allieplask's planning thread... lots of info/pics

[allieplask]

Nick and I got engaged on February 12, 2012 at Mountain Creek Ski Resort in New Jersey - with a beautiful yellow sapphire.

 

This picture is one we sent to friends once we got back from our ski trip.

 

I'm going to start with our engagement party.  Nick and I are not the DIY type - I prefer professions to take care of all that business.  However, we own an apparel and graphic design firm called Sincere Legends (www.sincerelegends.com) and decided that we were going to create our own website, wedding logo, invitations, save-the-dates, etc, etc.  Luckily for us, the business next door to our warehouse is a paper printing shop who has been doing our printing.

 

Since we knew we planned on having a destination wedding, we first planned a huge engagement party at a Triumph Brewing Company in Princeton, NJ.  We knew since not everyone would be able to attend a destination wedding, we wanted to have as many people attend our engagement party.  Of our 250 person wedding guest list, we invited the 140 that lived in the tri-state area.  In preparation for the party, we designed our wedding website:

 

                                                      www.allienick.com

 

Right now, the website has since been updated since the party but we did have an ENGAGEMENT PARTY tab with info about Triumph Brewing Company, directions to the brewery and information/parking in Princeton.  Right now, the ENGAGEMENT PARTY tab has been replaced by the WEDDING INFO tab.

 

We also came up with this "logo" as our wedding logo.  In our business, brand recognition is really important so we wanted to do the same for our wedding.  We used the logo to make round stickers which we used to seal the engagement party envelopes and plan to use it for OOT bags at the wedding.

 

 

 

We met with our engagement photographer, Brad Ross out of Clinton, NJ, and decided to take engagement pictures before the party so we could make a guest book for all of our guests to sign.

 

 

See some of our engagement photos (more on allienick.com: http://www.bradross.net/engagement/princeton-engagement-photography-allie-nick

 

Unfortunately, we took out engagement pictures three weeks before the party (at Princeton University and at the Brewery) and the photographer didn't have time to make a book for us himself.  We took the pictures he gave us and made our own book using Adobe InDesign.  We designed it exactly the way we wanted it to look and uploaded the entire .pdf to Blurb (www.blurb.com) to have them print it.  The printing only took a week and we got the book three days before the party!  The book was a HUGE hit at the party and now we have an awesome memory (and don't have to lug a book down to Jamaica).

 

                    You can preview our book at: http://www.blurb.com/books/3053205

 

I will attach a picture of the engagement invitation on Monday - it's at the office on my work computer.

 

BTW Triumph is a beautiful two-story building with exposed brick walls and big beer vats that sit behind two-story glass windows.  We did beer tastings of all their seven beers, etc. and it was a great time.

 

[allieplask]

For our bridal party, nick and I chose two of our close friends and also plan to have Nick's 7-year-old cousin as his groomsman and Nick's 9-year-old cousin as my bridesmaid.  We figured since we were having such small bridal parties, we didn't want to give them "jr." titles and they were too old to be flower girl and ring bearer.

 

Of course no one in our bridal party lives near us - Virginia, Maryland, Germany and New York are a little far to ask them all in person.  So, we made up cards asking them to be our bridesmaids/groomsmen and also send them some Red Stripe.  We figured since the wedding is in Jamaica, Red Stripe is the perfect gift and it's fun!  Who doesn't love beer?

 

All of the cards were printed in color on card stock.

 

Since Olivia is only 9-years-old, we did Disney Princesses for her card - much cuter and age appropriate.  *Note the font for "wear a pretty dress," etc. on the actual cards was the same typewriter font as the other bridesmaids cards (for some reason the typewriter font is not saved on my laptop).

 

 

 

For my other two bridesmaids, their cards were the following.

 

All of the cards were put into special envelopes.  The above pages were first.  After flipping past the first page they saw the additional three pages that were all organized in height order - the first page was the shortest, the second page only had the header visible and the third page the same.  The pages in order are "our day," "your role" and "the details."  I wanted to make sure my bridesmaids had all the information before deciding they wanted to be part of our bridal party - especially because we have not sent save-the-dates yet or old anyone where our wedding is (we have only told everyone else the date and Jamaica because we posted it on our website as soon as we got confirmation from the hotel).

 

[dominiqueamber]

I really like the disney princess invites...can't wait to see more

[allieplask]

 

Okkk, here is the file of our engagement invite.

 

We found a similar invitation on Etsy and liked it.. Instead of paying the $20 for it, we just made it ourselves in Illustrator and then had them printed on our own too.

 

If anyone is familiar with Illustrator and wants the file, I can email it to you?

[allieplask]

We are also currently working on our save-the-date cards.  We're not sure if we plan on doing invitations yet but here is our save-the-date.  We plan on having them printed as postcards (so nice when the business right next door does printing!).  The size will be: w-6", h-4.5".  Again, I have the Illustrator file if anyone wants it....

 

We look this idea from Etsy as well.  The thought was we didn't want pictured of ourselves on it (especially since our engagement pictures were done in the middle of winter).  We wanted our guests to get excited for the destination.  This picture works great because 1. we plan to get married at sunset and 2. it seems as Iberostar has a gazebo in the ocean.

 

Here is the link of the STD we "copied" - http://www.etsy.com/listing/85487457/save-the-date-postcard-custom-design

 

Instead of paying $20, we just recreated it ourselves, new font, etc.

 

 

[Krs398]

omg! i love the disney invites!! i wish i would've seen this and i totally would've sent it out to all of my bridesmaids! so mad now!! haha everything looks great so far!

[Islander88]

love your details... very spunky and lots of fun attitude... i can see your wedding is going to be very creative... cant wait to see more!

[JayKay]

Your STDs look great!!

[allieplask]

These are the thank-you cards we used for our engagement party thank-you's.  We had our engagement photos printed on heavy cardstock - size approx. 3"x5" - again by our business neighbor who does printing.  The cards only cost us about $30 and we bought envelopes at Staples for $10.

 

We had 5 different design cards.  We thought this was a nice way to thank our guests without using the traditional thank-you card.

 

These are VERY easy to make too - we just opened our engagement photos in Illustrator, sized them to the sizes we wanted and added the text.  Don't forget to create outlines before sending your files to the printer.

 

 

 

 

[shan0487]

awesome job! I think I need illustrator!