When I first started thinking about wedding invites, I was enamored with the letterpress route. Handmade! Authentic! Vintage! (I'm such a sucker for buzzwords.) I especially liked these balsa wood beauties from Night Owl Paper Goods.
But here's the rub: at $6 apiece, it would have cost more than 400 bucks to send out a modest 80 invitations. Not gonna do it.
Instead, we headed to Paper Source, and chose a pre-made template. They hooked us up with 80 flat-printed invites for about $100 (including envelopes). We stuck with a brown, cream, and kraft-paper color scheme. If you're not an especially picky couple, I think this is a home run.
And then the fun part: embellishing! In a moment of unadulterated ambition (or stamp-pad-fume hallucinations), I thought it would be fun to decorate the envelopes with barnyard critters. And it was! Until my hand cramped up.
Insider tip: use painters' tape to create one "big" stamp out of a bunch of little ones. Not only will you keep everything lined up neatly, but you'll also save time/energy/finger dexterity.
We didn't dish out for a calligrapher, but my handwriting is kind of cute, so I just stamped a festive little banner and penned everyone's name inside it with a white gel pen.
Instead of return address labels, we printed our mailing info inside a mason jar stamp, which corresponds to the escort cards we'll be using on the day of.
For postage, we selected stamps modeled after vintage seed packets (I already drooled over them, here).
To save dollars, trees, and time, we asked guests to RSVP online. When they did, they receivedan auto reply sending them to our wedding website, which contains directions to the venue, an out-of-towners' guide to an awesome city weekend, and lots of pictures of us doing things.
The best part of this process: sprawling out with Jason on our futon, making an invitation assembly line. Sharing the inkpad. Taking turns sealing envelopes. I've heard that for some couples, the stress of the wedding chips away at the foundation of their relationship. For me, the hullaballoo has just served to remind me of how happy I am to have Jason as my partner. And that's what this is all about, right?
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