Friday, April 30, 2010

etsy wedding giveaway! custom watercolor wedding map REVISED 10.12.10

Custom Wedding Map
{ UPDATE 7.march.11 -- custom wedding maps and illustrations by nattymichelle }

**UPDATE 7.march.11: the kind etsy soul who stepped in and volunteered her services: natalie of nattymichelle. more on her shortly. fantastic!

**UPDATE 12.oct.10: all, i'm leaving this post up because of all your wonderful comments and suggestions, but madison-claire never came through with the prize after multiple attempts to contact them, and i'm having to scramble to find a kind etsy soul to put together a wedding map for the winner. not cool.

if you're looking for lovely watercolor wedding maps, check out this search for current shops.

your long-awaited giveaway -- xxxxxxxx at madison~claire designs wrote with a generous offer: a custom watercolor wedding map, personalized and one-of-a-kind. so neat! they also do custom illustrations for programs, etc.

what do i need to know this time, you ask? to enter, in comments tell us about how you're putting together your invites -- letterpress? DIY? online resource? keeping it simple or personalizing? or any clever invitation resources.

63 comments:

  1. Wow - these are beautiful maps! We're actually getting ready to print, cut, and prepare to mail our invitations this weekend. Yep, we've gone the DIY route, which has involved a lot of forehead wrinkling and paper drafts as I attempted to remember what little I know of Illustrator and pull together a look that reflected our love of printing presses and old posters. (If only I had the talent of Michelle!) One of the best consequences of this route, though, is spending time with my love. Between choosing and cutting our envelope liners, ordering our butcher's twine to tie it all together, and discussing how much white space is good or what words to use, our invites will be the result of labor, scrutiny, and love. I think the maps would be a beautiful welcome and favor for our guests, all of whom are traveling to join us. Thank you!

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  2. oh these are so fun!! for our invitations we just got them printed but they're really fun and have green and blue leaves on them and i'm in love. :)

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  3. I love these maps! For our invitations, I used a photo I took of the tree lined road leading up to our wedding venue. I photoshoped it to give it an ink line-drawn effect, added the text and printed it on a white textured paper. I then mounted it on sage green cardstock to give it some color and added weight. It was simple, but a big hit with our guests. You can see the design here: http://hitchcockcreative.blogspot.com/2010/02/wedding-invitation.html

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  4. After creating our own design for our save the dates we finally decided to order stock invitations (with custom colors) since they would be cheaper than DIY (family connection) and less stress.

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  6. My fiance and I are both in law school and have to pay for our own wedding, so we are having DIY invitations (and DIY/Etsy for most things)! I have been admiring these custom maps for a while because our reception and ceremony are being held in the same area, and the grounds have so many different things to offer. I think a custom map would be perfect for our guests, and would help them appreciate the various buildings, gardens, etc.!

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  7. We are soon going to make the decision. We will be having a very small wedding - as in maybe 30 people.

    We are going back and forth between getting some blanks on Amazon, from Michael's...and there is another option, too.

    If we hold the wedding at the location we really want, it will be a couple of hours away from home in a VERY picturesque setting. So I was thinking of possibly doing a retro postcard-feel invitation.

    Between lack of skill and lack of budget, we are having to be creative. But, we'll make it with love and it will be perfect.

    A pretty personalized map would not only get folks to our destination faster - it would make them smile. What a great gift THAT is!

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  8. Your maps are beautiful. I think I got a little too ambitious in the design for our 105 invitees. I am printing and cutting it myself. Sewing in each pocket, wrapping ribbons and name tags on each one. And finishing with a wax seal. It looks nice, but man is it taking a lot of time. Thanks for hosting this giveaway!

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  9. These are the cutest custom maps I've ever seen!

    We're having our invites and rsvp cards printed by mae mae paperie, but our programs and table numbers and things like that will be a digital file that we will print out at home.

