<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" My wedding is just 10 days away! I&amp;#039;m filled with excitement. Butterflies haven&amp;#039;t surfaced yet, and I&amp;#039;m pretty sure that the Bobbi Brown waterproof mascara that I&amp;#039;m searching out will not hold up when this sappy bride starts tearing up, but I&amp;#039;m feeling great in the homestretch. It&amp;#039;s going to be amazing to have 60 of our dearest peeps in the world all in one room. Wow. So I wanted to share my wedding invitations, which have been one of my all-time favorite parts of planning this wedding. Here is the final invitation:  I linked up with letterpress stationery master Stacy Pancake of Pancake &amp;amp;amp; Franks. There are so many designers coming out with amazing invitations these days. Being lucky enough to attend the National Stationery Show each year, I get to see them all. But I had a somewhat clear vision of what I wanted \u2014 an invitation that captured the natural setting of the farm where the wedding will be held -- and I knew Stacy would do an incredible job of turning my idea into a simply beautiful invitation. She was beyond fun to collaborate with and I couldn&amp;#039;t be more in love with the end result. Here&amp;#039;s Stacy in the studio where all the design magic happens.   There are many ways to do a wedding on the cheap -- and letterpress stationery is not on that list. This was my one splurge to have letterpress invitations and reply cards. I absolutely love the tactile nature of letterpress papergoods. The way I saved money was that I didn&amp;#039;t do a package with thank yous, matching envelopes, etc. And it&amp;#039;s cheaper -- and easier -- to do your response cards as a postcard. Here is the letterpress printer that printed out my invitatons.  The invitations brought in the colors I&amp;#039;ll be using at the wedding, plums and turquoise blues. Here is Stacy&amp;#039;s computer at her studio as she&amp;#039;s checking out the Pantone colors we decided on.  And here is the full package (6 pieces in total) that was sent to each guest in a kraft brown envelope.  From outside in: I lined the envelopes with turquoise criss-cross pattern paper, part of the Martha Stewart Craft line, that you can find at Michaels.  I stamped a gold key to embellish the back flap as skeleton keys will be a part of the seat markers. And I stamped a decorative box on the front to keep my handwritten addresses in check in one neat square.  Inside each envelope was a stack of five pieces that I wrapped together in baker&amp;#039;s twine. First came the letterpress invitation with the amazing barn illustration and then the bird reply postcard, both designed by Pancake &amp;amp;amp; Franks. Then came the map that I made to highlight the town in Maine where the wedding will be held. I simply took a Maine atlas and photocopied the page I needed (shrinking the image down by 50 percent), and adhered it to a piece of white cardstock with a glue stick. Then I punched a hole with my screw punch to mark the destination spot. I made another map to call out the town where the lobster bake will be held the day before (we&amp;#039;ll be at Dan&amp;#039;s family&amp;#039;s camp). Can you spot the punched hole just right of Monmouth?!  The lobster bake invitation was a letterpress lobster flat card by the Maine-loving designer Liz of Linda &amp;amp;amp; Harriett (she and her husband went to Bates college in Maine.) Those lobster flats came with the kraft brown envelopes, which were big enough to house the entire package. I&amp;#039;m a nut and hand-wrote the lobster bake invite as well as a little travel card advising people to bring/rent GPS (since the farm is in a remote spot with no cell phone service and I don&amp;#039;t want guests to get lost!) The travel cards were pint-size versions of the ivory deckled paper I used for the Menu cards. I stamped &amp;quot;travel&amp;quot; with some alphabet stamps I had. This was definitely not a one-weekend process (just ask Dan!), but it was so fun to pull together. When you&amp;#039;re hosting a small wedding, you can definitely get away with adding your own special handmade touches that are hard to do when you&amp;#039;re sending out 100+ invitations. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/friends-family/a4078/wedding-invitations/>