Photos: Edyta Szyszlo

Yep! The little birdie, fly on the wall, grapevine, word on the street was right – Jared and I are officially engaged! Late April means 11 years since our first date. Time sure does fly :) Never in a rush, we explored the world and strived for greatness all while supporting each other. Timing just feels right now. So here we are! I know you want to hear about the behind the scenes :) Well, we are definitely romantic in our own way and aren’t really keen on the ‘standard’ or ‘traditional’ so I told him not to get down on one knee. Ever. Or to have the pressure of buying the perfect ring – we’ve been together for 11 years, why not do it together!? We’ve talked for months regarding wedding day details (I’m in the industry duh!) and we basically mapped out the feeling of our big day before any official engagement. It happened one night, laying in bed doing our normal chit-chat routine, we decided to ask each other. Casual, cuddly and emotionally charged as we both asked each other, “will you marry me?”.  Perfection.

And of course, we had to think of a unique way to let our family and friends know. A call, text and social media announcement just wasn’t going to cut it for us ;) We were inspired by the word search puzzles. So we designed, crafted away (hired some amazing people to help us) and snail mailed a anonymous surprise message via a word search puzzle as the sole way for everyone to find out our news. Keeping a secret like this for 10 DAYS is incredibly hard – especially when you have fun social things planned with the ones you love. But we did it! I want to give Ryanne Steele a HUGE MEGA thanks for the fantastic calligraphy on our envelopes. She’s an emerging calligraphy talent and went over the moon to get these to us in time. You can find some of her work on IG @steelemyheart and please email me info(at)edytaszyszlo.com for her direct contact info. Her website is still in the works. Enjoy the images, I hope you find them inspirational and fun! And yes, this was mostly a diy so I’ll include some tips at the end of the post.

Tips and Details!

Black Envelopes from Paper Source

Calligraphy by Ryanne Steele (contact me directly for her info)

Envelope Liners – made by me. Gold fringe liner made by cutting and layering pieces of gold foil onto a liner template. Inspired by Confetti System :) Other designs made by using a roll of gold foil purchased online and a glue stick. Scalloped pattern paper purchased from Flax Art in SF. The gold foil roll was leftover from another fabric project, I played with different adhesives as the one recommend for fabrics wasn’t working for paper. I tried smearing a glue stick, adhering the gold foil and peeling the backing off. IT WORKED! Abstract glue stick smears made for a modern and fun gold foil affect. Paper Source has a fun liner kit for all sizes of envelopes. Double-sided tape works great for tacking the liner to the envelope.

Postcard – designed by us using Illustrator. Local printing company did the gold foil stamp/printed on thick white paper.