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!

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.