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  10. I am doing letterpress! scg00387 at yahoo dot com

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  11. Very beautiful maps! We had a friend design our invitation and RSVP and then the ladies in my future family got together and we put all the pieces together with help of a sewing machine. I would love to have a map like that at our wedding. Thank you for the opportunity!

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  12. Gonna go with postcard save-the-dates and leaning towards designing our invites and getting them printed on the fabulous stock at Overnight Prints!

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  13. These are absolutely gorgeous! We are definitely going DIY, which I'm really excited about it. My fiance masquerades as a cartoonist, so we're trying to add an element of whimsey to our invites.

    These would be an excellent addition! :)

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  14. I"m custom ordering my invites from etsy! Not letter press, but really cool design and very professional looking. The theme is cherry blossoms.

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  15. My wedding is just over a year away, and I would LOVE to do the invitations myself...I just don't know if I am capable! I'm going to give it my best shot though. I love DIY projects, mostly because it adds such a personal touch.
    We are getting married in Rome (where we live) and will incorporate Rome into the theme. My save the dates will be postcards of vintage posters of Rome, with a map of Rome as the envelope liner. The invitation will be rather formal, but I thought it would be fun to make the RSVP card look like a museum ticket. Our church and reception venue are very near one another, so a handmade map would be perfect, especially because I could include a few interesting spots of interest that many of our guests would not know about.

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  16. those are really nice!
    we're using psprint.com to make postcards that my fiancee and i designed using pictures of us as kids on halloween.

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  17. Totally and completely smitten with these beauties! Invitations have been the biggest hang up for me - more so than the man, the dress, the venues, etc. etc. - but I've *finally* figured it out!

    We'll be meeting DIY half way by customizing PrintablePress.com's Classic Evening design (http://bit.ly/aaN3xG) in our color scheme. The background will be black, with gray and white font. We'll be using Mercurio Brothers to print digitally, and I've already rallied my mom and BMs to create DIY liners using a pretty paper such as this: http://bit.ly/98DSfW.

    I adore calligraphy, but unfortunately, it's just not in the budget. So, I'm planning to pick a pretty script from dafont.com, print all addresses onto a sheet of paper, then trace them onto the envelope -- a process that's sure to cause a lot of pain, sweat and tears!

    I'm hoping our invitations make a statement and stand out among the other handful our guests receive this year. I'd just love to tuck one of these gorgeous maps into them! Plus, it'd be a great keepsake of our hometowns, where the ceremony and reception will be held!

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  18. I'm planning to make DIY invitations with my artsy friend. We're probably gonna get some nice paper from a local paper shop and print the design (which I haven't decided yet) and info on.

    I love the water colour effect!

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  19. We're using our engagement photos for the save the date. We'll use photoshop to design them and vistaprint to print them. We're going to use an invitation kit from AC Moore or somewhere (there's some awesome Fuchsia Band Invitation and Notecard kits at Staples) and using our cuttlebug (whoo hooo) to add some letterpress flair! We'll order the pocket from cards & pockets dot com and hopefully add a fun twist using twin or yarn to hold it all together! So we're definitely doin the DIY route! Wish us luck! A beautiful map would be icing on the cake!

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  20. I NEED a map:) We're getting married about 2.5 hrs. away from our hometown and a map is in the plan:)
    We're hoping for super simple invites. Thick, nature, natural, recycled paper with black text....very simple and then hoping to add our own twist to it with something attached (possible black & white twine purchased on Etsy:) OR using goofy engagement pictures as envelope liner!
    BUT these maps are absolutely gorgeous and adding those to the invite would be more than perfect!!

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  21. well - I liked the idea of using recycled paper invitations...so we hired Earthly Affair: Earth Friendly Invitations. Our budget is crazy limited, so things that we once loved (letter press, desiger invites) just weren't in the cards for us...especially if we wanted to pay to bring some of our friends to our destination wedding!! (btw: Earthly Affair is a lovely business to work with!)

