Our very own Jillian married her hubby Scott in the pretty, laid back beach town of Sayulita a year or so ago. Her wedding was beautiful and fun and full of cold Pacificos and warm sand… but most importantly (to us) it also included the pretty paper details that she designed herself.
She wanted her invites to reflect the lightness of the actual wedding, (they asked their guests to wear white), while incorporating pops of bright colors that are so essential to Mexican culture. For inspiration, she and Amanda too a trip to Olvera Street in downtown LA, where they bought a bunch of bright paper flags. And she found a beautiful embossed card at Soolip, but buying enough for every invite would have been a little pricey… so she improvised.
She contacted John Sullivan from Logos Graphics in SF create a plate (for $25!) using a pattern she found. She was also able to purchase the paper, cut/scored to the right size, from him. A close friend knew a little about letterpress, so they went to the San Francisco Center for the Book where they blind embossed the pattern onto her own gate folded card, in the style of the inspiration Jillian found at Soolip. To save on printing, the main invite was printed at home on her Epson printer.
Aside from the invite and pretty cover piece, her invitation suite included tons of little details to get her guests excited about their trip to Mexico. For her reply postcard, she used a perfect bird graphic she found from Beaumonde and had custom stamps made based on those super cute, semi-iconic vintage Mexican playing cards. Her red and yellow envelopes came from Paper Source and she had Jenna (obviously) do the calligraphy. As an added bonus she created little velum packets that she stitched together herself, full of sand, photos Scott had taken of Sayulita, and a teensy Bienvenidos greeting.
Then Amanda, being the good friend that she is, designed a website based on Jillian’s invites! Absolutely essential for a destination wedding, in our opinion. And how cute is this website?
As a final note, Jillian says creating her own invites “was a lot of fun but took serious time and planning. Ultimately you have to utilize your resources and trust your creative vision!”
