Jul 10, 202010 min read

Save the Date, Invitation Suite & More

Updated: Jul 23, 2020

There are key things you need to execute your "Save the Dates", official wedding invitations and last any additional papered goods you may have i.e. ceremony programs, menu's, table numbers etc.

If you just got engaged, I advise you to first check out my " TOP 5 POST ENGAGEMENT" list. The five things I mention are priority to figuring out what you need: number of guests, locations, times etc.... go to the post if you haven't done so already.

If you haven't seen our New Orleans Wedding as a whole yet, check out our previous blog post HERE.

I'm all about the vibe, the details and everything of those details having a purpose that connects to the celebration. I love Pinterest, it is your friend if you use it as a guide to explain the tone of what you are going for to your vendors. I have a method to my madness when organizing my events, you can see what I mean by [CLICKING HERE]. So with each section of the wedding, of course I had one for invitations. A mood board within a wedding mood board makes for great references as you visit your vendors and see what materials they have on hand and matching, in this case, fonts, textures & color of paper, ribbon and wax seals.

Here's our Go-To Checklist you need to have done before you can execute your papered goods of your wedding (also useful for any special event coming up):

SAVE-THE-DATES |

Official Date Picked & Confirmed.
Location of Venues Confirmed - The date you picked may change based on the locations availability. Ceremony & Reception deposits are in/or paid for.
Wedding Website - A great way to direct traffic and lead your guests to more information, especially helpful for destination weddings. Which means that will need to get done BEFORE all of the Save-The-Dates get sent out.
Wedding Website Password - Remember that passwords are case sensitive. I made mine all caps, but I think it's best to leave them lower cased as people still weren't sure and texting me left and right, lol.
List of Guests - Be prepared to potentially print an additional stack as you will realize you may have forgotten a few.
Detailed Reference Photos- Color Scheme, Fonts, Added Flair ideas.
Addresses - Organize by Family, Friends, Work Friends.
Address Labels - Organize by Family, Friends, Work Friends. Decide if you are printing labels or handwritten.
Stamps -I created my own and uploaded them on Zola.com , you will want to over order and anything you have left over, just use for your thank you cards. Order as soon as you can. You can purchase our New Orleans Romance Stamp Bundle HERE.

FORMAL INVITES | (everything up above but now more details)

Official Ceremony & Reception Dates, Location & Time. A full itinerary for your guests is best!
R.S.V.P. Reply Cards - This is where you will decide to give them an option of either fish or meat or veg., followed by allergies. However we decided to ask as a whole "What are your dietary restrictions?". That way less verbiage, cleaner cards!
Detailed Reference Photos- Color Scheme, Fonts, Added Flair ideas.
Addresses - Organize by Family, Friends, Work Friends
Address Labels - Organize by Family, Friends, Work Friends. Decide if you are printing labels or handwritten.
Stamps - I created my own on Zola.com , you will want to over order and anything you have left over, just use for your thank you cards. Order as soon as you can.

MENUS & SEATING CHART DISPLAY or DISPLAY NAME & Table # CARDS

Official Attending Guest List- They RSVP's and they said yes.
Table Chart of all the tables and which guests are sitting where- If this is a sit down, you will want to put them in an assigned table, sometimes even chair if the person may have a allergy problem and you want the server to get it right on their dish. Regardless, make a side list for the servers of those with dietary restrictions as a precaution.
Display Chart List & Table Numbers Count - the count depends on your official assigned tables.
Detailed Reference Photos- Color Scheme, Fonts, Added Flair ideas.

CEREMONY PROGRAM

This one is tricky as it is optional and extra costs. However the people that like keeping a memory of things, it's made for them and I've enjoyed looking back on the day with these tangible items.
Know every single person, song and musician present an the order of each moment. Get that done as early as you can!

So here's my breakdown of how I came to each item and the results for our big day!

SAVE THE DATE & INVITATION SWEET

Now I know the first thought to a fall wedding is dark rich colors but for me I'm more about the soft romance in a vintage setting. Even as Halloween obsessed crazy lady, I still wanted to keep this softness to the wedding. The drama would come from the flowers of the deep marsala toned roses, scabiosas and peonies. Everything else would glisten from candlelight and soft beading in the linens and dress.

My favorite Disney movie of all time is Cinderella (however Princess & The Frog is a close second). I loved the the white carriage with the antique gold finishes and the little sparkle and blurs you see in her dress and castle. The color scheme of those moments with the prince have always stuck with me and my all time favorite Disney song " So this is Love...", the seen where her and the Prince are by the fountain. So our amazing wedding planner Sari Sosa, recommended Adriana Gutierrez owner of GG Press. She would be handling all the printing for the save the dates, formal invitations and the dinner menu's.

Since this is a destination wedding and in a city with a lot of culture, history and so on. I did feel we needed to honor it from the start. When we planned the over all concept of the invitations and I knew I wanted a map with NoLa icons and symbols. I've always loved when destinations have used maps of the cities and thought the "Save The Dates" would be an opportunity to showcase that. Why you ask?

It's the first thing your guests see.
It automatically says "Hi, pack your bags we're taking a mini vacay."
A quick glimpse on what is in store.

We featured music notes, iconic places of The French Quarter and where we'l be visiting, champagne, some crawfish, Mardi Gras beads, masks and so on. A blend of party but also elegance with the color palette and antique gold press. Never had to mention any location as it was already present with the map!

