:: ultra-eco wedding invitations ::
so the collection is all up, and now it's up to me to get the word out. the wedding market is saturated (to say the least) but i feel good about my new line and i think it'll do well if only i can get eyes on it. (so spread the word! tell your friends!)
why the emphasis on weddings of late? why have i worked so hard on this collection? well...
having returned home from a very strange wine and cheese event at a possibly stranger aquarium shop in the basement of a somewhat sketchy building, with an entire glass of red wine spilled down the front of my (favorite white) shirt by yours truly (trying to hold the plastic cup of wine while photographing some beautiful anemones was, i’ll admit, ill-advised), i had some revelations.
first: i can’t seem to turn off the inspiration. it’s everywhere. i need to capture it, channel it, and show it off.
second: i really need to develop some new wedding designs.
um, yeah. left field much? but rest assured: there’s a connection.
as i sat on the couch that friday night, chatting with my mother-in-law, who had been watching the kiddies while my husband and i went to the aforementioned bizarre fish-related mixer, we somehow got talking about how i’d become facebook friends with some of my wedding clients and how i had to get upstairs to the attic to finish up their programs and send them off in the morning and how even i was getting nervous-excited about their big event in a couple of weeks.
i’m kind of shy and sort of introverted, but man do i love making connections through my work. i love the emails i get when their stuff arrives – “they’re even more amazing than i could have hoped,” reads one recent note i received – and the times they come back with stranger and stranger requests – “you did such a great job with my stationery. do you ever make canning jar labels?”
but mostly i just really love to see all the personality that goes into weddings.
i myself was not your typical bride. oh, i blushed alright – people watching me and all. but i didn’t gush. i didn’t cry. i didn’t wear white.
after we got engaged (when brian proposed out of the blue as we walked to our crooked, crumbling columbus apartment one night, i had to double check, “are you asking?” just in case i had somehow misunderstood), our dear friends informed us, “your wedding is not about you. it’s about your families.”
for the next few months, i wasn’t very into planning the wedding. i didn’t really want to talk about it. occasionally i worried that that was a bad sign: that i must not really want to get married.
and then i realized: i did want to get married. my way. (and of course by my way i mean our way. of course.) my take on the whole thing was this: if we make it completely about us, if we make this wedding exactly what we want it to be and nothing else, then it will start to be about our families in a more complete way, and our families will love it all the more for that.
so we planned. we invited. we executed.
twenty-nine guests. one back yard for the reception and a nice restaurant for dinner. a ceremony we wrote ourselves, officiated by a close friend (we actually had to go get married privately in the morning with a judge so that the whole thing would be real). three gorgeous cakes and table centerpieces filled with green apples. and then a month later a giant (catered) picnic with hotdogs and hamburgers and all the salt potatoes we could eat, attended by all of our extended families, all of our friends from through the years. we got the best of both worlds and everything we wanted. we got the low-pressure wedding day and the high-impact celebration.
people still talk about how perfect it all was. how us.
my wedding collection is all about that. it’s all about you. it’s one part sugar and one part sass. it’s silly and serious and meaningful and just the tiniest bit irreverent. it’s about two real people making one real(ly big) commitment. it’s about showing off your personality and the personality of your union. it’s about starting wedded life with a bang. it’s about wearing a short dress if what you want to do is wear a short dress, or asking your guests to bring their own favorite songs to the reception for a truly eclectic (and possibly hilarious) play list.
it’s about details. it’s about connections. it’s about choosing invitations that can change things – how you feel about weddings, maybe, or how you think about the word “tradition.”
in a way this wedding collection is about juxtaposition. it’s about designs that look amazing at first glance but also invite further perusal. it’s about style and substance. it’s about being eco-friendly without (necessarily) hugging a tree. it’s about you and your guests. it’s about well-chosen fonts and small, organic details. it’s about invitations that are printed on professional quality papers with professional quality, non-water-soluble inks by the person you’re buying them from. it’s about knowing that two careful hands (and two discerning eyes) took the time to create your wedding suite for you.
i hope you love it as much as i do.
and of course there are some extra special things to note:
- these wedding invitations are available on papers that are either 100% recycled post-consumer waste or 100% cotton (tree-free). all of my envelopes are at least 30% post-consumer waste.
- all of the invitation designs are available in a postcard form printed on 100% cotton paper with water-insoluble inks (no running should they get rained on in your mailbox) – an elegant and supremely eco-friendly option for anyone looking for some major wow factor.
- i design, print, cut, and assemble all of my paper goods by hand. i recently decided not to outsource any of my printing in an effort to save waste (no print minimums, less overprinting, more control over how much paper is discarded as waste). and because i really like the making part.
