Invitations are out- hopefully you've received yours!

 Hello!

Although it has been quite awhile since we've posted to the grassroots wedding blog, we've been busy with multiple wedding projects which you'll soon read about here, including berry picking, jam making, junking and thrifting, and scoring stuff on the "free" section of craigslist.  Before we get to all of that, however, we wanted to share a little bit about the process of creating the wedding invitations.

Here's Chad, stamping and stuffing.  What a champ!

(keep reading....)

We were extremely lucky to work with the lovely and talented Samantha Fisher, a friend and gifted graphic designer who listened to what we had in mind, took our ideas, and improved upon them in a way that we are thrilled with.  Here are the enclosure cards and invitation, which I think turned out beautifully:

You can see my favorite font, Holtschue, is being used prominently on the invitation itself and the RSVP card.  You'll also notice the swallows on the invitation.  We chose the swallow motif because swallows are always a welcome presence in our outdoor adventures.   We see them when we walk Lexi on the trail below our house, flying through the meadow and eating flies and mosquitoes.  On a lake or near a river, they always show up when an insect hatch is about to start, which generally means that fishing is about to get hot, so they've always been a sign of good luck.   I also remember, as a little girl, waiting each April for our resident swallows to return, then marking their arrival on the calendar.

Swallows are also world travelers, traveling each spring from South America to more temperate climes.  Since Chad and I are also aspiring world travelers, we find this aspect inspiring.  Finally, swallows mate for life, making them a fitting symbol of enduring love.  Though they travel long distances, and can be quite independent from their mate, swallows always find their way back home.

Once we had an invitation design, we extracted our address in a fun font and turned it into a rubber stamp, so that instead of hand-writing return addresses or ordering labels, we could simply stamp our address on the envelope.  This way, we can also use the stamp for years to come for return addresses.  

The stamps were very affordable and came from www.rubberstamps.net .  We also made two stamps out of the swallow motif, which we used for decorating envelopes and that we plan to use to decorate all of our wedding paper goods.  Again, a green, reusable item.  And made very well.

We used one of them to decorate the back of the envelope, so the result was an invitation suite covered in swallows.  It looks like they're nearly about to fly off the page, sweet!

You'll notice that we included a belly band (the yellow strip holding everything together).  We did this to eliminate the need for an interior envelope, thus saving paper/ being more green.  We also used an RSVP postcard rather than an envelope/ card, again saving paper. 

All in all, this was a very fun project and did a great job of setting the tone we hope the rest of the event will have.  Great job Sam (and special thanks to Chad for doing a ton of work to get these in the mail).