Monday, May 11, 2009

Planning Rewind: Our Invitations Part 2

So I lied to the hive on Friday, I said that I'd have a weekend full of last minute wedding stuff, but in actuality- I did nothing wedding related!!! Unless you call going to the gym and treating myself to a mani/pedi wedding related??? Which in a sense it was- I think I have learned how to justify just about anything as wedding related.

While I don't have much to show for my weekend, I do feel VERY refreshed today and finally feel ready to tackle some of the projects that I should have posted about ages ago.

First up, I showed you our invitations, but I never showed you the full package. One of the things I really wanted was brown envelopes- and boy did I get them. Finding brown, square, eco-friendly envelopes was a challenge. Fortunately we found them- and paid a pretty penny for them. Unfortunately, I don't have the name of the envelope company any more (sorry guys). I will say getting brown envelopes over cream ones ended up being an unexpected wedding splurge and catastrophe all in one.

Since calligraphy was never in the budget, I thought I could easily print them out on our handy dandy color printer. When I went to print our envelopes, I constantly got this message:

ERROR!!!
Source.

Every brides worst nightmare! For some reason our printer hated our envelopes. After hours of struggling with our printer- I went straight to the Hive for an alternative. And thank goodness for the hive!! Mrs. Quiche recommended using Paper Source round labels for the return addresses. Genius!!


I immediately went out and bought two packages of the Super Fine Soft White (aka cream) then took a jpeg of our names from the invite and fit them into the Handy dandy on-line template for the round labels, added our address, picked out a fabulous font (High Tower Text) and presto chango- we had some very cute return address labels (sorry for the need to blur almost all of our invite pictures):


I used the same font for the RSVP envelopes but I used the standard file labels, again in Super Fine Soft White:

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the RSVP envelope.

For the front of the envelope, I used my best handwriting and a Gelly Roll Pen in Gold Shadow- Green. On the brown envelopes the ink wrote green and dried gold, but on white it dries a more greenish gold. I wish I had an envelope to show you, but used up all the ink.


I also tried white pen and clear labels with white ink- neither worked.

My next project again involved Paper Source. A few months before I had purchased their Envelope Liner Template Kit:


The square template fit perfectly. And I found an equally fun wrapping paper to liven up the envelope package. I found that double sided tape and glue worked equally well, but the person at Paper Source highly recommended tape. So of course, that's what I used. It's also a toss up if you should line the envelope first or write the person's address?? I guess I'd recommend writing the addresses first (I think I screwed up more of those). Good thing I had plenty of extra envelopes!!

Before I get to the final product, we included one more element in our invites:

The ever popular- MOO cards!!!

I love these babies. We used a variety of our engagement pictures on one side, and the other side directed guests to our Wedding Website. I will mention that the are a bit small in person, but for 19.99 they were much cheaper (and cuter) than adding a whole other piece to our invites in order to include the website address.

Here's what our invite package looked like:


And here's the package with the back of the envelope too (again, sorry for the blurry invite):


The best part of our invites- each guest had a favorite part. Some loved the Moo cards, some loved the liner, and my Bridesmaid absolutely adored the return address label (you have to love your friends for loving the details just as much as you do!!!)

Anyone else have a hard time with colored envelopes? What was your solution?

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