Paper Goodies: Setting up the Invitations

Hive, I have to be honest with you. I still have a little bit of bitterness and/or resentment toward our invitations. They are GORGEOUS, don't get me wrong, but MOH Mem and I put so.much.time. into them. I swear on all that is sacred: I still have nerve damage in my thumb from holding the scissors for hours. 

We DIY'd these suckers, bottom to top. I know - Miss Palm Tree, the self-proclaimed DIY Sadim (Midas backwards), DIY'ing INVITES. All I can say is that I'm stubborn, determined, in a probably unhealthy relationship with all things paper and so grateful for MOH Mem (and also BM Tiny Dancer, who helped in intervals and on a smaller scale).

personal photo | Yeah. This happened. 

Advice from Miss Palm Tree: I love our invitations, but honestly, if you have room in your budget, buy them. Or at least source parts of them out - the printing, the assembly, whatever. Not only did I create/tweak a design and the wording, but I printed it onto cardstock. We cut the cardstock and used adhesives to stick it onto fancy backing paper (that we also cut to size). We cut the RSVP cards and put them in their envelope. We hole-punched hearts, we cut ribbon, we hole-punched info cards, we assembled the cards on the ribbon, MOH Mem tied the ribbon (the one time I tried I ripped the sides of the invite. . .sigh), I addressed the invites, we stamped and sealed them. It's a lot, Hive, and it took us two sittings - one of which consisted of well over seven hours - to complete them. All I could think in the back of my head was, "these are going to end up in the garbage." I'm not even hating on that, I get it: paper, clutter, whatever. Of course you're going to recycle/throw away the invitation because why keep it? Granted, I keep the really nice ones, because I'm sentimental and goofy, but there are plenty that still make it into File 13, you know? That's fine. But to know that's the inevitable end of the result of our bruised thumbs and damaged nerves and chunks of time. . . siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Pour one out for the homies, Hive. Invitations can be a bitch.

Enough misery. Let's get to the details. 

I purchased the envelopes from Envelope Mall, on the recommendation from a co-worker. This was a total win. I went with the Stardream line for everything, including the backing paper. 

image via Envelope Mall 

image via Envelope Mall

As you can see, the envelope colors literally matched our colors perfectly: aquamarine and sapphire. Dreams can come true, you guys.

I went with the Anthracite backing paper, and I used the Silver paper for the heart cut-outs (more on that later). For the actual invitation itself, I used plain white cardstock that I think I bought from Staples. I don't know if this was weird or not, using the heavier material for the actual invitation and the lighter/flimsier material for the backing, but it was aesthetically pleasing and cost-effective. 

The heart punch I keep referring to was purchased from Michael's. It's this one, except the heart wasn't scalloped: 

image via Michael's

I also purchased those fun scissors with the different patterns and beautiful silver sparkly wire-y (so helpful, I know) ribbon from Michael's. Inside Info: Miss Palm Tree is spay-shul and totally cut the first ones backwards, like held the scissors the wrong way for the mock up because she liked that pattern better/didn't realize it was wrong, so that's how we did the rest of them. This probably adds to our nerve damage, right?

Now the really fun stuff! Just like Miss Lemur, I fell in love with the free printables at Wedding Chicks. They are honestly so fun and whimsical, which is what I wanted to communicate to our guests: you will have fun at this wedding, I promise. Mr. Palm Tree okay'd them (true story: he did not give a BLEEP about these invitations. We could've sent Facebook invites and he would've been okay with it), agreed on their cuteness, so off I went to tweak.

I didn't do much - I just replaced the wording with our own and changed the fonts a bit. The design itself is totally courtesy of Wedding Chicks and their gorgeous, generous creator.

image via Wedding Chicks | We only used the invite and the RSVP card.

downloaded via Wedding Chicks | I used these colors, but changed the wording a bit. You'll see that in my next post.

These were SO perfect for us. We're very goober-y with our love of hearts and the whole Live-Laugh-Love theme. We have it in picture frames all around our house and often doodle hearts for one another, sometimes on a Post-It on the other's lunch, sometimes on a napkin while we're sitting at a restaurant waiting for our food. It's the simple things that keep the flame glowing. ;)

I took advantage of Vistaprint's infamous Free Business Cards offer to print our info cards. This was simple. I needed to communicate our hotel information so I did that and threw our wedding website on there as well. A Word to the Wise: people will still ask you what the name of your hotel is, what the number is, how much it will cost, where it's located, etc. even if you state it in a clear and concise manner and include it with the invitation. I'm just saying. 

I also had a coupon, so I created a TON (I think 500, no joke) of labels. I've been using these for everything and will continue to do so long after the wedding. I can't lie, these are kind of my favorite part. I get a little "EEEE!" feeling when I see them, because even though they're just mailing labels, they're personal.

personal photo, label created using Vistaprint 

You might remember those stunning folks from this post - I couldn't help but include Mr. Palm Tree's artwork elsewhere. I mean, I couldn't not incorporate these people into our big day! Spoiler Alert: they'll be making some other appearances, too. ;)

As for the stamps, I ordered two different kinds of Forever stamps, because I'm not playing the post office's games: the Wedding Roses and these fun Celebrate ones. We tried to do all of the outer envelopes with the roses and the RSVP envelopes with the Celebrate, but I miscounted so we just rolled with it. There was no method to this madness.

I know I've said this more than a few times already and I know my tone is probably whinier snarkier than usual but seriously, you guys: these were so much work. I went this route for monetary reasons, not because I love to DIY (*snort*), so I'm sure that plays into how I feel about all of this. We also sent out 92 of these bad boys.  I do love them; I'm proud of them and I love to look at them and know that MOH Mem, BM Tiny Dancer and I literally created these. I just don't necessarily know that it was worth it to do EVERYTHING. It saved me hundreds, so of course it was totally worthwhile in that aspect. . . I'm just conflicted. My advice, again, is just to weigh your personal pro's and con's and if you can outsource, even pieces, do it. 

I'll do a full reveal in the next post, but after listening to me drone on about the boring (but necessary! I think, anyway) details, I think it's only fair to throw in a sneak peek:

personal photo | DUH, who else would the mock-up go to?

personal photo | The messy mock-up. See our people on the info card? :)

Does anyone else have a love-hate relationship with their invitations?