You are warmly invited to the folding, printing, sticking, cutting and posting of our wedding invitations. Yep, I will admit, I usually have eyes that are way too big for my stomach, (and by stomach I mean time, money, manpower etc. etc.) and this was no different. Mind you, I am convinced that by taking all of this on myself, I saved hundreds of dollars and got exactly what we both wanted.

Here’s what we did …

Envelopes

The envelopes are DVD cases which I ordered through a packaging company in Sydney … I of course didn’t even think about the fact that they arrive flat and need to be folded (x 100).

Stickers

Ok, so after folding 100 envelopes I stood back and realized they looked pretty blank and boring so we decided we would choose some of our favourite photos from our engagement shoot (which we shot with the freakish talent – Dan O’Day) and turn them into stickers to line the box. This also ended being the perfect place to remind people that it was an invitation only event …  Apparently, that’s not obvious to some.

The Details

A good friend of mine Dan Codyre of New Exhibition Creative Agency had designed our engagement invites and we had also asked him to do something for our wedding. He hand-painted the front of the insert, which we love. He got some shots of the ceremony venue and then pretty must just dropped us right in there. Of course a painting of us holding hands in front of a house is a bit vague as far as details go so I enlisted the help of another genius friend of ours, Leonie to hand paint all the info on the back!

Ribbons

On one of our random wanders through Paddington, The Fiancé and I found an amazing award ribbon, which we purchased … and when we sat down to work out what we were going to do for our invites, it just seemed like a fun way of getting our theme across … why did our invite have to be paper? Why couldn’t it be a colourful award ribbon with all the details on it? – so that’s exactly what we did. I searched high and low in Australia to find a company that made them but there was nothing that looked as good (or was as affordable) as the one we’d found in Paddington that day. So I dug it up, found the website and contacted the company in Pennsylvania!!

I think they thought I was a little crazy – who the heck was this random Aussie guy wanting 150 ribbons with wedding details in crazy colours?! Anyway, a few late night calls to the US and a couple shipping dramas later, they arrived!

We taped everything together with tape from Rob Ryan and sent them all off for our guests to marvel at and maybe ponder in confusion.

I am definitely relieved that it’s done, and I’m thrilled that I will be getting married only once in my life – but we love our invites and hope you like looking at them too!

Photos from Julian’s collection.

Ms Gingham says: I love the award ribbons!!! I think we’d all agree that marrying the love of your life feels like coming first in a race so why not? Very creative stuff!

Groomzilla describes himself as: Stylist, Meticulous planner and creative eye.

Read more from Julian here.