    We are in need of a map for our wedding...it's a destination event..in a small mountain town in Arizona. I've been drawing and redrawing maps of my own - but - I am no artist. Ha!
    Jes
    simplefreckles@gmail.com

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  22. We bought DIY kits with 50% off coupons...we aren't sacrificing money or style. Our best man (pro graphic designer) is going to create the fabulous layout, and our bridal party of 8 will have an assembling party!

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  23. The watercolor maps are beautiful and would make such a great addition to our invitation suite!

    We are going to DIY our invitations. I designed a simple invitation which will be printed on ivory cardstock and matted to black linen cardstock. I had a swirly design made by a graphic designer on Etsy that I'll be using to tie all the pieces together. The whole thing will be held together with a red vellum belly band and a gold wax seal.

    I got all the paper at www.paperandmore.com which has GREAT prices and sends samples quickly and inexpensively. I can't wait to get started on my invitations. As soon as I finish the semester, I plan to get started on them.

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  24. I would love these maps! I really wanted different and fun invitations, and I told my cousin about this. She offered to do some shopping and see what she came up with. She lives in Mexico and sent me a bunch of samples. My aunt graciously offered to pay for them and after some translation issues, I managed to receive my gorgeous invitations. They are beautiful Turquoise and Brown invitations sitting here waiting to be stuffed and the only thing missing is a map. Our invitations reflect our style and set the tone for our low-key wedding. I was really hoping to get a custom map, but I just can't afford it. With everyone checking out Mapquest and Googlemaps for directions now a days, I think that a map like this brings us back to the pre-computer days. Thanks so much!

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  25. wow...beautiful maps!
    well, i'll try and keep this short. our diy invitations were sent out over a month ago and we used custom illustrations (done by me) that were scanned and printed with my fiance's laser printer at work. i made custom envelope liners, tear-away rsvp postcards, reply stickers and return address stickers with my xyron, and a custom illustrated map that was printed on my gocco. everything was packaged in an accordion-fold invitation and held together with super cute paperclips that had a heart cut-out. it was a labout of love and i'd do it all again in a heartbeat!

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  26. these maps are amazing! I just love these. My sister and I are designing my invitations, she does letter press has a hobby, so I will have custom letterpress invitations with out the cost. ~leela leeandadamwedding {at} gmail

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  27. SO Beautiful! I would love one of these for our North Shore Hawaii wedding! It's such a fun place, and I can just imagine how it would look!

    One of the things I was always looking forward to when planning a wedding was making things. I always loved craft stores, and now I have an excuse! So my invitations will be DIY with a lil help from some family and friends!

    My soon-to-be aunt is doing the calligraphy in GA, and I'm designing the cards and having a pocketfold party in a few weeks which should be fun as well!

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  28. Beautiful maps! I'll be doing letterpress :)

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  29. We'll be doing boxed invites with a design from Etsy, and lots and lots of M&Ms! I would love to have a cute little map to add in there!

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  30. Love love love these maps! Wow. Incredible.

    Funny you ask, because the invitations just went to the printer late in the evening of April 29! We opted to do a two-sided, full color postcard. My fiance did the whole thing in Photoshop. :) One side has pics of us as kids and the date, and we somehow managed to fit all the wedding info and the directions/hotel info on the back!

    We'll be mailing them in envelopes, but we are psyched by the postcard because it saves paper. :)

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  31. I am in love with these maps! They are so personal and unique. For our invitations, we are attempting to "do-it-yourself." I enjoy digital scrapbooking, so I'm going to make our invitations through a scrapbooking program I have had for a while. We're going to print the invites on photo paper to cut costs and then we have purchased shimmery gunmetal pochette envelopes to paste the invites to. Then we're going to seal them with some sort of embellishment and use them as our envelopes, too! We're all about cutting costs and saving as much paper as possible. This map would just be the perfect little addition! :)

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  32. Haven't decided yet - I like the idea of DIY, but not the potential stress. One thing I am settled on is postcard RSVPs! That's a start, right?

