A few months ago at SxSW, I was sitting around a lunch table with Laura, Helen Jane, and Aubrey talking about doing a project together.

All of us like entertaining and planning events, and since “plan a retreat” is on my life list, we settled on a weekend away for a small group of Internet girlfriends. We reserved boon hotel + spa, a tiny place near the cabin, decided to call it the Broad Summit as a joke, and started in on planning.

I’ve been so inspired by all of Jordan’s amazing invitation ideas, and her philosophy of invitations as little gifts that get people excited about the festivities.

I’ve also always wanted to make an invitation in a wooden box, and because the retreat is in wine country, we wanted the invites to look like mini wine crates. Helen Jane works with a lot of wineries, so she called in a favor from Delgadillo Cellars who makes these custom adorables. Helen Jane pulled together a logo, and they silkscreened it on the lid.

When you have grand invitation ideas, it’s helpful to have a graphic designer as a partner. Helen Jane and I spent a weekend figuring out the wine labels (which are an enlarged version of the flag logo printed on trimmed Avery labels), and the included “map.”

We originally thought we’d put champagne glasses in with the wine splits, but settled on silly straws (from Target) because we loved the mental image of everyone sipping straight from the bottles. Because the hotel is in the Russian River Wine Country, the blue straws inspired us to make maps with a tongue-in-cheek legend that hints at our plans for the weekend.

We attached a little bit of bakers’ twine to the top of the map, so you can pull it out to reveal invitation details on a second sheet behind the map.

I’m so happy with the outcome, and I love the idea of friends all over the country celebrating early with mini bottles of bubbly. Cheers!