We also only included Our Names, the dates: "October 31st- Nov. 2nd" and wedding website and password. Little verbiage so the map would stand out and the website would be of great help. Even though everyone was getting the Save-The-Dates 11 months out, ours was a destination wedding and I wanted to give my guests time to prepare, save money, arrange sitters etc. I even gave my friends attending the wedding website a month after I got engaged. It was a way for me to keep everyone informed as the details evolved. It also gave me peace that I did my part in getting these time frames out to me guests, so I know I didn't add stress to them if it was short notice.

For the SAVE-THE-DATES we had the addresses printed on the envelopes by Adri. She did a wonderful job of pre-filling them so all we had to do was seal and stamp. I searched a while on Zola for the perfect stamp... the first go on these I just found what looked best against the gray envelopes that the Save-The-Dates went in. There was a subtle cream magnolia that you could add your initials too and would be a matching and beautiful contrast to the gray envelope.

Check out the final results below * note that the envelope was grey for our guests but this beautiful picture was taken later by: Lara Rios Photography

When it came to the formal invitations, Adri had this beautiful handmade Italian paper that was stunning and delicate but handled letterpress really well and displayed the antique gold accents beautifully, especial the Fleur De Lis. I was worried I would get judged with my monochromatic-ish vibes, but Adri had all the colors and material samples available to put in front of us (mom, Sari and I). What brought it all together was the antique gold inner lining of the grey envelope #obsessed ... Look Below:

After our meeting, Adri of GGPress sent out a digital plan of what our papered everything would look like. A tweak here and there and proofing of punctuation as we added a little french to the invites because heellloooo, NoLa. The earlier you can make these decisions the better so she can order the materials. The handmade paper is what we waited for really, everything else was pretty much readily available.

While that was happening we had a couple more things to do:

Hand Addressed Envelopes- I love script and the new fluid ways on traditional calligraphy. The best in town is Invitations by Leston. He's been in the wedding industry for years!!! You can see a short video of how effortless he is with his hand in our bridal highlight! He would handwrite the addresses and then inside there was an additional grey envelope he had addressed with the guest names.

MORE STAMPS- So back to Zola.com because these babies are going to need more than one stamp. We needed a solid $1.50 an envelope. I never thought a little sticker could be so heavy. The one thing you can play with is the amount each stamp is worth and to give more of the vintage flair, I played with putting multiple stamps. It looked complete that way, I made a total of three styles! You can purchase our additional New Orleans Romance Stamps HERE.

You can see in the images below:

The most stressful thing in my opinion when it comes to invitations is having the addresses, making sure the punctuation and grammar is in on point and setting a timeline for yourself. My sister being the Maid of Honor and amazing at organizing addresses and collecting data made a huge difference. Thanks Sis! The timeline of getting these done worked out, but it always feels like it's not going to lol. Just make hard non negotiable timelines to get these guys out of the way. The final product is just breathtaking making all that anxiety worth it lol.

Check out the image below, photo by: Lara Rios Photography

MENU, SEATING CHART, TABLE LINENS

Although the menu and the prints of the seating chart 'n table numbers were from a different vendor, I kept those colors uniformed and vintage notes relative. I always carried my samples and pictures with me!

Adri continued her magic with the menu's using the wax seal, vellum and slightly warmer tones on font instead of the greys since they would now lay on the deep colored linens and saturated florals. One thing I at first didn't think was needed was having names of each guest on the menus, but my Mother really pushed for it lol, make mamma happy y'all. It was a Black Tie wedding after all and it really was a personal touch for the guests. Even one of my friends came up to me on the dance floor to chat about the names on the menu, mind blown! Touche' mom! Touche'!

Seating Chart and table numbers were done by Leyani Trevin, the same vendor we got our linens & plates (thats another post to come). There were so many options I saw on #pinterest , but then I saw in person this old world looking scroll. Again a scene of Cinderella pops in my head when reading names of princesses of the village off the scroll. I knew it was perfect for the wedding and also a once stop shop for us planning!

I kept the table numbers simple and legible with the right color tones. They have plenty of bling status options, but The linens and flowers were what I wanted to " POW" ya. I do not have a picture of the table numbers I had but I do have a picture of the section in her shop with the many option below. The one that is by itself with the fleur de lis holder was basically just like mine except no bling, or initials, just the number with the same antique gold coloring for the number and the framing colored paper.

The Ceremony program, again optional but what a nice thing to have and opted as a great option to hold our the handkerchief for the second line for our guests. Quick note on that: We originally thought " handkerchiefs for the welcome bag" but most likely everyone, including myself would forget to bring it. There is something very nice acknowledging everyone who took the time to participate in your big day and also honor those who have passed that are watching from up above. We bring back our friend, Invitations by Leston. He's fast, he put together a beautiful program. I legit just sent him the information and Sari picked them up and I never saw them until after the wedding! LOL. It was one of the items I wish I checked off my list sooner, but delays often happen as you are finalizing certain songs titles and which people would be reading, available so on and so on. Again we were luck as Leston is quick and efficient at what he does! See the images below.

So there we have it, the papered goods of the wedding weekend! There is one more papered item we had, but it's for the welcome bag and we'll be doing a separate blogpost on that. Friends it's a monster of a project, It's really helpful to have one of those wedding books with all the " to do's" if you're a digital person, zola.com 's app has it digitally and you can add your own unique items if you prefer that. The point is the tedious stuff is really figuring out the guests numbers and where you'll have to punch those names and addresses later. The sooner you can get that out of the way, the faster you'll enjoy the rest of the creative process. Or maybe I'm wrong, you might not like the artistry and prefer organizing and collecting all the data. I like it up to a point, but then I'm over it. lol I've always been better at the vision and translating it to materials.

The papered goods was the first detailed post because it's really going to play a part throughout the whole process. Organize and keep your wedding information documents in one place! For more wedding help and ideas CLICK HERE.