My Design

My friend Molly and I had a different beginning to our friendship than anyone I've ever known. We met in Richmond, VA for a two-week copy editing seminar that was part of my summer internship back during my junior year of college. Molly lived in St. Petersburg, FL, and knew that someone (out of the 16 of us) in the seminar was going to St. Pete for their internship. When she learned it was me, she glommed onto me in hopes that I would drive her back to Florida when I left. Concerned that her intentions were just about getting a free ride home and possibly killing me and leaving me for dead on a roadside in Georgia or some shit, it was a weird start to a friendship that has happily been going on for almost 13 years.

When she came to DC in October for some work training, we got to have dinner and catch up after not seeing each other in several years. During all the chatter I asked her what date her wedding was because I couldn't remember her telling me previously. "Funny you should ask," she said. "We just decided last week to not wait and it's going to be in about 7 weeks." That was OK by me, until she started mildly panicking because with the nuptials about two months away, very little had been done to plan the grand affair.

Being the (foolish) nice guy that I am, I offered to help with with the wedding invitations since I could tell she hadn't given it any thought and she was going to end up paying out the wazzoo because of the tight deadlines she was under. We talked briefly and then over the course of about a week got design comps for her to choose among and started printing. It was pretty crazy to work with her in such a short time frame, but I have to give her and John (the lucky guy) kudos for focusing in and knowing exactly what they wanted and how they wanted things to look, which made the process move smoothly. They wanted to emphasize Florida, orange groves and didn't want straight photos. They wanted the artwork to be more of a painted look, so that was a nice challenge to find the proper photography that leant itself to some creative photoshopping.


In the end I was really pleased with how everything turned out considering how we had to get it all done and printed and mailed in 11 days. And considering how we hadn't spent a lot of time talking to each other over the years and had a lot of catching up to do, it was very brave of Molly and John to put their trust in me to do right by them, and I don't underestimate that at all. So I thank them for believing in me and after the compliments I got from her family and friends at the wedding, I couldn't be happier with the end products. Congrats, Molly and John.