If, of course, you live near one of our invited guests, that is.
After spending the entirety of the recent 3-day weekend completing the design, printing, and assembling thereof, the Road Trip invites have flown the coop (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor). While we want to give them a few days to get to their destinations, can we talk envelopes for a moment, and the addressing of said bits?
Even though it complicated matters a smidgen, I went with chocolate brown envelopes from Envelopes.com for our invitations. Even though they’re the usual #10 envelope size (which fits just right with the style of invitation I designed), the color definitely sets them apart from bills and junk mail that might also be in the box that day. With such a dark envelope that leaves only two options for addressing: labels or opaque ink (white or metallic). For some reason I didn’t even consider labels and option, really, so went on the hunt for just the right opaque ink.
I got my first calligraphy for my 11th birthday and have been practicing different styles, off and on, over the last 26 years but I really didn’t feel like fiddling with my dip pens for this. Instead, I started with a couple of paint pens: one with a chisel tip that just disappeared on the paper and one that showed up great that would have worked well for the front but would have been a bit big for the return address flap. So the hunt continued.
Sometimes it just helps to see the options side-by-side.
Another trip to the store yielded 2 metallic contenders: Prang brush pens and why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-before Sharpies. Even though the bronze and gold Sharpies fit our color scheme better, the Silver stood out the best of the three and just felt better writing-wise (Mr. Road Trip cast the deciding vote on that one, as he did with a few other invitation elements).
As for the writing, I skipped the exemplars and just went for my usual handwriting with a few extra swoops on the capital letters. After all, calligraphy comes from the Greek for “beautiful writing” and while I don’t claim to have the most beautiful handwriting in the world, it is something I’ve been a tad obsessive about. In high school I would rewrite homework assignments if I didn’t like my handwriting on a particular page and would change how I made certain letter-forms when I thought my writing could use a little shaking up. As a bookkeeper it helps that my writing be more than legible, and when I draw comics I insist upon hand-lettering.
With all of that in mind, I probably shouldn’t have started addressing envelopes at 2 in the morning. I was  up, it was next on the list, but I completely spaced about using titles on the first handful of envelopes and I wasted about a dozen all-told with various screw-ups. This is the point where I didn’t mind having to order a pack of 50 envelopes to send out 25 invites!
A Tip: When using opaque ink on a colored envelope and you need to fix a little bobble, find an ink pen or Sharpie that’s the same color as your paper and “fill in” the little oopsies. It’ll save your sanity when you’re down to your last few or you’ve already put postage on an unfinished envelope.
Of course we’re inviting the head cheeses!
For stamps I didn’t stress. There weren’t any good wine or grape-themed stamps available outside of places like Zazzle (and I just couldn’t see paying double for postage, even with such a small quantity) so I chose the wedding cake and white roses stamps (which was about $0.20 more postage than necessary, but better safe than sorry). In the end, they looked great against the dark brown envelopes, so all’s well that ends well.
What was your biggest challenge when it came to addressing your wedding invitations?