things are better with a parrott: Homegrown Wedding Invitations

Hello! Today I am so excited to share our invitations. When I began designing our invitations I started with the elements I wanted to include: calligraphy, illustrations of birds, flowers, a custom map of Pineland Farms {where our wedding took place}, & vintage stamps. I wanted the invitations to have a similar feel as our save the dates, but a distinctly different design. I did this by using the same color palette, the beautiful calligraphy of Grace Edmands, the same paper, & similar vintage stamps while introducing custom illustrations of birds & farm animals by my sister-in-law, Debra Bianculli & floral imagery.

Rich & I really wanted to incorporate a swallow {my favorite} & a red-tailed hawk {Rich's favorite}. They are an unlikely duo, being predator & prey, so I made sure they were the same size on the paper band. I also put our respective birds by our names. Deb's line drawings were perfect!

The suite included the invitation, RSVP postcard, & a folded card which included a custom map of the farm, a list of the weekend's events, & things do on the farm, a map of directions to the farm, a paper band to hold it all together, & hand-lined envelopes.

I put an enormous amount of effort into the custom map of the farm. I had the idea of a map with Deb's illustrations in my head for nearly a year before I put it on paper. Pineland is an amazing place & I wanted to make sure our guests who were staying for the weekend took the opportunity to explore, & I wanted it to be a keepsake of the day. I loved the little cows, chicken, & horse.

Grace calligraphed all of our envelopes with white ink on sage green envelopes. The calligraphy was so, so beautiful, & I wanted to keep them all! I had stamps with state birds & flowers & I spent hours curating the stamps & matching them to the recipients. We had guests from all over the U.S. so many guests had their own state bird & flower stamp. If they did not get their own, then they had a stamp that had some sort of significance to them {one couple received the Iowa stamp because they met there, another had Rhode Island because she went to school there, & so on}. I obsess over details like this & I loved the result. After all that effort I made sure to have our envelopes hand-canceled at the Post Office. They happily obliged & they all arrived in quite pristine condition. {As a side note, I am at the P.O. at least 2 -3 times a week. They know me. If you do not frequent the P.O. you may need to sweet-talk the P.O. worker to hand-cancel your envelopes. Bake them some cookies & be sure to tell them they are your wedding invitations!}

So. Was I my own worst client? In a word: Yes! I was demanding. I kept changing my mind. I made last minute decisions. I made myself reorder some plates because I was not happy with the quality of printing. I made an 11th hour decision to line the envelopes. I made my mother & brother-in-law help me attach stamps to the RSVPs. I made Rich seal all of the envelopes because I was taking to long! :: sigh :: But it was all worth it!

Everything was letterpress printed by me on 140lb cotton paper in antique white with pink, sage green, & chocolate brown inks. The envelopes were sage green & lined with kraft brown paper. The paper bands were printed on kraft brown paper as well.

{All images by Fat Orange Cat Studio except the two of the map, by me}