rustic-travel themed invites

♫…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. 🙂

progress, progress!

Yikes! It’s almost mid-Feb! Don’t you just think how fast time flies nowadays? On the other hand though, the 2 weeks spent waiting for my visa seems like eternity for me and Hubbie. It seems that eight Japan visas (with two under COE), a Schengen visa and other countries’ stamps on my passports are not enough for the powers that be to grant me my visa right away. Some scrutinity still needs to be done. Please, powers that be, a husband and his wife has just got to be together….

Anyways, it’s roughly 11 weeks till our wedding! And I do believe we’re making some good progress.

  • our invites are currently with the printers. Per Erika’s advice, we’d probably have it by Tuesday next week, the latest. Hope we can have it earlier though since we’re still to DIY some parts.
  • booked our emcee at last! after a loooong search, we’ll be having Issa Litton (yes, the one with the Star Wars wedding theme and pulled it off successfully at that). There’s a catch though. There’s some possibility she’ll be overseas for a new show she’s doing at the time of our wedding. So let’s cross our fingers, shall we?
  • booked Jamsy for our lights and sounds, yey! I looked up W@W reviews on Jamsy and they have good reviews (no bad reviews whatsoever) albeit reviews were dated more than a year ago or older. But I’m satisfied with their quotation (asked for bubble and fog machine to be freebies and they obliged, yey! —yes, there’ll be bubbles and fog on the wedding hehe. Yes, even hubbie was surprised. Oh I’m loving this) and our coordinator recommends them so I’m at peace. 🙂
  • sent our spec sheet to K by Cunanan through Macy for detailing. Now waiting for her feedback
  • booked Yellow Coco for my family to stay in during their visit here
  • booked 7 rooms in Sonya’s Garden for Hubbie’s family and other Japanese guests. I wanted 8 Suites but they’re more than 10k pricier than Sonya’s!! To think Sonya’s is already pricey. I am yet to pay Sonya’s though for the booking
  • settled the Church flowers. Will make a detailed post about that soon
  • booked Mang Rey Casedo for the entourage barong. He gave me a pinya fan as freebie 🙂

Next in line are the designs for our wedding favors and the misalette. And oh yeah the list of songs for MPO. And the guest list. Let’s get down to work, shall we?

3 months exactly

Our wedding is gonna be hopefully exactly three months from now!  🙂

I’m really all hoity-toity and giddy today because our invites has already been finalized by Lene! Why giddy? Because it’s soooo pretty!! And creative. And out of the box. I just love Lene Dee-Dragon! And we’ve attained what we’ve been aiming for – your not so usual travel-themed invite. Will share it here on our wedsite once we’ve had our invites delivered to our invitees.

So thankful for Lene who’s designing our invites free of charge, to Rey and Dee sisterhood for giving us a warm stay at their place and for MOH Kat who stayed with me in the Dee household to support and keep me company.

For now, I need to update the invitees list to finalize the total number of guests so as to estimate total number of invitations we need (plus allowance) to make as well as the number of reserved seat for each guest (no allowance) that we will put on the RSVP card.

Yet another ASAP item as well is that I need to update our “Tagaytay Hotels and Sites” page since, well, I made a reference to it on our invites.

We are also currently starting discussions for detailing on Reception styling. And you know what? I just love Detalye. 🙂