Averie's Wedding Invitations

I will probably never be able to thank Averie and her husband enough for giving me the opportunity to design their wedding invitation suite with mostly free reign. Having never worked with printed products before, both she and I learned so much through this process, and I was even inspired to offer my services to other friends as a result.

The process:

We started with a Mural board so we could map out the number of printed pieces she wanted as well as all of the text/information that would go on each piece. I learned about standard paper sizing, ramifications of custom sizing on postage costs, typical wedding stationary bundles, and much more. We decided on a 5x7 primary invitation, a dual-sided, postcard-sized map and details card, and a business card-sized RSVP card.

We also used the Mural board to pool inspiration imagery and align on a vibe for the suite. We discussed things like labeling roads, including a compass rose, adding whimsical details in the land and water portions, etc. Fortunately for me, Averie left a lot of these decisions up to me, but it was still helpful to get her initial opinion.

After I had all of the logistics in place, it was time to start painting. Counterintuitively, this was the section of the process that took me the least amount of time. I first wrote all of the lettering by hand (their names, the chapel name, etc.). Then I used a grid system to copy the landmass and reference photos onto my watercolor paper, built a color palette to keep general consistency across buildings, and got painting. After I had the building outlines ready, it ended up being the most cathartic 2-3 weeks of the project.

After I had all the assets, I had purchased a simple scanner to digitize all the paintings and handwritten lettering. I used Procreate on my iPad to position the lettering and place each building on the landmass. I used Canva to type up the formal invitation and the rest of the non-handwritten lettering for the other pieces. I'm omitting a bit of back and forth with the print shop that required adjusting the files' color mode and bleed area for some of the pieces, but in the end, the whole process ended up taking about 5 months.

We had a packaging party to bundle all of the printed pieces to mail out and getting my own in the mail was maybe the giddiest I've been in a while. This experience was truly a learning process and I've come away with so much more confidence in my abilities - so again, a huge thank you to Averie and her husband for giving me this opportunity. Hit me up with any wedding invitation suite requests :)