You’ve gotta love YouTube, it just throws up all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff everyday!  Today, one of my twitter buddies tweeted about this unusual Save The Date - they filmed a youtube video spoofing action movies!

A hot trend for 2010 is for more and more couples to be using some form of video in their wedding - a music video style montage with photos of the couple growing up, and their relationship is becoming quite popular.  Maybe this Save The Date video concept will take off in Ireland too, who knows?!

Wedding Invitations can be tricky business, and getting the wording just right is very important as you want to get the pertinent info in there, make sure whoever’s paying for the wedding are named and also set the right theme for your day (formal, relaxed etc)

Came across this handy little tool: an Invitation Wording Wizard where you answer a few easy questions about your wedding and voilá they come up with the appropriate wording for the invites.  You can get them printed from that site (there are a selection of templates to choose from) or you can just take their ideas to your own printer.  Easy peasy!

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you’ll know that I am in love with the quirky and more unusual ideas and my designer Sabrina Dent is a nut for design and a bit of a Stalinist when it comes to invitations and fonts.  So happily, this post deals with both quirky and unusual AND invitations!

I stumbled across this incredibly cool invite on the web this week and contacted the designer to see if I could share it with you fine folk.  She graciously obliged and voilá!  Check out these uber-cool invites she photographed and designed for her friends David and Fiona.

FRONT:

Annie took the photo of the couple, David and Fiona, with their dog Lola.  This adds a whole lot of personalisation to the wedding invitation.

BACK:

David wrote the text for the invite himself and Annie designed the typography to give it a bit of a vintage feel.  I love how informal this is and really sets itself so apart from traditional wedding invitations.  To me, it almost feels like a flyer for a music festival or something.

RSVP:

Annie also included a very informal RSVP page, which lets face it, even in these years of email and facebook people still love receiving post and none is more special than a wedding RSVP Card.

Annie Atkins, photographer and Graphic Artist is based in Dublin and is available for all types of design work and I’m sure would love to do some more wedding invites if the opportunity presented itself!  You can see more of her work and contact her via her website: http://www.annieatkins.com

Last Sunday I was invited down to Adare Manor to their wedding fair to check out the property and see what the renowed 5 star property has to offer potential brides.

Let me tell you…ALOT!  It was incredible to see a black carriage being pulled by 2 large black horses with the white feather plumes coming out of the top of their heads!  The Manor itself is really spectacular, and the banqueting hall in particular would be amazing for a wedding ceremony.  For parties up to 90 people they can set the room up with a long extended banquet table - spectacular!

They had invited Wedding Planner to the Stars Tatiana Byron to speak to the brides and grooms to be, about Wedding Trends for 2010.  Diligent as I am, I scribbled notes for you guys so here we go!

A key piece of advice from Tatiana - Approach any decision for your wedding day with one thought in your mind: “How is this going to affect my wedding guests?”  If you always consider your guests then you can’t go too far wrong with your decisions.

Top 10 Trends for 2010

#1 Personalization is key

Suggestions:

• Custom designed monograms for the couple.  This can be used throughout throughout the wedding day from lights on the dance floor, the aisle runner, invitations, cake toppers, menus….the list goes on!
• Custom Wedding Songs.  You tell the story and a musician creates a song, you can use for your first dance, for your wedding “music video” etc.
• Get a characaturist to do a picture of you the couple which can be used on invitations, to display at the wedding etc.  Black Eye Peas singer Fergie did this for her wedding!

#2 Wedding Colours

Suggestions:

• Trend at the moment is anything but traditional, Vibrant colours such as oranges, yellows, hot pinks, greens etc.
• Use colours as a common thread in your wedding - flowers, linens, invitations, table cloths etc.

#3 Themed Weddings

Suggestions:

• French Opulence is popular for 2010.  Think Chateau Versailles.
• Word of caution.  If you are going for a themed wedding, you have to embrace the theme throughout to be true to it and to create the atmosphere you are looking for.  This will inevitably drive up the overall cost of your wedding.

#4 Eco Friendly Chic

“Green Factor” Suggestions:

• Food and Flowers - grown within 100 mile radius, organic farming
• Invitations - sustainable materials eg bamboo, plantable seeds, recycled paper etc.  Katherine Heigl had an Eco Friendly Wedding.
• Favours - homemade organic cookies, organic caramel apples, potted tulips, bamboo coaster & plants…these are a symbol of good luck!

#5 Signature Cocktails

Suggestons:

• Serve your favourite cocktail & name it aafter the happy couple á la “Brangelina”
• Cocktail menus can feature your monogram
• Cocktails can be matched to your colour scheme, eg coloured liquers, sugar crystals on glass etc.

