The Invitations

lullafly — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:09:58 +0000

I knew right off the bat that I would be designing our invitation suite. I also knew these invites had to follow very specific guidelines set by yours truly. They had to be colorful. They had to include illustrations. They had to reflect our wedding style. And most importantly, they had to be an accurate representation of Mr. Star Wars and I as a couple and as individuals. (This is beginning to sound like a repeat of the save-the-dates, isn’t it?)

That last one is a lot of pressure to put on yourself. I’ve faced this challenge as an illustrator many times before as I struggled to develop an artistic style in college that reflected my “voice”, and I was about to face it again with our wedding invitations.

They had to be us, and man is hard to pin us down into a single design suite. The pressure was almost too much, so once again I procrastinated. A lot. I procrastinated by scouring the internet for inspiration, and just when I thought I found some elements that would be my inspirational focal point, I found another invitation suite that ran in the opposite direction (and was just as cool).

I finally had to gather all my favorite sources of inspiration in front of me and then just sit down and start drawing. I gave myself a pep talk about how there’s no way anyone can create something that embodies everything about us as individuals, so I focused on a starting element and things slowly evolved. Before I knew it, I had a general, consistent theme that just felt right. And despite all my procrastination, I started early enough so that I could pick away at all the little details until I had something I was really proud of. There were many neat elements and ideas that I had to sadly cast aside, but I realized that the illustrations needed to be the focal point and anything else was an unnecessary distraction.

So, without further ado, here are the Bunting wedding invitations!

personal photo

They are printed digitally on a lovely linen paper. I bought our envelopes from Paperandmore.com, which carried the perfect coordinating color and proved to be cheaper than Papersource.com. The carribbean blue baker’s twine used to tie it all together is from Etsy.

You want to know a secret little detail? In addition to the unicorns at the bottom of the main invitation, I added in other little unicorns and TIE-fighters (from Star Wars) among the flowers. See if you can find them all:

personal photo

So there you have it. Our wedding invitations, complete with unicorns and spaceships. Yeah, that’s just how we roll.

Did anyone else struggle with finding an invitation suite that reflected both of you as individuals?

We Wed » invites

The Invitations