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  33. We're printing our invites on vintage hankies and napkins I've been collecting. I think they'll turn out gorgeous, but I'm worried about the fact that we have to keep the text very minimal. Having a watercolor map to include would significantly reduce my stress factor about people being able to find the place!

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  34. We are getting married outside of Boulder, Colorado and are having a local artist design our invitations. My fiancee came up with a design and he is so excited about it (maybe the most excited he has been about all of the planning). Ha. These maps are so amazing. I think a fun Colorado map would be a great addition to our welcome baskets.

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  35. I am planning on making my invites. Hoping it will just be simple paper + inkjet and cutting some paper, nothing too complicated. I haven't designed anything yet! It is such a big task that I can't start!

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  37. Great maps! I got lucky because my finance's dad works in the printing business so he can get wholesale invitations. So we are doing it the old fashion way and ordering from a company :)

    gingerbutler_@hotmail.com

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  38. Fabulous giveaway! I designed and made my own pop-up wedding invitations, which, despite the hand cramps and the late hours, was totally worth it. You can see the final product here: http://hoyawedding.blogspot.com/2010/03/diy-pop-up-invitations.html

    I'm pretty crafty when it comes to a paper cutter and x-acto knife, but these gorgeous maps are something I couldn't attempt in a thousand years.

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  39. My invitations are going to be DIY. I have an idea for for the response postcard, but not quite sure how to pull it off yet....yikes!

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  40. The work you do with a map is unique and fun!!! We just ordered our one-of-a-kind invite this week. We hired a graphic designer to make an invite that would be fresh and perfect for our summer outdoor wedding. She did just that! We are totally impressed with the style and color she used. One of your maps would be the "icing on the cake" for our guests and us to enjoy.
    THANK YOU!

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  41. Love these maps!! They would go really well with our spirited vintage-inspired invitations. My fiance and I worked out the concept and we're asking a grad student to help design it. We're inspired by those star wheels that show constellations through cut-out windows. Our invitations will have a die-cut circle with a cut-out window that can swivel on a grommet. When you move the circle around, you'll be able to see all the details of our wedding through the cut-out window.

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  42. Wow, these maps are gorgeous! We are designing and printing all the elements of our pocketfold invitations with our Gocco. The map is giving us trouble, especially since I have fallen in love with watercolor ones like yours!

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  43. We're in the process of figuring out what to do for invitations. We're hoping to have a friend design the invite and we want to use seed paper or recycled materials. We will need a map to the tiny rural town and the venue and we also want to convey the laid back, non-traditional atmosphere we're looking for. And, like many people, we're on a tight budget. How's that for a tall order?

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  44. My fiance is designing our invites. The concept is to play with typography that tells our story in a cute way. We're going to try to find a printer that will do them on recycled paper with soy ink.

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  45. One of these maps would be a dream come true!!! I literally was going to do a search on etsy for a wedding map to give to all of our guests when they get to the small town where we are hosting our wedding, but as I was typing in "etsy" into my browser, "etsywedding.blogspot" popped up instead, and sure enough--a post about maps! All of our guests are traveling for our wedding, which is taking place in a small town near the Great Lakes, and we really need a map to show guests how to get around as well as a few of our favorite things about the town that we grew up in. A map like this would be the perfect welcome gift for our guests!

    As for our invitations, we just sent them for our summer wedding! They are bursting with a royal blue and lime green, a mix a western font with an elegant font. I love they way they mix modern and traditional. At first I wanted to DIY the whole way, but then I found a design that I LOVED online, and realized that by the time I did it myself, all the time that I would have spent on learning how to create them and creating them, well, that time/energy/stress would probably be worth way more than the dollar amount to have the invites made. So I contacted the graphic designer (who does happen to be etsy!) and purchased them from her.

    With a map like this, I would definitely frame it after the wedding--it would be a perfect keepsake from our wedding as well as a symbol of the small town where we were born and raised (where we no longer live). :) yea for this giveaway!

