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How To Create Wedding Invitations

A friend of ours was planning to get married last year. She knew that my husband is a graphic designer and quickly came forward to ask him to design wedding invitations for her. She didn't give him much of an idea of what sort of invitations she would prefer, simply dropping off a piece of fabric from the bridesmaid dresses, and telling him to work from that.

My husband, though usually a procrastinator, got started right away. He created a beautiful sample and we sat down to discuss areas of improvement and firmed up his final design plans. He also put in a call to the bride-to-be asking if she could stop by to see the sample and to discuss his plans to make sure they were in sync with what she had in mind. Of course, she was busy with other things and told him to go ahead and create the wedding invitation mock-up, which she was sure would be just fine.

So my husband spent significant time going to purchase velum paper, ink cartridges for our printer, card stock and beadwork so that he could create the wedding invitation mock-up as instructed.

When I saw the work he had done to create this wedding invitation, I cautioned him about going too far before our friend had seen the concept. I knew how fickle she can be and I just had a bad feeling about this. I knew that she had no idea about the amount of work required to create wedding invitations. Coupled with that fact, she is very opinionated and her style tends to be more conservative and old-fashioned. However, she had assured my husband that she'd be happy with his work, so my husband continued full steam ahead.

Finally, he was ready to show the mock-up. My jaw fell when I saw this work of art. He'd been tasked to create wedding invitations in the past, and his work was always good, but this wedding invitation was incredible. The cover was velum, with a strip of crimson fabric on the left hand side, detailed with intricate beadwork. Through the velum you could see hints of the script text, glinting through from the interior of the wedding invitation. Upon opening it, all the details were copied out in beautiful script work, on a glossy crimson background. He had created a custom envelope as well. The envelope also featured the script font and was printed again, on the glossy crimson stock. These wedding invitations were literally breathtaking.

I was no longer worried about our friends reaction. She had definitely made a wise choice in asking my husband to create wedding invitations for her. We were sure she'd be delighted. We called her and asked her to stop by to see the mock-up in all it's glory.

It was really strange. She seemed very distracted when she came by. She merely glanced at his work and said that the invitations were nice and rushed out the door, leaving some matte card stock with a floral imprint on our counter. My husband and I were very confused. We weren't sure if she wanted to go ahead, make some final changes or scrap the idea all together.

A couple of nights later, my sister called me. She said she'd been over at our friends house to discuss some wedding plans, since she was part of the bridal party. My sister told me that while she was there, she found that our friend had created wedding invitations of her own, on the same card stock she'd left on our kitchen counter.

We waited for a week and a half to see if our friend was going to talk to us about the wedding invitations that my husband had created. We didn't hear a word. Then one day we went to collect our mail, and there was a wedding invitation inviting us to attend.

To this day we don't know what happened. It's a mystery why she would commission my husband to create wedding invitations for her, see the incredible results and then drop him without a word. There's no doubt in our minds that the invitations that my husband created were of excellent quality and absolutely beautiful. The rest remains a mystery!