La Rue Louise: A Vintage Modern Wedding: Jen + Jake's Wedding Stationery

Jen and Jake are such a sweet couple. They first met in sixth grade and were high school sweethearts! After graduating from college they decided to teach English together in China and did all of their wedding planning from overseas. With the help of their awesome family and friends (not to mention the internet!) they planned a fabulous wedding with lots of beautiful details.

Jen described their wedding style as "Vintage, elegant and modern. Our colors will be eggplant, cream and mauve with hints of antique silver and moss green throughout the decor." In keeping with their color palette, Jen chose bridesmaids dresses in Lapis from David's Bridal, and with the help of her sisters, created their bouquets from mauve peonies found at Garden Ridge. A glimpse of their wedding colors (mauve peony, mauve card stock, and DB Lapis swatch):

Jen and I discovered that it's not always easy finding ribbon that matches your wedding colors. Luckily, I've got the hook-up when it comes to customizing fabric and ribbon (thanks mom!) and I was able to create custom Lapis-colored ribbon for Jen and Jake's wedding invitations. This is what 200+ pieces of ribbon looks like drying (please excuse the fuzzy phone pic):

Like many brides, Jen had a large guest list and a not-so-large budget. Believe it or not, many times the cost of the postage amounts to half of a couple's entire wedding stationery budget! So we worked together to reach a solution- for most of Jen's guests we eliminated the response card altogether and gave the guests the address of Jen and Jake's wedding website where they could RSVP online. This saves you the expense of a response insert and envelope, not to mention the RSVP postage. About 70% of Jen and Jake's guests received an invitation, mailing envelope with printed return address, reception card with reception and RSVP website info, and a card stock and ribbon belly band to hold everything together:

The other 30% of Jen and Jake's guests (mainly guests without internet access or older guests) received an invitation, mailing envelope with printed return address, reception card, response postcard (again- saving money on postage!), and a card stock and ribbon belly band to hold everything together:

Response postcards are another great way to save money on your wedding stationery budget- you pay for postcard stamps versus first-class stamps AND you eliminate response envelopes altogether!

Everything but the belly band was printed on cream-colored metallic paper. The belly band was printed on smooth mauve-colored card stock that matched Jen's flowers. Checkout the details:

For the "day of" stationery, I created ceremony programs and reception table tent cards that coordinated with the couple's invitation suite. The programs were tea length (4.25" by 11") and printed on smooth cream-colored card stock:

Jen and Jake wanted to take advantage of this opportunity for their guests to get to know more about them as a couple. They came up with 17 different fun facts about their relationship and I printed them on 5" by 7" tented cards for their reception tables. Here's one sweet little tidbit:

We also customized their ceremony further by embellishing the couple's unity candle and aisle runner. I created two different monograms (for Jen to choose between!) and printed them on vellum so she could dress up their unity candle like this:

Finally, I used my wide-format printer to print the above monogram at approximately 3 feet wide, so that Jen could customize their aisle runner à la Heather of Road to the Aisle.

Thanks Jen and Jake for entrusting me with your wedding stationery! Your wedding was beautiful and I'm so glad I was a small part of it!!

The gorgeous bride and groom