Invitations Part 2: The REVEAL!
Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 3:44pm
If you missed Part 1: The Great Assembly, be sure to check out that mini post. Mr. Knight and I were cuttin’ fools cutting all the layers for our invitations!
Yes, it is ABOUT TIME I showed ya’ll Mr. Knight and I’s labor of love. We spent quite a long time designing and putting together our invitations. Mr. Knight has been on my case for WEEKS to write this post because sooo many of our guests had no idea that we had designed and made our invitations ourselves. And, hey… we deserve some credit! :-)
Over winter break, I designed the bulk of our invitation suite. We decided then that we would print and assemble our invitation ourselves, and send our RSVP postcard and Accommodations card off to Overnight Prints, to save us time and money.
Want to see our little labor of love? I hope you do! Here they are {hooray}!!!
The envelopes, all prettified with their Vancouver Olympics stamps and the cute wrap-around address label we made.
photo by Miss Gator
What our guests see as they open our their invitation to our Wedding.
photo by Mr. Knight
More postage. I do love fun stamps! This RSVP card was sent out to our Canadian family in Newfoundland!
photo by Mr. Knight
Our wedding invitation!!!! Hooray!!! These were really the only part of our set that we actually had to ‘put together,’ since the rest we had ordered from Overnight Prints (saving us valuable time and money). That being said, it certainly wasn’t a fast or easy task putting these babies together. So much cutting and gluing, I seriously don’t want to see an x-acto blade or cutting mat for at least a few weeks!
photo by Miss Gator
Here are our RSVP postcards and Accommodation cards printed through Overnight Prints. They did an amazing job with printing them, they are very sturdy, and the RSVP postcards held up well in the mail. Which makes for a happy bride! :-)
photo by Miss Gator
Here are all out invitation pieces (minus the super cute Gold shimmer envelope with wrap-around label), showing the reverse sides of the RSVP card and the Accommodation Cards. Map made by Knight Dad.
photo by Miss Gator
Overall, Mr. Knight and I are very happy with how they turned out. We love the little RSVP postcards (it has been a lot of fun getting them back), and the map Knight Dad made is just too cute! The only thing that Mr. Knight and I agree that we would have changed was how we glued them. We used a glue stick to glue the layers together of our main invitation. Bad idea. When we went back home and saw our invitations on family and friend’s fridges we discovered they had warped terribly from heat and moisture and the layers were starting to pull apart from each other. This was incredibly upsetting for Mr. Knight and I since we had invested so much time into trying to make these invitations perfect, in our eyes.
After seeing how the glue stick SUCKED, I tried a few invitations just using double sided tape and they have been holding up pretty well. We’ll see how that goes. :-)
Okay, so now for the all important price break down!
- Envelope Mall: 100 Gold Stardream A7 envelopes and 100 Quartz Stardream 81lb sheets $41.19
- Envelope Mall: 100 Aquamarine 81lb Stardream sheets $21.42
- Paper-Papers: 50 Gold 105lb Stardream sheets because they were sold out at Envelope Mall $24.30
- Overnight Prints: 100 double sided postcards for RSVPS, 100 double sided postcards for Accommodations/Map $60.91
- OnlineLabels: 98 (7.5″x1.5″) glossy labels for wrap-around address labels $18.87
- Postage: $72.20
- GRAND TOTAL $238.89 at $3.14 an invitations set (including postage) for 76 invitations
$3.14 an invitation, including postage? Not bad in our book, considering postage ended up being around around $1 per invite (and a little more for our Canadian guests).
Now lets compare our invitation set price to one that is similar on Wedding Paper Divas (one of my favorite stationary shops):
Wedding Paper Divas Stylish Sweet Invitation
I chose this one to price compare to ours, since they didn’t have any close to ours, and this one is super cute, and could have been a contender for our invites. :-)
Wedding Paper Divas price? For 75 invitations, 75 response cards, and 75 reception cards the final price would be $285. This doesn’t include postage, additional two layers of paper behind the invitation (for a swanky border like ours), or labels for the front of the envelopes. There is also no map for this price, and the postage would cost us more considering the response cards are not postcards.
Sure it would have been much faster and easier (and pricier) to just order our invitations from Wedding Paper Divas (or another company) but Mr. Knight and I had too much fun putting our invites together, we would have missed out on all that forced quality time together. :-) We had so much fun designing our invitation suite together, and ordering pizza while we spent hours (upon hours) assembling all the pieces. I wouldn’t give that up for the world. I swear, our invitations have brought us closer together. For reals.
So, I say, if you want to DIY your invites, and you have a helpful future hubby, GO FOR IT! You will not regret it, plus your wallet will be thanking you! Just be sure to figure out that pesky glue situation, speaking of which…
What kind of glue/adhesive/etc did you use to put your invitations together? How did it hold up? Please… I need to know!! :-)
Tags: DIY, handmade, Invitations, Stationery, Wedding Inspiration
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