Invitations by Impress Prints

First of all, invitations were not one of our top needs to splurge on during our wedding planning. As most people do (including myself - I am guilty as charged), invites are either lost, misplaced or not even opened. Days/Weeks before the event (based on our previous experiences), people will text, call or even post on your facebook wall asking about the event details despite the fact that you have personally handed them the invitations already. =) I am okay with it (I think it's how we Filipinos are), it's just that in our case we think the cardstock invites are just for formality sakes. But I do am aware that some people keep them as a souvenir and I mean "some". =)

So no splurging. We have the idea of just having a simple invitation. Not too elegant nor too classy. We don't want our wedding to be stiff and too formal. At first we have no preference on designs and layouts, as in, we really almost not talk about it. Until I saw a design layout that will truly depict our invitation as "us". It is a little simple, kid-like but the essence of showing what we really are - not boring, not typical, but fun and child at heart will all be there. Also, how we met and how our relationship nourished is an open book to friends and family so we don't mind sharing them to the rest of the world of how everything went through with us before the "big day" itself.

We then look for the affordable yet quality-driven printing company who can accommodate our super-duper customized wedding invites. TIP: Most "known" invitation printing companies only present you with templated invites and minor to major customizations will cost you an additional much from the what-they-say "affordable" standard invite set. After numerous expos, web research and referrals, we then came across Ms. Jennifer of Impress Prints by Calliope Printing. They acknowledge that they can create our super-duper customized invites without extra charges from the standard price of the total invite set. It was really a great deal! So we signed with them.

What I am proud of myself doing is I personally made the draft that I want for our invite. I just used MS Word and used its comments power to instruct the designer of what to do. I end up submitting this fully detailed document to start it of:

After submitting this document, the layout that we had in mind was made just after a short 5 days. I think my OC detailing helped explain every bit of the invitation so the layout specialist didn't have a hard time contemplating on what we want. Just 2-3 minor word revisions we were able to see the Final Invitation Set! Drum Roll Please...

See I told you it would be far from being conventional. Quirky, fun and lively. That's what we want our wedding to be. :) This is a 6 x 18 vertical accordion type invite with Main card, Entourage Card, Parchment Envies and Seals.

And since I'm a DIY fan. We've personally made these RSVP, Attire, Map cards & Labels:

I did the designs, layouts, map, wordings and printing. Momon does the approval (haha!) and the cutting. (Thanks to our Ninang Jay who made us borrow her paper cutter, it really produced neat cuts!) :)