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  47. I am going DIY all the way with the invites and the one thing Im stuck on is the map and directions piece of the invitation puzzle!
    I was raise on the east side of Michigan, my fiance from Southwest side in Jackson, MI, we now live in Grand Rapids which is more midwest and we while we are getting married in Michigan, we aren't getting married anywhere close to any of the places mentioned above! Since ALL of our guests will be "out-of-towners" it is very important to have a great map to show what the quaint town of St. Joseph, MI has to offer, as well as help our guests get around for the weekend!
    For the save-the-dates, we are using a vintage postcard with a birds-eye-view of our reception hall as it was in the 1940s on the front with all the standard save-the-date info on the back.
    Our invitations are going to be on vintage handkerchiefs that I have started to collect from Esty. I'm using 5 different fonts (yes all on one invitation!) to give it a vintage and custom feel I and designed our own monogram to be used in different ways on each piece.
    My inspiration comes from all sorts of wedding blogs, including esty wedding, and fell in love with the handkerchief invitations by Birds and Banner and decided to use my 2 year graphic design degree to put my own touch on it. I can't wait for it to come together and I think a custom Madison Claire watercolor map is the perfect finishing touch!

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  48. The graphic designer I work with will design them. Our company will print them in-house! DONE.

    Our wedding is taking place on a plantation in Scott, Arkansas. It's a little tricky driving out there; it's all farmland and dirt roads. A pretty little map would help tremendously! Thanks for the chance to win!

    nicole.boddington@gmail.com

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  49. These maps are beautiful!

    I designed our whole invitation suite (STD, invite, RSVP card and thank you card), and had them printed on birch wood by a company committed to the sustainability of their resources. I couldn't be happier.

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  50. We're getting married in my family's backyard on the shores of Green Bay/Lake Michigan. As a social worker without a lot of money, I'm necessit-arily creative! I am thinking I'm going to incorporate cut-out pink flowers (made with a paper punch) with little black and white brads for centers (I did this for the save the dates and it turned out awesome!). For the matting I'm going to take some Amy Butler fabric and scan it and then take it to a print shop to have some high quality color copies printed out on nice cardstock/paper. Then I'm going to do something simple for the wording part and I might attach the paper to the matting with the flower brads and a little stitching here and there. The little flowers are the hardest part and take forever but it's worth it in the end! I'd love to have a map so people can find their way out to our remote place... many are coming from Florida and might be scared of so much space and wilderness so the map could help them find their way! :)

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  51. Woohoo! I love these.
    We are about to get working on our save the dates, which I have drawn in Illustrator- it has two little cartoon portraits of my fiance and I, surrounded by a bit of flowers and plants, with a banner over head that says "Save the Date." We will be using the amazing GOCCO, which I have never used before, and bought specifically for this purpose. SO, I'm kind of scared. Hopefully, everything turns out alright without too much hair-pulling!
    We bought the pre-cut 4x6" paper from Cards and Pockets and the envelopes, which are in a "paper bag" color, are from Paper Source (LOVE that place!).
    Our invites will be done in the same fashion...using the Gocco printer. I haven't designed them yet, but it would be amazzzing to have this custom watercolor map- I think it'd go with our DIY invites perfectly! (I was planning on drawing my own map anyway, but these are so much better than anything I'd do!)
    Our wedding is going to be a lot of DIY- my mom and I are even doing all of the flower arrangements ourselves- so this would be awesome to win!

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  52. I heart the watercolor wedding maps and would love to have something that special for my wedding. We are in the beginning stages of looking for invites. We are doing a bicycle theme- so I know that will be tied into the invite- and we want to keep it earth friendly so we will def. use recycled paper.

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  53. We found ours on Etsy and adore them. It's been a wonderful experience working directly with the creator and I love that I am supporting the hand-made industry. We did do our own save-the-dates though - we held up a banner with our wedding date on it and had our best man snap a photo, printed it on postcards, and popped it in the mail. Super easy, very fun and economical.

