We have finally come to the end of a very, very, very long road — invites. A project that took over three months to complete. A short summary of the 500-step process involved:

• designing the invites, which was impossible until I was able to grasp the look and feel of the wedding. To do this, I tried to create a series of logos and design elements that would be able to be carried throughout the invitations, and  wedding. Some graphic designers are absolute genius at this, I, however, am not. This took me FOREVER. Thanks to my designer-friends and non-design friends (and sly) for helping me sort out my zillions of idea.
• enlisting my friend to help me with production (she’s way better in print production than I am). This basically saved my sanity, and if it weren’t for her help, I’m pretty sure I would have jumped off the bridge at this point. We spent many countless hours bouncing ideas off one another, setting up files, running test prints, fixing things.
• enlisting yet another friend to help me with the copy for the travel guide.
• after all content had been gathered, then came the nightmare of printing the invites on a circa 1928 hand letterpress borrowed from a friend. I took one course in letterpressing about 10 years ago — this was nothing like that class. Beyond setting up the files, we had so many issues regarding block size, gauging, creating a ‘make-ready,” embossing, pantone matching, alignment, cropping right angles, paper type. And on and on and on. To say this is a labor of love is a major understatement: the people around me must have really loved me to put up with all this crap.
• finally, after days (and long nights) of setting up, and getting everything just right, we pulled our first print. After ensuring we knew what we were doing (rather late in the game), I brought on Sly for manpower., who pumped out a stack of invites.

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