Growing up, our mom would help with the occasional wedding and with six girls in the house, there was a lot of weddings to plan for and time for us to imagine what our dream wedding would be like. Leslie is the biggest culprit; she's been married for more than two years, but she still looks up wedding ideas on Pinterest and receives wedding magazines for her birthday.
The two of us still send many emails back and forth outlining what kind of wedding dresses we love, bridal hair, invitations, decorations, the whole shebang! We enjoy critiquing and planning for my wedding day (I'm almost done-all I need is the groom :) ) Being the last kid of nine siblings to get married can be kind of rough, but let's be honest, they saved the best for last.
Here is my family in March when my little sister Mary got married. Leslie's husband was out of town and I'm right next to her holding my nephew.
As I mentioned above, my sister and I have always been excited when it comes to weddings. There are times when all 6 of my sisters would email and comment about a particular wedding dress or reception decor. When Mary got engaged, I went to work trying to design shower invitations.
We started with Microsoft Word. I knew I needed something different though; when you want to print invitations, one will see you can't get the best resolution with .doc or .docx, so I downloaded the trial of Adobe Photoshop. It was a big time of trial and error-Google was my best friend when I had to figure out how to do something. I made several invitation ideas and I ended up making an invitation from some we saw online. Minted. com is a treasure trove of ideas and simply awesome. Working night shifts as a nurse, I would stay up the night before to prepare and just design and learn new things.
Here is my sister's invite:
Front
Back
I was learning and now can definitely see things I can improve on, but it was my first real one. I have learned quickly how to use the tools to smooth out the process, but alas, my trial was coming to an end. So that is when I downloaded GIMP, and it has really worked for me. You can download it for free here. With the tutorials online and by using Google quite a bit, I'm really starting to get faster and more efficient. And I am also LOVING it!
Leslie has this amazing eye and she can tell me when something looks good or not. She is not afraid to be honest, so it works out well. I can be designing and working on invitations and hours will fly by. That's when we decided since we spend so much time doing it, we might as well help others in the process.
When my brother-in-law's sister got engaged, she asked us to make her invitations. We had so much fun designing and figuring out what the bride and groom wanted. It's an amazing thing to have them tell you exactly what they want, and then you can customizing it to their exact specifications. The possibilities are endless and we work hard at bringing to life whatever you have in mind for an invite.
Here is one of their first designs, names changed.
Here is a back I designed. You can put in monogram, an image or just keep it blank.
One of the best things about doing invitations is that there is a site that one is able to print out the invitations at very reasonable prices. It is so fun to see people get excited about a customized invitation and not have to break the bank. That's why my sister and I want to help design invitations and print them at an affordable cost. That way you can splurge on your photographer or venue, but still get classy, professional invitations. We are adding more designs to the site and will include pricing.
Oh, and before you think all we can do is wedding invites, we also can do: graduation and birth announcements, customized and personal decorative posters, Christmas cards, anything your heart desires. Just email us and ask.
Designed this for my dad and his dad who served in the Marines. God bless the USA.
