Our Mix Tape Wedding Invites: Mel’s Monday Recap

I  am SO freakin’ excited on this Monday to finally be sharing our Mix Tape and Boom Box Wedding Invitation suite! Seeing that the wedding is over and done with I’m pretty sure all our guests have seen them by now. ;) So how did this instant love affair begin with my invitation designer,  London Tierney, exactly? Through our obsession with mix tapes and love for all things with a vintage/retro-modern twist of course!

A lesson of “it never hurts to ask” played out quite lovely when the talented London uttered the sweetest words ever “YES, I can do that!” to me. =)

See it started when I had the greatest idea ever to design and home print our own save the dates and wedding invitations.  While on my beginner Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator high, I was able to knock out the save the date.

The mix tape was a little potion of Mr. Oceanside’s love for music and my love for, well, anything that was different than a standard save the date magnet! But mix tapes and boom boxes also remind me of 80′s music (which I love) and they also bring back memories of me sitting in my room with my BFF, Tahiana, waiting for our favorite songs to come on the radio so we could run and hit “record” to capture the song and create a new mix tape! Ahhh, good times!

So okay fast forward a few months later when it was time to design our wedding invites. Yeah, not feelin’ it anymore but wedding invitations suites are so darn expensive and of course, like many other brides out there, I was trying to save money. Upon pursuing my favorite go-to website for all random pretty things, no not Pinterest but the other one- Etsy, I came across these a-m-a-z-i-n-g little retro-radio tiny tags  in London’s Etsy shop. I think I remember squealing really loud when I first laid eyes on them. See, Mr. Oceanside and I were tossing around wedding “theme” ideas and how we could tie in our original mix tape save the date. A million and one people reminded me that I didn’t need to have a “theme” carried out if I didn’t want to but the mix tape save the date alone would have kind of been random. Sooo of course I had to figure out a way to “mix” it in.  =)

So after seeing these tags…

And then these fab ones…

I decided to send a message to London to find out if she could customize the tags to match our colors. In that convo I mentioned to her that I was going to attempt to design our own invitations and she mentioned that can design pretty much anything and would be happy to help if I needed it. Ahhh, music to my ears!  This is where I began to fall in love. Okay, so after exchanging a few more emails about what I was looking for and discussing pricing and all, it was settled. My initial thoughts of London possibly being an angel sent from God was confirmed. She was. I seriously believe that.

So London and I discussed what elements I wanted in terms of color theme, details like specific verbiage & headers I wanted, the doily/lace background, mix tape and boom box, and of course I wanted headphones put on my fur baby, Mr. Boston Garcia!

A few more weeks later and this super FUN box arrived (and London delivered JUST want I wanted!):

Here is my invitation/fabric flower work shop table a.k.a. my mother’s dining room table! My step-dad was a trooper because I pretty much owned this table for about 6 months before the wedding.

The main invite:

The wedding weekend itinerary:

The RSVP was printed double sided, with one side being the actual “RSVP” with the other side inviting guests to request a song. I have to tell you the song request was a huge hit and I LOVED receiving them over the month or so before the wedding. It definitely added to the “wedding experience!” I was actually quite bummed once the RSVP’s stopped rolling in simply because there were no more songs to YouTube anymore. =(

Our envelope wrap label:

Our complete music-inspired wedding invitation suite:

All wrapped up with love and ready to go out in the mail!

The envelopes were zigzag stitched bakery bags with coral dots sealed with washi tape (which has become my newest obsession lately). I was looking for something unique and this was definitely it for me! I had actually seen fabric invitations with stitched elements before which I LOVED but never a bakery bag! So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out London also had these in her collection of amazingness…

I had to snap a pic of our first RSVP envelope that returned, lol. I cheesed so hard every time I got one of these mini bakery bags back in the mail.

London is seriously talented so I definitely encourage all you bride to be’s out there to check her out if not for her invites, but fun tags, custom buttons, and twine collection!

Ahhh so finally! There’s the recap. I know I’m so behind but trust me, I’ve been dying to share these invites with everyone!  So tell me, what do you think???