#6 Dessert

Suggestions:

• Cupcake displays very trendy in last year or so
• Dessert Spreads and Candy “Bars”
  • Gourmet chocolates
  • Colourful and towerinig desserts
  • Lollipop gardens
  • mini cupcake towers v popular
• Use your monogram on your cake
• Personalised M&Ms with your initials (only costs about €150)

#7 Entertainment

Suggestions:

• Non Traditional Performances
  • Electric Concert Violinists
  • Cirque style performers
  • Stilt walkers escorting guests
• Trend at the moment for “music videos” in weddings which is basically a 1.5 minute video/photo montage of the couple which can be put to music and shown at the wedding

#8 Bridal Fashion

Trends:

• Bridal Fashion follows runways of Paris and Milan
• Brides showing more skin
• Mini dresses
• Multiple gowns for the evening
• Convertable dresses
• Old Hollywood Glamour, think Grace Kelly
• Romantic/Princess like gowns
• Sheer fabrics & lace
• Mismatched Bridal gowns
• one gown, multiple looks
• Alyssa Milano’s bridesmaids all looked different
• Shop: Sydney, New York OR London; 2Birds Bridesmaid make 1bridesmaids dress for weddings which can be worn in 15 different styles!  Something to suit all shapes and sizes and is sure to please your bridesmaids.

#9 Beauty & Accessories

Trends:

• Hair down with simple headpiece á la Fergie
• Birdcage Veils v popular
• Statement Jewellry - beaded necklaces
• Natural Make up
• Loose cascading curls
• Antique brooches used in hair

#10 New Things!

• Wedding Websites so couples can share their planning process and journey with their family and friends eg. mywedding.com, projectwedding.com
  • Can share updates on hotels, recreation activities, restaurants etc.
  • Involve your guests in your wedding planning process
  • If you are having a “destination wedding” then a wedding website is almost obligatory to keep people informed of the plan for the few days you are expecting them to travel for.
• Blogging about your experience is also a growing trend amongst brides-to-be.
  • Build a Bridal Community
• Honour your heritage.
  • If you have traditions in your family, your wedding is a lovely time to integrate them into your new family!
  • Think about food inspired by your heritage, music etc etc.
• Celebrities are a great source of inspiration.
• Ultimately your wedding is about YOU!
• Follow trends but always add the personal touch.

You know how everything to do with a wedding is really freakin’, annoyingly expensive? Well, here’s a free template set for beautiful, customised multi-piece wedding invitations:

The set includes invitation, RSVP card and Save the Date card, too. These templates come courtesy of Etsy designer curlygnomes and are available to download for free at Vecteezy.

They come in EPS format, which means you need Photoshop (or a compatible graphics program) to open them. They can be re-coloured, the fonts can be changed, and obviously you can edit them to add your own information.

If you want to DIY your invitations, you could colour print each piece on heavy stock paper with a good quality printer at home, or you can have your invitations custom printed and cut by your local printer instead.

If you’re like me, one of the best reasons to DIY your invitations is because you’re obsessive about fonts, and have a veritable cornucopia of beautiful fonts you’ve just been waiting for the right occasion to use - like your wedding invitations.

Biscotti is one of those fonts - and if you’re wondering why it looks so absolutely perfect for a wedding:

…that is because it was designed for a different kind of client. Brides magazine wanted “a typeface that makes the reader feel pretty; it should capture the voice of this happy occasion”. Highsmith developed a simple and clean descendant of the flourished engraved scripts that are traditionally deemed suitable for wedding invitations and the like. Biscotti is a contemporary typeface that captures the smiling spirit of these classical forms.

Biscotti is available to buy online, and at $40 for each weight - regular and bold - it’s positively cheap as paid fonts go. When you consider that with a well planned wedding, you’ll use it for invitations, orders of service, table cards, menus and even your thank you notes, that’s a lot of mileage out of $80 - and so pretty!

Are we drooling yet? These absolutely stunning wedding invites are from the aptly named LoveLetters.ie, and are currently on sale until the 18th of December.

Self-assembly packs offer a huge savings over most printed invitation options, and are surprisingly easy. The gorgous invites pictured above start at €2.00 per invite, which if you’ve been shopping around you know is excellent value for something this chic. All of the pieces come pre-cut in the right sizes, and include the coordinating ribbons, belly bands, etc - so all you have to do is compose and print your own invitation text onto the provided sheets, assemble the pieces into gorgeous, stunning invites, and post the lot off.

If you’re not feeling confident about DIYing your own invites, Love Letters has some helpful, confidence boosting information on how to do it with style. As they point out, “handmade doesn’t have to look homemade”and they are totally right - I’m only moderately crafty and did my own invitations, and frankly they turned out knock-your-socks-off posh. Go for it!

Most of us do not end up walking down the aisle with our very first loves, and in retrospect I’m glad of that fact. Not only did I score a rather fabulous husband, but I avoided having my first boyfriend’s mother chained around my neck for the rest of my life.

This woman hated me. She hated me so much she refused to address me in the first person. Her contempt dripped off her like her tacky, tacky perfume - and the antipathy was entirely mutual.

The problem was less me and more the fact that no teenaged hussy was good enough for her boy, but I sincerely did a double-take when I saw these yesterday:

I’m pretty sure these invitations are not real, but I just have this creepy feeling that had my life worked out slightly differently, they could have been.