Dual Anniversary Party

 I just finished up an invitation for a dual anniversary party that will be held in late May. It is for the client's parents, who are celebrating 40 years of marriage, and grandparents, who are celebrating 60 years of marriage. The party will be held at a winery under a gazebo in the afternoon.

A lot of things came to mind when brainstorming this project.  These are both huge milestone anniversaries. The client suggested something springy, she was thinking flowers so I started there.  No matter how many flowers I tried, I just couldn't make it work.  Maybe it was because I just finished the ideas for the gerber daisy invitations and I was all flowered out!  I did some more exploring.  I found out that the 40th anniversary gift is the ruby and the flower is the nasturtium.  The 60th anniversary gift is diamonds but there was no flower associated with this important turning point.  I tried my hardest to work these with elements.  No luck.  Rubies and diamonds really don't say garden party, even just working with the colors was proving difficult.  Only having a flower to represent 40th anniversary wasn't helping either.  Maybe I was taking all if this way too literally.  

I took a different approach.  It takes a lot of hard work and love to make a marriage last as long as these two couple have.  Strength and endurance is essential.  They enjoyed the good times, weathered the bad and lived to tell the tale!   It suddenly hit me, there is one icon in nature that projects this strength and everlasting beauty, a tree.  

I started searching and found a picture of a tree that I had taken in Central Park one spring.  It was perfect.  The leaves were just beginning to grow.   Strong branches and an old sturdy trunk supported these leaves and the tiny creatures that made it their home.  It took a lot of magic wand and pen tool to extract this pillar or strength from it's background.  I then had to use the rubber stamp to add leaves where the tree was cut off on the sides.  It was worth the effort, the tree came out beautifully and with the addition of a little grass at the bottom, this invitation really started to take shape.  

The fonts I used were Gill Sans and Scriptina.  The latter is a soft, swingy font that evokes thoughts of summer days spent relaxing under your favorite oak tree, daydreaming, or twirling around so fast that you fall down on the green grass, laughing so hard your stomach aches.  It encompasses the feel of this light and happy time. It also sets the guests of honor apart from the rest of the information, highlighting this extraordinary event.  

At this point the invitation was just about finished but it was still missing something. It needed one final touch.  I thought of a bird and knew that that is what it needed.  The placement of it on the line of type pulls the entire scene together and allows all the elements to interact.  This is exactly what it needed!

So, here we are again, waiting for a reply.  I sent this to the client last night in hopes that she approves.  Patience is a virtue, as my grandmother used to say!