Last friday two of my favorite people were married. It was a small family affair with a follow-up after party held at the groom’s house in late October. I received the invite for the party and instantly thought that the bride, Jessica, had designed it, though both she and Jim are designers. I come to find out that…no, it was Jim that created this grizzly-rich wedding invite. I had to ask him a few questions on how he DIY’ed the reception invite himself…

HD: How did you come up with the idea for the invite?

Jim: Since the event isn’t meant to be a formal wedding reception, all of the traditional ideas kind of went out the window. We wanted to have an open house at my parents home that people could drop in and say hi, grab some food etc. Just more casual. No fuss. So since the party is going to be in the woods essentially, I thought of using recognizable wild animals from the midwest (Neither moose nor bear are usually found in Midland, but that’s part of the fun). The standing bear made for a nice form to place the invite info, and I was able to style the type to make it look like his belly to add to the laid back vibe of the event.

HD: Did you try to find a balance between a male/female perception of the invite? Or did Jessica give you complete freedom in the design?

Jim: I had total freedom. I didn’t want to create something that was too masculine or feminine. I thought the balance was struck by pairing the masculine text/layout with refined and beautiful materials.

HD: What materials did you use to create your reception invite?

Jim: Jessica and I went to Paper Source to buy supplies for our wedding invites and on a whim bought the wood grain silkscreen paper from Hambly Designs, because we really liked it. When we got home Jessica thought of the idea to incorporate it into the reception invites. From there, it was pretty much in my hands. I picked a khaki paper to print all of the vitals on using our inkjet at home and the shimmery chocolate paper for the envelopes and invite. I thought that dark chocolate color would complement the gold stamp nicely. We had the stamp made by The Chicago Rubber Stamp store and tried a couple of different inking techniques before landing on using a brayer and woodblock printing ink.

HD: What do you think of the wedding industry?

Jim: Hmmm…I think the wedding industry has become pretty ridiculous. Spending $50,000 on a wedding seems like an insane way to start a relationship in my opinion. We are splurging on some things like flowers and clothing for the event, but it just made sense for us to DIY all of the invites because I mean, I’m a designer with a fine art background, why not?

Contact Jim for more than invites and check out his professional design site here.
email him: tactics@zimmer-design.com