A romantic wedding in California wine country

On the first weekend of October, I flew out to San Diego, California to attend the wedding of my friends, Jason & Lindsay. Back when they both lived in Boston, I brought Jason with me to a group lunch, where we both met Lindsay for the first time. After their engagement, they both moved to San Diego and decided to get married in California wine country, so it was a destination wedding for all of their guests.

I had the honor of creating their wedding invitations, which included a grape leaf design, and accent colors of crimson red and gold. The custom map, rsvp card, and gold rsvp envelope were all set in a crimson red pocketfold, with the invitation mounted in the middle. Wrap around address labels were used on both the rsvp envelope and the main envelope.

The ceremony was held in the beautiful All Hallows Catholic Church in La Jolla, and then the reception was at Gershon Bachus Vinters in Temecula. The cocktail hour was held outside right as the sun was starting to set, and then the dinner inside the house was amazing because two sides of the house opened up to the outside so you had the vineyard setting all around you. Here are a couple of photos from the wedding!

Jason and Lindsay, it was so nice to see you both, and congratulations again!!!

~Emilie

Cherry Blossom Pocketfold Wedding Invitations

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Peter and Jennifer to create invitations for their spring wedding at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The cherry blossom branch invitation was a pocketfold style, which is a great way for guests to keep all of the invitation components together. I designed the brown metallic pocketfold so that the branches from the main invitation, rsvp card, and directions card all look like they are coming out of the same area of the pocketfold. It is as if the branches are part of one tree, because the color of the branches match the color of the pocketfold.

All of the invitation cards are made of pearlescent white metallic cardstock, and the main invitation is wrapped with two pieces of double-faced brown satin ribbon. The envelopes were also made of pearlescent white metallic paper, and custom stamps with the cherry blossom design were created for both envelopes to match the rest of the invitation. For the directions and accommodations card, a custom map of Cambridge was created to show some key streets in the Harvard Square area, along with the wedding venue and closest T stop.

The other major element of this invitation are all of the hand-glittered cherry blossom flowers. There were definitely a lot of them, and here is a little statistic for this invitation project:

# of cherry blossom flowers on front cover: 6
# of cherry blossom flowers on the main invitation: 18
# of cherry blossom flowers on the directions card: 9
# of cherry blossom flowers on the RSVP card: 9
Total # of flowers per invitation: 42
Total # of invitations created: 160

do some multiplication and ...
Total # of hand-glittered cherry blossom flowers: 6,720

If you are interested in these invitations for your upcoming wedding or event, please contact me at info@pinkorchiddesigns.com!

~Emilie

Love Bird Wedding Pocketfold Invitations

Wedding invitations come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes they come with multiple pieces, like the main invitation, directions card, and rsvp card. A pocketfold invitation is the perfect way to hold everything together, and it's a great way to showcase an added belly band or ribbon around the invitation.

This modern invitation is one of my favorites. It has colors of silver, pink, and gray, and has a pair of love birds with the couple's initials right underneath along with a little heart. The main invitation is pearlescent white cardstock, mounted onto silver metallic cardstock, which is mounted onto a steel gray metallic pocketfold. The pocket on the right side contains the directions card, the rsvp card, and the silver metallic response envelope. The directions card contains a custom drawn map of the Laguna Niguel area of California. The rsvp card displays meal choice icons of a cow, a fish, and a carrot for beef, seafood, and vegetarian options. The belly band contains the love bird and initials design in pearlscent white cardstock, mounted onto silver metallic cardstock, with pink ribbon that wraps around the invitation. The entire pocketfold fits perfectly inside of a silver metallic envelope for mailing.

I really like how when you first open up the pocketfold, you see a very minimalist look with a lot of white space and the love bird and initials design. Then, once you take out the directions card and rsvp card, you see that there is a lot of information hidden underneath! If you are interested in this invitation design for your upcoming wedding or event, please contact me at info@pinkorchiddesigns.com!

~Emilie

Local Area Maps for Out of Town Guests

When wedding guests come in from out of town, it's common for brides give each guest a bag of goodies, like water bottles, snacks, and a list of city attractions. One thing that I think is really great to include in these bags is a local area map. I'm not referring to just a free city map that you can pick up at a local tourist counter, but a list of restaurants and stores right around the hotel where the guests are staying.

If guests are traveling to an unfamiliar city, they may think that there's nothing around the area if they can't see anything directly next to the hotel. They may end up just eating in the hotel instead of venturing out because they don't even know if they would find anything. With a local area map, they know exactly how far and where they need to travel to go to the pharmacy, pick up a bagel, or grab some lunch.

Since it's hard to find maps with all of the stores and restaurants laid out, most of these maps have to be custom designed. This process definitely starts with walking around the area where your guests will be staying, and marking down all of the stores and restaurants that you think would be of interest to your guests.

The following map is one I designed for guests staying at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Brookline, Massachusetts. The hotel is located in an area of Brookline called Coolidge Corner, and there are definitely a lot of stores and restaurants all within a few blocks.

This was one of the cards included in a set for the Out-of-Town bags. The other cards included a welcome letter, a schedule of events, and directions to and from the rehearsal dinner and wedding. This local area map was printed on pearlescent white metallic cardstock, with stores in blue, and restaurants in red.

If you are interested in a custom local area map for your wedding guests, please email me at info@pinkorchiddesigns.com.

~Emilie