First of all, can I just say how exciting it is to get these little envelopes in the mail? I know it makes absolutely no sense--after all, I was the one who addressed and stamped the things! And yet I get a little flutter in my chest every time I see one of those pretty white-and-yellow envelopes in my mailbox.
Now, I have a confession to make: I bought these luxe beauties at Michaels. I am not one of those brides who lusts after 5-dollars-each invitations, nor am I quite crafty enough to come up with something pretty on my own. But after stalking the wedding aisles at Target and Michaels for several months, I finally found some that I LOVED. They matched my wedding colors and the overall tone I was trying to set. The best part? They were $20 for 40 invitations, and I had a 20% off coupon. So the grand total for my fancy-shmancy invitations was $64.
Okay, enough intro. Ready for some eye candy? I really hate having to blur out the details, but just imagine these without weird grayish patches running across them:
This is the whole "invitation suite". That sounds so fancy!
The invitation itself, both the outside & inside.
The invitation with the envelope
I printed each person's name on their RSVP card. It guarantees I won't get any RSVPs back and wonder who they're from! It took some work, but I'm really happy with this little detail.
The RSVP card with its envelope
I adore these invitations, but they definitely required some work. And some cursing at my printer, but we won't get into that. This is what my coffee table looked like during this whole process:
There was actually a template to download from the company's website, but because I use Open Office instead of Microsoft Office it wasn't compatible, so I had to start from scratch. I downloaded fonts from dafont.com (Engravers MT for the body of the invitation and English for our names).
After the invitations were printed, I had to glue them into the folders and then add the ribbon. Thank goodness for my friends, because without them I would still be working on these! Instead we popped in the first Sex and the City movie, opened a bottle of champagne (or two or three...) and cranked these puppies out in a couple of hours.
I used clear address labels--I know you're supposed to handwrite addresses, but I honestly have the worst handwriting ever and thought THAT would offend people more than address labels would. For the addresses themselves I took the somewhat controversial step of making the invitations out to "FirstName and FirstName LastName and Family" rather than "Mr. and Mrs. LastName and Family." I sent my Save-the-Dates out to Mr. and Mrs. and a lot of my female friends and family got offended that their names weren't listed on the invitation separately. Eh, whatever keeps the most people happy, right? I try not to stress about it too much.
So there you have it. In retrospect, these invitations were a lot more work than I thought they would be, but I would really say it's worth it considering the results-to-effort ratio. And ESPECIALLY considering the results-to-price ratio. Now, to sit back and wait for more RSVPs to roll in. Are you listening, potential wedding guests? Just sitting around waiting...
That's Trigger, supervising the invitation-making.
There was actually a template to download from the company's website, but because I use Open Office instead of Microsoft Office it wasn't compatible, so I had to start from scratch. I downloaded fonts from dafont.com (Engravers MT for the body of the invitation and English for our names).
After the invitations were printed, I had to glue them into the folders and then add the ribbon. Thank goodness for my friends, because without them I would still be working on these! Instead we popped in the first Sex and the City movie, opened a bottle of champagne (or two or three...) and cranked these puppies out in a couple of hours.
I used clear address labels--I know you're supposed to handwrite addresses, but I honestly have the worst handwriting ever and thought THAT would offend people more than address labels would. For the addresses themselves I took the somewhat controversial step of making the invitations out to "FirstName and FirstName LastName and Family" rather than "Mr. and Mrs. LastName and Family." I sent my Save-the-Dates out to Mr. and Mrs. and a lot of my female friends and family got offended that their names weren't listed on the invitation separately. Eh, whatever keeps the most people happy, right? I try not to stress about it too much.
So there you have it. In retrospect, these invitations were a lot more work than I thought they would be, but I would really say it's worth it considering the results-to-effort ratio. And ESPECIALLY considering the results-to-price ratio. Now, to sit back and wait for more RSVPs to roll in. Are you listening, potential wedding guests? Just sitting around waiting...
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