♫…brown paper packages tied up with strings,these are a few of my favorite things…♫

Yep, our invites indeed are one of my favorite things (among many others in our wedding details). Ever since I saw a passport invite months before we decided to get married, I was bent on having our invites passport-style. But when I actually got started with the wedding preparation, I learned that a LOT of couples already adopted this idea. We’d only be one in hundreds. How to make our invites a bit different from the others?

Lene certainly had more ideas in mind. In her words, “who said we’re just sticking to passports?” I-just-love-her. See, what she had in mind were for us to have:

• main passport invites, with the front and back cover text and logo gold embossed
• a postcard for the RSVPs and dress code
• a train ticket for our gifts preference (we’ll be based in Japan whilst the wedding is in the Philippines hence we had to specifically request our guests to not to follow Filipino tradition on gift giving – which is actually buying house items for the couple)
• a hotel stationery wherein a
• location map is attached

Lene also tossed the idea of wrapping our invites with brown craft paper for the rustic touch and Erika (Detalye) tossed the idea of sealing it with  logo sticker.

I love each and every part of our invites because of the detail in each. Take for one our train pass. Our inspiration was from Yokohama’s old subway train pass (nowadays, it has the pink PASMO mascot in the background). 

It has some orange logo in the background. And you know what Lene did?

I was beside her when she was doing this bit. We were just talking about some normal topic, totally non-invites related and then wham, she reduced our logo into minis and had it as background for our train ticket. Imagine my giddiness when I realized what she was doing. Lene is just simply awesome, isn’t she? 🙂

To complete our invites, we wrapped it in laminated craft paper and tied it up with a string. Erika’s team (Detalye) was kind enough to buy the strings for me in Divisoria. For somebody who gets sick e-v-e-r-y-t-i-m-e she goes to Divisoria, this favor is really something. Dust and aerosols and any minute particles really doesn’t sit well with my nose (that includes tatami and the dust and mites housed in the tatami which means I shouldn’t stay a lot in out tatami room 🙁  Or better yet, clean the tatami room thoroughly hehe.)

There was one hitch though that really got me pressured. I can’t ask the printer to set up our invites for me because if they fold the paper and tie it up already, I would have to untie it and unfold it again so as to write the RSVPs and addressees. This could result to a much-wrinkled wrap. Shoganai ne, I have to do the wrapping myself. And for one who has untrained hands, this really put a lot of pressure on me.

But nothing is too strong for prayer and determination. True, before I started folding and tying, I had to pray for it. And I had to say this is for Atsushi and our loved ones.  Suffice it to say that each invite was a labor of love. 🙂  And they turned out not so bad after all.

Requested my ex-colleague/friend Russell Olaguer to take some shots of our photos. They turned out really nice, as expected! Together with Douglas Cataylo, Russell also covered our first prenup. I am so excited for our 2nd prenup tomorrow or sunday, granting good weather conditions with Russell and Gali Montalbo!

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Ugh, I can’t delete the first two pics about the train pass in this slideshow. Anyways the map was in full lime green print (not in the pictures, it was the one folded in the hotel stationery), giving balanced exposure of both our wedding colors. Sorry, I had to mosaic the names though, for privacy purposes.

Oh, by the way, do visit Lene’s FB page for her miniatures and be amazed more with her talent.  Please do visit as well Lene’s portfolio. We are thankful as well to Crowne Print through Erika (Detalye) for their very good output/prints of our invite. Really nice work. 🙂