Destination Wedding Diaries: Creating Our Invitations

Planning our destination wedding hasn’t been a fun process for me. The entire rigmarole, which I’ve heard is supposed to be exciting and romantic, has instead felt like a stressful ordeal; from struggling to find the perfect wedding venues in Italy (our dream destination!) to the wedding planner failing to secure our chosen venues and boldly trying to re-book our ceremony elsewhere.  At times I’ve felt like the universe is conspiring against our big day. First world problems, right?

I considered washing my hands of the whole thing and applying for Don’t Tell The Bride more than once. Thankfully though, things are back on track and we’re finally able to send out wedding invitations to our guests. I’ve been bursting to do this for so long!

Our Save The Date cards and wedding invitations were very kindly gifted to us by Rosemood Atelier. Aren’t they beautiful? Rosemood are a French brand who specialise in personalised stationery.

The online design and ordering process was so simple. I got email updates at every stage so I always knew exactly what was happening. It was a very positive experience at a time when basically every other element of wedding planning was going wrong, and I’m very grateful for that.

It felt like the fun part was finally starting the moment I got my wedding stationery in my hands.

Tips for designing your wedding invitations

I had no idea where to start with designing my wedding invitations so it was really useful to have a site like Rosemood Atelier’s to guide me through the process. The user journey is a bit like that of Moonpig or Canva, so it felt quite familiar and easy to navigate. Lucky, because I don’t do Photoshop or anything too techy!

Choosing a design for your invitations

Your wedding invitations are likely to be the first hint guests will receive of your overall wedding theme. Will it be modern or traditional? Whimsical or bold? Rosemood have a small but rather lovely selection of designs to choose from. They’re all customisable, so you can alter them to reflect your wedding’s overarching vibe.

I really liked the idea of having a photograph on the front of ours when I spotted a few designs with this option but there wasn’t time to go out and shoot something suitable. I was too eager to get my wedding invitations ordered!

Instead, we went for something simple, romantic and elegant with gold foil stamped font to add a bit of glamour to our invitations. We kept the Save The Dates simple, and chose an easy-to-read typeface.

Choosing a palette

In the interest of keeping things consistent, we picked colours that complement our wedding colour palette. Okay – I picked colours that complement our wedding colour palette. I doubt Tom knows what that even is.

Since we’re a while away from finalising – our even starting to choose – our decor for the wedding, I just went for colours that are similar to the flowers I have in mind. I was a tad apprehensive about the paper quality because ordering online means you can’t actually feel the item, but our Traditional Textured Ivory Paper was perfect.

What to write on your wedding invitations

In terms of wedding invitation wording etiquette, I had a helping hand from Rosemood Atelier because their designs have wording pre-populated. Of course, I adapted the text a little to make it more personal. Traditionally, wedding invitations are addressed from the bride’s family but that wasn’t right for us, so I chose to write, ‘Together with their families, Dannielle & Tom would…”

(Oh, and we argued over whose name should come first. I won because mine is first alphabetically, and then I read on the Rosemood website that the bride’s traditionally comes first anyway. Score.)

The main details to include on wedding invitations are the couples’ names, date, time and location of the wedding and RSVP contact details. I didn’t give people an RSVP deadline but I asked that people let us know ASAP, and I’ll chase anyone who dithers!

Because all of our guests will be invited to both the ceremony and the reception, I didn’t think it was necessary to give details about the reception venue. We’re sorting out transport for everyone between the two venues and would prefer it was a surprise. My cousin did this (I showed up basically knowing nothing about the day’s plan) and it was brilliant.

Double check everything!

Once the design was done, I chose some pretty pink envelopes and hit Submit, with the beginnings of full wedding mode blooming in my chest.

I tend to rush things and always have to remind myself to triple check everything, especially when money is involved. The fact that Rosemood offer a review service when you place your order really put my mind at ease. Their proofreaders double check each card while their graphic designers ensure that any photos look good and that each card is perfectly balanced.

For our Save The Dates, I’d picked a font colour that didn’t contrast with the background shade enough, so they sent me a heads up that I should probably change it, and recommended a simple swap that would make it look perfect. I was really pleased with their help.

Five days later, my wedding stationary arrived. I was so excited!

Other important wedding stationary

In addition to Save The Dates (which I feel are important for a destination wedding because people need time to save and book the travel), you might like to add Guest Information Cards. I did plan to create lovely little cards with hotel recommendations, which airport to fly to and the like, but decided our guests can figure everything out for themselves. When we first decided on a destination wedding, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Just so you know, I’m not planning everyone’s holiday for them.” I have to keep reminding myself of that!

You can also order RSVP cards, stickers and belly bands to complete the wedding stationary suite.

Depending on what our venues offer (we won’t know full details of our decor options until six months before the wedding), I’d like to order wedding menu cards and place cards for the day too.

When to send out your wedding invitations

We’re keen to send our wedding invitations out as early as possible because we’re aware that with a destination wedding, people will need plenty of advance notice so they can plan and save up. I’m aiming for everyone to get their invitations ten months before the big day, just so they can start booking their holidays at work!

If you’re not having a destination wedding, four months should be plenty of time.

Now all we can do is relax and wait for the RSVPs to come back! Despite a few setbacks that my darling future husband stepped in to navigate because I was too busy throwing tantrums, I’m starting to enjoy the more frivolous aspects of wedding planning. Wedding dress shopping in Newcastle was fabulous and I think I’ve found my dress, but obviously I won’t be sharing that until my wedding day.

Are there any other wedding planning blog posts you’d be interested in? I’m enjoying sharing the process and have been given some really great advice from readers, so I’ll keep going with this series and try to cover everything!

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, our wedding stationery was gifted to me by Rosemood in exchange for this review. Views are my own.

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