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  54. these maps are BEAUTIFUL. my wedding is actually two part-- the ceremony will be this summer in india with a reception close to my home in NYC. i think a map would be so cool and creative with our destinations... since the wedding is in india, i got my invites printed there-- i went for simple and elegant! great giveaway

    husainn (at) mail.amc.edu

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  55. Our invitations were definitely DIY. I used an example of an invitation that I had seen online and created my own similar one with my limited design skills. We printed them on recycled cardstock and then used jute twine, a custom made rubber stamp and a sprig of native wildflower to embellish them. They were definitely nothing fancy or ground breaking but they fit our budget and feel for the wedding. And, I continually get comments on how much people love them. The best part - they were each about $.70 from start to finish including postage and envelopes. :)

    The maps are beautiful and given my lack of artistry it would be great to have a map for our guests that was clear enough to get them to the right location. ;)

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  56. These maps are beautiful! We are having a destination wedding at the Outer Banks in NC, so a map would be amazingly helpful for our guests. Plus, it would emphasize the fun, beautiful parts of the beach we love!

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  57. oh please pick me! These are beautiful. My wedding is a destination wedding so these would be So helpful... and beautiful!

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  58. We are still very much in the "time to pick a date" part of wedding planning, but I'm imagining designing our own invitations, probably printing them up on a letterpress.

    (any NY-NJ based letterpress operators out there? Anyone who can print up something like this? http://hellowedding.blogspot.com/2010/03/save-date-place.html)

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  59. One of my few specific wants for our wedding was classic invitations on good paper. When they arrived from the lovely card shop where we purchased them, I kept it out where I could admire it for . . . well it is still sitting out on my shelf.

    I will keep our invitations nicely framed, just like my mom has with hers, for years to come. Maybe its the paper, or maybe it is because, as my mom says, I am an "older bride," but I can't take my eyes off of our invitations.

    The historic gazebo and hotel located at a gated community on the shores of lake Erie is the site for our very special day. A map of this special place designed by madison-claire designs would be a simply stunning addition to our wedding. And will look beautiful next to our invitations framed on the wall of a grateful bride.

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  60. Due to budget restraints, I knew right away that I wanted to make my own invitations, but I wanted something more special than the kits you can buy. I fell in love with the look of Gocco invites, and even though they are no longer making it I figured I could get enough of the supplies to pull it off; so I got a used machine. I'm design challenged, so a graphic designer friend is putting them together for me now, and I'll print them once she's complete. I can't wait to get her design and begin my part of the job! I had planned on making my own map, but this would be a much more welcome and beautiful addition to the suite.

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  61. I am a Minneapolis bride, getting married in a country town in Missouri! Our wedding theme is kind of "vintage, county fair" (for lack of better words). We had an aquaintance from college design both our save the date and invites. My close friend here in the Twin Cities just purchased a 1500lb. letterpress machine, so we are going to attempt the invites ourselves! I am really excited to see how this thing works! Our save-the-dates are on chip board and look like a carnival ticket. They say, "Sarah & Kyle are Gettin' Hitched". I just adore them. I could hold one all day! The letter press is beautiful! We have somewhat of a logo with is prize ribbons, with a ferris wheel. We had a custom return address stamp made and I ordered special postage stamps. I wasn't going to ruin all that beautiful hard work by putting some stamp with a duck on my precious yellow envelopes! I would love to share the invites with you too, when we finalize all that! AHHH!!! It is all so fun! With our wedding being Destination, DIY and lots of vintage flair, these fantastic little maps would be PERFECT! Thanks!

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  63. Our diy invitations will be #10 length. My fiance created the sakura flowers similar to a stamp we saw at a sore. We decided the to do the layered booklet style because I always admire it. It will invitation first, followed by the directions/map, the rsvp as a tear out post card. At the end we will add metallic back cover. It will come together with 2 snaps we saw at Paper Source. :)
    Awesome giveaway!!!

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