Playing with Paper

The Professor has been taking care of almost all the wedding plans, except for the tasks that I wanted to manage (by “manage” I mean, of course, “make more complicated than need be by considering every possibility under the sun then collapsing under the pressure of infinite decisions”).
I took on selecting and sending the invitations. We looked through a bunch of catalogs and online, and the ones I liked best were a gazillion dollars and still not exactly what I had in mind. It didn’t help that the Professor and I had different taste too. Although we agreed NOT to get these.
Well, it just so happens that I work in publishing. With designers. Who make paper beautiful. So I asked Erin Kirk New if she would consider creating our invitations for a fee, and she very kindly offered to do so as a gift. Talented and generous. We had lunch and I showed her samples of invitations that the Professor and I liked. The look I was fixed on was a blue or green card with the white or ivory of the paper showing through for the text and for a botanical silhouette (like this one, in light blue).
There are a couple of tricks to get invitations printed like that. For one, the printer has to be able to allow “bleeds,” so the color can go smoothly off the edge of the paper (a nontechnical and perhaps noncorrect description). You also have to have a particular type of printing and ink. All of which are possible but cost more than I was interested in spending. I talked to friends and called a few local printers but ultimately decided to go with Bel-Jean, largely on the recommendation of my colleague Kathi Morgan, and she was right. Gary and his crew have been fantastic. They are able to do bleeds, but the inexpensive printing has a bit of a sheen to it, so it wouldn’t work with my original vision. So Erin came up with this beautiful solution.

(Yes, the Professor’s real name finally appeared on this blog. No real reason not to mention it, except that I like referring to him as the Professor.)
Erin modified a photograph of Queen Anne’s Lace to create a silhouette, then added a rule and matched it with lovely fonts and whatever other magic takes place. She set up the PDFs for the printer and Bel-Jean printed and cut them, and they are so very lovely. And unique. And WOW you can get a much better deal this way.
Bel-Jean can also print addresses on the large envelopes (though not the small reply cards), so that was a convenience too, at least for the addresses that I was organized enough to get to them.
Erin also had a lot of other wonderful and creative ideas for invitations. One that I loved was her stamp idea: come up with a PDF of a design or picture, then have a rubber stamp made of it. Then stamp by hand each invitation. That way you could get color without the expense of printing in color, use the stamp on any other variety of stationery and gift items, give each invitation a special, handmade look, and have a memento to keep. Brilliant! I am really going to miss working with her and the other designers at the press, all so gifted.
So now the invitations are out, and I’m just sorry we couldn’t send them to more people. It’s a small wedding, and I wasn’t able to invite a lot of friends, my dear friends at work, or even a good bit of my very large and extended family. Maybe we can host lots of smaller parties after we get settled in our new home so we can celebrate with everyone eventually. A life of parties. Sounds pretty wonderful. Especially since that means I’ll get to keep playing with invitations.