Do you really need a theme for your wedding? I don't know, I think it is all up to the couple. We knew we didn't want the typical colombian wedding, or the typical invitations. We want something different, where our personalities and story could be reflected, without going broke.
We set a budget and a date. After that we started to work on our guests list. First we said 50 people, but this had to be reconsidered and went up to 60, us included. This was easy and perfect while I was still in Germany, but that's a story for another blog.
Today I want to write just about our invitations. Since ours will be a destination wedding, we looked up online for some inspiration. There were Planes tickets and Passports invites. We really liked the passports invitations, but we were not willing to pay what they cost, plus we wanted to make our own and have our now design. We discussed some ideas and then my fiancé started to work on the cover. Now that they are finished it looks easy, but this sure was not as easy as it looks. Once the cover was ready, we started to find places and alternatives to print them. We went to places in Hameln and Hannover, the cheapest offer for 50 covers was 300 euros. We were like: no way!. It was just the cover, the booklet was not included because we haven't worked on it yet, plus we planned on printing it at home.
It sure was discouraging, but we didn't give up. We tried to find a solution online and we did! We found this place to print our personalized invitations, select the tick paper we wanted for it and with the gold-like touch. Just like in a real passport. 50 pieces, all for 80 euros, shipping included. Isn't that awesome? Never give up!
The covers. They turned out beautiful and exactly how we imagined them.
While we waited for the covers to arrive, my fiancé worked on the booklet. He also did an awesome job with it. He turned images into stamps, he created a background for the booklets, to make it look like real passports and to be able to use white normal paper, that way we didn't need to buy any special paper for it. The background's pattern is perfect and we saved on some paper.
Some of the stamps my SO created out of regular images. There you can also see the booklet's background.
The right order of the booklet can't be seen here. Once you open it, you find the formal invitation, with a nice short quote on top. You turn the page and get a passport like info sheet with the most important info and a picture of us. Next page is a proper description and address of our wedding venue. Next page is a map, with directions to find the place - next page RSPV. We created an email account for this and we ask people to confirm by email before the 9th of June. There at the bottom is the word "cupo", which is the strategy we used to let people know for how many people is the invitation for. Next page is just general information about the city the wedding will be at, along with a picture my So took in '12, of a beautiful beach with light blue water and white sand, which is not far from where we will be. Just to get them more excited
Being it a destination wedding, the passports invites fit to our theme and give us room to share some important info, besides the basic info you include in a wedding invitation. No need to set up a wedding website or stuff like that. There are two versions of our invites: one in german, which has more information than the spanish ones: Accommodation, Visas, Currency, Vaccines and so on. The spanish ones at first sight could not make sense -because most of my guests won't need a passport to travel to our wedding destination- but once they are there, they will understand :-)
They are now ready to be delivered. My SO sent his, some weeks ago. I am a little behind, but it is Ok. It was important for my SO to send his first because his guests needed more time to decide, than mine. The investment they have to make is bigger, in both time and money. I can't wait to deliver all my invites. I am so proud of my SO, he did an amazing job, WE did an amazing job. We worked together on this -from discussing ideas, to buying the envelops, to printing, to putting them together from a distance,etc- and it is satisfying. We sure make a wonderful team. I miss him and can't wait for the big day to arrive!
@Snow: you can find the online store where we got them printed under: online-druck.biz We used their printing services to print just the covers. My SO prepared the file with all the specifications and sent it ready to print. I recommend them. They were fast to ship and the quality is outstanding.
We were going to go for train tickets and I still plan on doing that if/when we get to have a big-ish party. (My SO majors in railway systems engineering and while long distance we travelled by plane and train equally) .