to me) but definitely a bit of a pain.

I’m a font enthusiast, and I’m obsessed with both of these. The script is Tart Workshop’s “Nelly.” It was $40 (yes, for a FONT) but I’m using it as the basis for all of my paper products. You’ll see it a lot. Seriously, I could write an ode to this font. The other is “St. Marie,” free on Font Squirrel, and is a great thin, unobtrusive serif - for my fellow Times New Roman haters.

Before printing, I had tested out a few different layouts (for both the text and the paint):

I used a foam brush for these because all my paintbrushes were at my mom’s, so the lines are a lot wider than I’d like, but you get the gist. Getting the watercolor effect is pretty easy - I just mixed acrylic paint with a bunch of water. I ended up liking the middle right version the best - the right justification is nice, and the wide watercolor wash was super pretty.

The printer only had 12x18 watercolor, so I fit six to a sheet and had to cut everything down to size. I knew I wanted square, and I sort of based the final sizing on envelopes - I ordered translucent envelopes because I love when you can see a card from the outside. We also had to cut down grey cardstock for the backers. My mom did all of the cutting - she has one of those cutting tool thingys. I told her if I had to do it I would have used a ruler and scissors…she stared at me in horror.

All cut! This took awhile. I told jokes while my mom did the work.

After this, my sister and I painted. This took basically no time. I wanted them all to be different, so it was pretty hard to mess up. Some were darker, some lighter, some had some splatter - it was all good (see above photos for how different the colors were on some).

My sister was getting ready to go to college, so we had a lot of boxes acting as drying racks.

Once everything dried, I ironed the paper. I see a lot of people use heavy books or bricks for this - no need! Just put the paper between two other pieces of plain paper or fabric (don’t use anything printed - the ink might transfer) - and iron.

I loved the finished look, but we thought it could use something a little extra. My mom suggested sewing the paper. I love this detail on other products, so we tested it out:

Left, no sewing; right, with sewing.

I conferred with Wolfman and we decided the stitching was awesome. My mom sewed grey thread (with her machine) and I taped the hanging thread behind the white card.

The finished stack.

Then, we taped to the grey cardstock. Again, my mom had some sort of cool taping tool so it was pretty fast. In the envelopes, they look great - you see a hint of the content:

On the back of the envelope (the “business side”) we used grey labels that I printed on, plus awesome DC stamps:

Hey, they’ll be in the neighborhood!

These split apart, and I think I’ll use the whole stamp for the invitations (stamp and photo via USPS).

(Stamp via USPS)

In the mail they went! I think they turned out pretty great - it’s hard to show even in pictures how pretty the watercolor wash turned out. What do you think? It was a somewhat hefty project but I have a lot of satisfaction that we did it ourselves!

All photos personal unless otherwise noted. Some edited for privacy.

As far as our ceremony goes, Wolfman and I are not planning anything super religious, so we needed to find someone to marry us. Our first thought was to go to a friend, Joey Tribiani style.

(Photo via Fan Pop / Friends)

We even got to the point of asking one of Wolfman’s old coworkers but only then I looked at all the rules for someone to be a legal officiant in DC. It was kind of a lot - basically, you have to prove that you are a minister of a real religious group that meets regularly. I know we could have done the friend thing and do the paperwork separately, but I wanted it to be legit at the time of the ceremony.

So I started searching around…it was important that we find someone who would pretty much let us design our own ceremony (type A, whattup). On some of the DC wedding blogs, I kept seeing the same name over and over - Bill and Joyce from Say I Do Your Way. Really, hardly anyone else was mentioned.

(Photo via Say I Do Your Way)

I contacted them and they got back right away and offered to meet with us. I have been judging vendors a LOT on their responsiveness, so this was already going well. Wolfman and I met with Bill one night after work; most of our vendor meetings have been somewhat perfunctory - just going through the motions, knowing we were going to pick them based on all the research we’d done before, making sure they weren’t secretly trolls - and I figured this might be the same, but we ended up talking to Bill for about an hour. He asked us all about how we met, our engagement, etc - it was fun to tell those stories to someone who hadn’t heard them a thousand times already. We talked about what we wanted from our ceremony and he went over exactly what he would do (or not do, depending on our preference). We signed with him that night - I left feeling like maybe I could trust someone else’s judgement about the ceremony content and not need to write out every single thing. So, even though he was a little more expensive than I wanted (something confirmed by other brides), the fact that he lifted some  responsibilities off my plate (even though they were self inflicted) was worth it. 

So - we’re having a ceremony!

To be completely honest, the place where we’ll be standing for the main event isn’t my favorite aspect of the venue.

(Photo by Yelp user Lola B.)

As I explained here, our chairs will face the window (we’ll move the piano) and we will stand in the middle of the alcove there. I’m not a fan of the drapes, that couch, or the general color scheme here. The rest of the house definitely still has this historic look to it…but just a little less…pink. I also don’t think the entire party is going to fit up there, so we might have to get creative with where the maids and groomsmen are going to stand.

So…what to do? Having a window is nice, so ideas like this could work:

(Photo by All American Christmas Co)

Our ceremony will be right at sunset so I can see something like this being pretty - not to mention easy - and hopefully the Christmas lights would distract from the overall color scheme. I also really like something like this: 

(Photo by Tru Identity Designs)

But maybe using free-standing, pre-lit branches, like this? This would also tie the season in nicely.

(Photo by Sugar Pie Farmhouse)

Or maybe all three together? I don’t have a ton of room or much time to erect something, so it needs to be relatively simple, but I do want to set the area apart. Any ideas?