When the time came to start thinking about and sourcing my wedding stationary, I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted but was having trouble forming a tangible explanation. Although I have a fair bit of experience with graphic design - I didn't want to put that added stress on me to DIY coming up to the wedding - cue etsy!
Etsy, in my opinion, is every brides dream website for all things wedding. It is my constant source for inspiration and guidance.
After just a few hours of browsing stores and doing a few searches. I had narrowed down to a few select stores/designers. After contacting them for quotes and getting an idea of what they did - I decided that Krissy at New Borrowed and Blue would be the perfect fit for me*. She was very flexible with design, really quick with communication and very affordable. We ended up doing our save-the-dates, invitations & helped my sister organised my bridal shower invitations with her too.
Save the Dates
We posted our save the dates about six months before the wedding, I know not all couples feel the need to do these but since we live away from 90% of our guests, we thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know when it would be so they could know to ... well ... save the date.
I ended up getting a PDF printable which was the easiest and most affordable option for us (since the Etsy seller is located in the US postage is just crazy to Australia). I chose the first printing company I found in town and they printed a bunch of copies. I was kinda disappointed in the quality. It wasn't as awesome as I expected but they did the job. Using postcards was very economical too - not only were they fun and simple but they saved cost because they didn't require envelopes.
To look at the full design (I didn't want to reveal my address/other private information) visit the listing on Etsy.
Invitations
I was very indecisive on how to do the invitations. In the end.. I decided to get pdf printable files for these too from the same etsy designer and then sourced a much better local dedicated wedding invitation printer. I highly recommend doing this because they turned out absolutely perfect - they were very knowledgable about paper selection and gave me great advice for sizing and envelopes etc.
If you have a look at the listing for this invitation you can see it is a 3 fold invitation with 2 sections for extra information. We decided on very basic wording (basically the same as the etsy listing) Then we chose to have a custom response postcard.
Then began arduous task of addressing and stamping 50+ invitations. It took me the entire Saturday morning to do this but I am so glad it is completed. All I need to do is pop them in the mail and wait for the responses to come back. With each wedding planning milestone that passes - it becomes more and more of a realisation that our wedding is coming up! I am getting very nervous but also very excited for our big day!
*Just in case anyone is wondering... I am not advertising for this Etsy seller - I am simply sharing my experience for our wedding stationary, providing my own personal advise and opinions :)
