Tuesday Tip - Wedding Invitations

Our wedding suite

Wedding Invitations is the part of the process I have been most excited for! Fast forward to yesterday, I learned that the mailbox I dropped the invitations into was vandalized with all the mail being taken out of it. We’re 3.5 months out from our destination wedding & have to quickly scramble to figure out what we do next…

With this top of mind, my Tuesday Tip is a breakdown of Wedding Invitation Suites in hopes that this helps you!

Timing: You will hear a million different average timelines depending on your sources. Think about how much notice you would want and use that. Our wedding is a destination and we knew we wanted to send everything early to give people plenty of notice. Our wedding is in February, requires travel for most quests and we treated it like someone would be planning a mini vacation. Our Save the Dates were very early (9-10 months notice) & our wedding Invitation needed to beat the holiday rush (4 months notice).

• Sending it early! We had a huge snafu and circumstance happen that our wedding planner had never heard of! Because we sent them so far in advance we can still meet the 3 month mark.

Design: Your design will be greatly dependent on what you are comfortable spending on an invite. For us, I looked at the invitation suite as commissioning art work we could later frame around our house. My sister had hired an artist for her wedding & it was my favorite keepsake. When it came time to plan mine I knew I wanted to hire an artist to create custom artwork. Other couples opt for more formal (letter pressed) or more casual (printed templates or e-vites). The look and feel was extremely important to me.

Expected Costs: These will vary greatly based on what type of design you select & who you use. When you are working with an artist the majority of the cost is for their time designing your suite & the art. This means the cost will be higher.

• Designed Custom Invitation Suite: $4,000-$10,000

• Custom Invitation Suite (not original artwork): $2,000-$5,000

• Pre-Canned Design (Zola, theKnot etc): Under $1,000

• Evite: Under $500

How to Choose: If the cost doesn’t scare you & you want to take the Designed Invitation Suite route, start browsing styles that you liked on Instagram. What I did was followed most of the luxury wedding planners in the area to see who they were working with. Have a call with the designer, review timelines & don’t cut corners in the design process. We for instance, didn’t get a mood board & our first drafts didn’t reflect what I wanted. My designer was nice about it, but had we taken the time to do it right from the start it would have been easier.

Mailing Your Invitation Suite: We had the stationer stuff our Wedding Save the Dates and she was adamant about Hand Stamping them. When I went to the post office to Mail the Wedding Invites, the guy told me to save time just put them in the Mailbox, they all need to be run through the machine so there is no difference. Trust me… Hand Stamping takes more time but you should definitely not drop them in a mailbox. You want to Hand Stamp them at the post office to ensure they get delivered neatly to their destination.

Here are some of my favorites, which ones do you like?

Have a Great Week!

Source: Grace Farm

Did you have a lovely weekend? I sure did. With Veteran’s Day off, an unexpected 3 day weekend ended up being exactly what was needed! Overall - it was perfect.

Weekend Recap:

Friday I ended up booking a last minute hair appointment (I see Stella at Peter’s Place for an easy gloss), which obviously meant I couldn’t waste a good blow out. We’re both keeping dining out to a minimum with our upcoming wedding so we agreed to a drink & an app. We went here to get an experience that was wonderfully reminiscent of New York and is a great stop for something slightly elevated, but still casual enough. After that we stayed in and watched Something’s Gotta Give (I mean loved it is an understatement).

Saturday Dress shopping was surprisingly easy! My Mom found her dress for my wedding locally at this adorable boutique Nina Raynor in Delray Beach. It was so tough to figure out where to go that I’m going to definitely list where we went. The cool thing about Nina Raynor is that once you buy a gown, they don’t sell it again. This ensures that you don’t show up to an event (gala / wedding) in the same outfit as someone else. After spending a small fortune, this is absolutely the advantage of shopping local.

On Sunday’s Matthew and I have weekly (get shit done) meetings where we go through mail & most recently we do our wedding budget / planning. Luckily we went through final design selections last week and now we’re moving on to the flow & feel of the wedding. We planned our ceremony & what we want it to feel like - it’s so soon! We are not having a religious ceremony so there is something amazing about getting to choose every detail. I love what we came up with.

Have a Great Week…

Can you believe we’re just over a week away from Thanksgiving? Really that’s just a countdown to putting up a Christmas tree. I love a real tree, but I really want a second one for the other living room.

Before the holiday’s I’m focused on keeping it tight…Heading to Montana Method in a few to get a good sweat in & then staying on plan with my health coach to make sure I’m on target for the wedding! I can’t recommend her enough - she’s no nonsense in the best way!

Plans for the Weekend

After not sleeping much the night before, yesterday ended up being the coziest rainy day. It was liberating not having any pressure to go anywhere & felt perfectly acceptable to spend the evening on the couch. In Florida where most days (especially this time of year) are beautiful, you don’t always have the luxury of a relaxing fall day. I’m so glad I was able to slow down, which is the general theme for this weekend.

On Saturday my mom & I will be searching for the perfect Mother of the Bride Dress for my wedding. We did a first pass last week at Bal Harbour & Aventura Mall, but nothing really stood out. This weekend we’re heading to smaller boutiques. Wish us luck!

Matthew & I are trying a new thing on Sunday’s where we spend a few hours looking at our finances and crossing things off our list for the wedding. We’re nearing the end of the planning process & I cannot wait for it to just be here already. P.S. If you think you might be in wedding planning mode soon, you’ll want to read this.

I’m going to be listening to a lot of this playlist, which is giving Nancy Meyer’s movie energy. I like that it perfectly fits the transition into they holiday’s, but isn’t holiday yet. What are you listening to?

Speaking of Nancy, the timeless design in her movies have been sending me down a Google & Pinterest rabbit hole. Is this kitchen not goals? The way she get’s her spaces to match the characters in her films is incredible. It has me thinking, does the design in my house match my character? Are there things I would change to make it more embody mine & Matthew’s character? Anyway’s I’ll be putting her movies somewhere on the agenda this weekend.

Enjoy the weekend!

xx