Cards and Pockets

Planning a wedding involves a lot of decision making. From where and when the big day will take place to what we'll be wearing and all the tiny details in between, Zac and I have had (and still have) a lot of things to sort out.  When it came to invitations we knew that we would be making them ourselves. We looked at various websites to order invitations and have them printed and (although we aren't in any way amazing graphic designers) we definitely thought that we could make nice invitations for a fraction of the cost.

I started looking around online at pictures to get some ideas about how we would like our invitations to look. In the end we decided that since we needed room to give our guests all the appropriate information regarding our event, it was necessary to create invitations with plenty of space. Pocket invitations (like the one pictured below) were the way to go.

After seeing that a company called Cards and Pockets had some great reviews, I jumped on over to their website to check out their products for myself. As you might have guessed, Cards and Pockets have a variety of pocket style invitations to choose from. All of the cards come blank and are available in a array of colors to help build your own unique invitation, specific to your event.

We really liked the look of the invitations and decided that we would check out a few samples of the Signature 5X7 Pocketfold (mainly because we couldn't settle on a color without seeing them in person). As you can see from the diagram below, when folded the invitation would be small enough to put in the mail without having any special shipping, and when pulled open, has plenty of room to showcase all of the wedding details.

Within a few short business days of placing our order for the samples we received a small cardboard envelope in the mail:

We ordered two samples: one in yellow and the other in dark gray.

Both invitations were very nice and went well with our color scheme. We didn't intend on sending out two different invitations so we needed to make a decision. After thinking about how the invitations would look as an end product we realized that we had more options with the dark gray invitation.

In addition to pocketfold invitations, Cards and Pockets also sells an assortment of accessory items like envelopes, liners, and mattes to make the invitations more fun and professional looking. We knew that we would need to get envelopes and thought that it would be a nice touch to get a printed liner to make the invitation a little more special. The envelope liners (for both the invitations and the RSVP cards) are available in 15 different patterns and over 50 colors. We settled on the pattern below (called Retro) in a shade of yellow to add a pop of color to our dark grey invitations.

Not too long ago we recieved our order in the mail. (I just love coming home and seeing packages on our front step!)

We ordered enough pocketfold invitations to send out to our guests, as well as a few extras in case we make some mistakes. (Having never put together invitations like this before I'm sure we're bound to have a few mishaps.) We also ordered envelopes for both the invitations and the RSVP cards as well as liners for both envelope sizes.

We love the way the liners look. The yellow is bright without being neon and the pattern is fun (which is definitley the vibe that we're going for).

You might also notice a yellow rectangular shaped package in the bottom left corner two photos up. We decided to order some precut colored mattes to add a bit of contrast to the dark grey invitations. This yellow matte will be glued to the center of the pocketfold and a white invitation will be placed on top of the matte. If you're like me and you need a visual, just check out the photo below.

We haven't started constructing our invitations just yet, but we're pretty happy with the materials we have so far. The next steps will be deciding on invitation wording, choosing a font, and creating a design to make the white invitation more interesting.

Wish us luck.