Stationery
Hotel Maya, Long Beach Oceanfront Wedding | Wonhee + Sungmin
Mar 23rd
Who needs a destination wedding in Hawaii when you could bring the sea to you? Having lived so close to the coast in southern California, Wonhee and Sungmin have always wanted to go sailing. Their wedding was at the Hotel Maya in Long Beach, across from the gorgeous harbor of Long Beach. The inspiration board allowed for this nautical themed wedding to be unique, fun, and elegant as we had a chance to play with the dessert bar by incorporating cute donut lifesavers!
At the ceremony, ropes resembling those of boats, lined the aisle and were incorporated in the brides bouquet. The bride and groom had their very own personalized stationary with an anchor design as well as custom linens and napkins. The ring pillow had an anchor design as well. We got creative with the bride and groom sign using the nautical inspiration and created the captain and first mate sign! The personalized dance floor monogram was an eye catcher for all of the guests.
With a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean and the wedding’s beautiful light blue, navy, light grey and soft butter details, Wonhee and Sungmin invited their guests to come sail away with them on their next journey together. Studio EMP did a fabulous job with the photography at the wedding!
Invitation Cost
Nov 9th
.
.
First off, let me say that wedding invitations don’t have to be expensive! The good news is there are many ways to give this part of your wedding budget some relief.
Invitations can cost anywhere from $100 to $4,000. The cost depends on how detailed you wish to have your invitations, paper type/quality, and shape of your invitations. Some details that will certainly make your invitations cost more are including bows/ribbons, gems, having heavy cardstock, specialized printing like embossing (where the words are raised up from the page), and circle, square and other unique shaped cardstock.
Now if you’ve only got 75 invitations to mail out, these things might not be a big deal. However, if you’ve got 275 invitations to send out, you may want to reevaluate your invitation style for the sake of your budget.
Certain wedding invitation websites obviously charge more than others. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have better and prettier invitations than the websites that don’t charge as much. There is such an immense variety out there so it is imperative that you do a lot of research and compare prices/quotes. Websites like etsy where very creative people have handmade (and can modify) every style invitation design you can think of. Lots of sellers on Etsy provide great ideas that do not cost a fortune for wedding invitations. It also doesn’t hurt to personally message them to see if they are open to giving you a discount on bulk orders, which has personally worked for me in the past.
If you happen to have a creative member in your family that you can persuade to help create a design for your save-the-dates and invites, this could save you hundreds of dollars. You can then email this design to a printing press, bring in the paper stock you plan on using (purchase in bulk at places like Kelly Paper) and hand it over to have your design printed onto the paper. This only leaves the fee to print at the printing press, which, in comparison won’t cost much at all!
Something that must be taken into consideration is postage. The heavier and unique shaped your invitations are, the more postage it will cost to mail them out to your guests. You also have to provide the return postage for the RSVP’s.
.
.
In Love: Calligraphy
Jun 7th
.
I love calligraphy. There is no denying that when you receive an invitation hand addressed by one of these artists, you feel so special! Having your wedding invitations hand calligraphed may seem like an antiquated tradition that you don’t need to do (printing envelopes on the computer is so easy, right?). Well, it is an old tradition, but one you shouldn’t skip if you can afford. A wedding invitation isn’t just any old invitation to a party: it is something extremely intimate and important and it should be treated as such!
Take a look at some of this calligraphy eye candy. Notice how the styles are so different? The options out there are truly endless. These are some of my absolute favorite calligraphy artists.
Lisa Ridgley; Pen & Ink Calligraphy
.
Kathryn Murray; Kathryn Murray Calligraphy
