Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

The invitations are complete and all have been mailed out! Soon the RSVP cards will come rolling in. With only 78 days left until the wedding, crunch time is finally upon us.

When deciding on invitations, Zac and I looked through a bunch of different pictures online on different invitation websites, but didn't really find anything that we liked. It seemed silly to spend a bunch of money on something we weren't excited about. In the end we decided just to make our own. We ordered some pocketfold invitations and envelopes from Cards and Pockets (read all about that here), and I got to work on designing the invitations, RSVP cards, and maps.

I'm no graphic expert and don't have extensive computer experience, so I used Microsoft Word to complete the task. (I did the same thing when I designed our save the dates.)

I took my time, and over the course of a few weeks I came up with something that I thought went really well with the vibe of our wedding. I ended up using 5 different fonts, three colors, a few heart shapes, and some lines and dashes. I made the invitation less formal by not using our last names and using a design that had a more casual, less traditional flow.

The next step was to create the matching RSVP cards. I incorporated the same fonts and colors that I used on the invitation. The important pieces of information that I needed to make sure appeared on the RSVP cards included:

- The date in which guests would need to RSVP by.

- The fact that our wedding is an adult only occasion. (Just in case guests did not read our blog post about plus ones and children.)

- A place for guests to include their name.

- The number of seats that we were allowing/reserving for each party.

- A place for guests to let us know how many of the reserved seats they would be needing.

- The address to our wedding website.

- And of course the most important detail, a place for guests to let us know whether or not they would be able to attend.

It took a little bit of manuevering but I finally figured out how to get the information squeezed onto the 3X4 cards without looking too crowded or jumbled.

I started to assemble the invitations and loved the way that they looked all together. I posted a picture of the RSVP card and the completed look (pictured below) on Pinterest, and the response was pretty nice. I had 8 people email me to ask if I could send them the template I used so that they could modify it for their own weddings. It was really flattering!

The next order of business was to create inserts with a map and directions to the venue. Though a lot of our guests live in the area, not everyone has been to Wolf Lakes Park, and we would hate for anyone to get lost or arrive late because we neglected to help them out with directions. Wolf Lakes was nice enough to include a map as well as a list of multiple routes in our package of information when we booked out date. This information made the task a lot easier on me. I created a sheet of inserts for each invitation.

One sheet for each invitation resulted in quite a stack of paper. It took me a little while until I was ready to sit down and tackle the task of cutting each of them to size for the nearly 100 invitations we were sending out.

Finally all was finished and the invitations were ready to be sealed, stamped, and addressed.

Since our envelopes were a dark, slate grey color, I realized that using a regular black or blue ink pen wasn't going to work. I picked up two white gel pens at Micheal's Craft Store for only $3. It was a good thing that I bought more than one. The first pen ran out of ink at around invitation #70. Between addressing the invitations and RSVP card return envelopes I think the first pen made it pretty far. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I spent Valentine's Day evening, sealing and stamping all of the invitations (94 in total!). [For a little bit I felt a little like Susan on Seinfeld!]

Now that the invitation business is complete, it's time to move on to other projects! This weekend is going to be a fun one. Amy's baby shower is tomorrow, and our little nephew, Grayson is having a Dr. Seuss themed first birthday on Sunday. I can't wait to share the details!