Wedding Suite

Wedding Suite

My brother and his girlfriend got engaged in November 2018 and set a November 2020 date for their wedding. They weren’t looking to spend a lot and particularly didn’t want wedding invitations that went to the nines only to be thrown in the trash.

Given my background in graphic design, I offered to make the invites as a wedding gift.

Final Products

These are the final products produced for the happy couple. The process and collaboration that went into creating this set are documented below.

Inspiration

For inspiration, the bride, groom, and multiple bridesmaids contributed to a Pinterest board.  Common themes in the Pinterest board included:

• Wood textures
• Elegant handwritten lines
• Lights

Since we were looking primarily at the wedding, we wanted to reflect this flavor.

Preliminary Design

I created a series of invites to start off focusing on the wood texture.

Brittany was wary of including any flowers on the invite since she wasn’t sure what flowers she’d have at her wedding or what color they would be. While she was certain that the wedding colors would be white and navy, the design was otherwise open.

I began looking for background textures of wood and made a few mockups to gauge their general interest. They liked one design immediately but wanted to see it in more colors.

Once they sat with it for a while we arrived at a dark wood design with Presley Slab and Quatro Slab as the main and secondary fonts. We found a perfect decorative font to give a bit of rustic and country flare with HWT Catchwords.

Save the Dates

Then we moved onto save the dates, which were supposed to be similar but not exact to the invites. I used the same background to iterate on the designs. I created two backs and two fronts.

On the backs, I left a white square that’s a little smaller than the size of a standard mail label so they could easily place the address for their invites.

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The bride liked elements of my first two attempts but really wanted to see a calendar added in. I moved around some elements and added a calendar figuring out how to keep some of the elements they still liked.

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The final step was picking out photos since they were still making arrangements for their engagement photoshoot from CT Photo Group. They both had multiple favorites so instead of the one photo frame, I came up with a set of three to give them more options.

To ensure they got what they wanted, I sat down with them and for about an hour we tried out different combinations of photos until they got one that they liked and it was good to go to the printer.

While the dogs would likely not be part of the wedding, they wanted to incorporate them in their Save the Dates in some way. Samantha, the bride’s sister and Maid of Honor, took a photo of the couple with their dogs on the deck, but the lighting was off. I put it into Photoshop and adjusted the brightness and curves until we got something that worked.

We then incorporated the final dog photo with two of their favorites from their engagement shoot and changed up a few final details before reaching this final version that we would send to the printer. The changes included setting a mason jar on at an angle and incorporating a heart with an arrow through it at Michael’s request.

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Bridal Shower Invites

As a separate project, I worked with Samantha on a coordinating shower invite. My directive here to make something that again fit the rustic theme and drew on the preliminary invite and save the date invite but didn’t match it too closely.

Since it was a Jack & Jill shower and was going to be super casual the invitation should be elegant but not overly feminine. Combining a script with a font from the wedding invite tied the designs together but did not overlap.

Another concern was incorporting the registry link. Brittany and Michael had registered at Zola and Bed Bath and Beyond, and they wanted to include a link, but since the link to the registry was so long and there was already hefty text on the page, I used a bit.ly URL to shorten it and make it easier to type in.

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We came up with an original concept pretty quickly but iterated on final details like names, and the garland we would use to break up some space at the top. When we finally settled on one, we were somewhat concerned it overwhelmed the rest of the invite, so I deleted a few strands for the final product.

The final product is easy to read, appealing, and was loved by the bride and groom as well.

Revisiting the Invites

Since the wedding was taking place in 2020, the invite had to go through another round of revision. The venue was out of the picture and the ceremony and reception would be taking place at two different sites. This meant I had to change the layout and fiddle with the fonts.

We also made a slight adjustment to the background. We kept the wood but looked to Adobe Stock for a more rustic looking wood background.

The bride and groom ended up liking this better largely because the new background evoked the new venue: a barn restored by the groom’s father.

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They were also concerned about the coronavirus pandemic, so I suggested we add a card that would act as a basic Q & A for any precautions they were taking. The card would include the following and be the most efficient way to get information to any older family members who may not be internet proficient.

• COVID-19 Precautions
• Changes to the venue
• Parking and other notable information
• Directing them to the website

I laid this card out with bulletted lists and incorporated the mason jar from the Save the Dates to tie the suite together. .

Thank You Notes

Around the same time that we were laying out the final invites, I mentioned the need for thank you notes. I designed a complementary postcard that correlated to the shower invite.

Brittany didn’t want it to be too close to the Save the Dates, so we opted not to use any photos on the front, and instead focused on using illustrations and vector graphics. We used a garland that had mason jar lights and used the same fonts as the shower invite to put their initials inside of the jars.

On the front side, we designed it to look like a typical postcard. I made several lines so they could write their own personal messages to their guests. The address field also provided space for them to add a personal touch to this correspondence.

Next to where their signature would go, I added one of their engagement photos.

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While I worked with Brittany on these thank yous we also got a rough plan in place for the wedding thank yous. She wanted to use a wedding photo and do something similar to the Save the Dates in a postcard format. We also found some black and white art of champagne glasses clinking on Adobe Stock that we wanted to save for this particular design.

Within a few days of the wedding, Michael and Brittany received about three dozen teaser images and quickly gravitated to one of them dancing in the barn. I was excited to get to work with these photos and was about to come up with some preliminary designs when Michael texted me confirming that photo was Brittany’s favorite.

The wheels were already turning so I decided to bank on an idea I had. knew that the dark wood from the barn in the photo would easily get with the rustic wood background we’ve been using so I decided to go lighter bringing in the rustic and weathered wood with a frame from Adobe Stock.

I sent a rough design to them for their approval and they loved it. I suggested a few small changes like incorporating a garland, finding a brighter white background, and adding a second line of text, which they agreed with and we got a working draft in progress immediately.

We left most of the back untouched, save for changing the background and updating the names on their return address, and replacing their engagement photo in the signature field with one of their wedding photos.

I let them sit with the final product for a few days before we sent the order through. A couple of weeks later they got a box of their perfect, finished product.

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