Our invitations were sent out in the summer and as of this week, everyone has booked and paid in full, which means I can now relax (somewhat).
Like our
The invitations are pretty easy to create on the Wedding Chicks' generator and, as an added bonus, it allowed us to change the standard wording to reflect our history and personalities.
Our invite reads:
...that sometimes when you know, you just know. Please join us in the celebration of the marriage of
Our tagline on the bottom reads: Dinner, drinks and awkward dancing to follow.
We planned ahead to switch the colours of the font and the chevrons around so that they would match, but each piece would be stand out on its own. The STDs were mostly in the teal colour with grey font, while the invitations were grey with highlights of teal (our names, the tag line) and the RSVP was a mix of grey and teal chevrons.
I also printed a free herringbone pattern called "tiny pieced chevron" in light grey from Melstampz's Flickr on plain computer paper and used it to line our envelopes. I managed to do about two liners per page -- they didn't go all the way to the bottom because that felt unnecessary and led to many papercuts on the first few attempts.
TEAL LUGGAGE TAGS
Figuring out the luggage tags wasn't as difficult as I thought. I simply measured the dimensions of the tag and then used that to draw an invisible outline in Photoshop Elements (just the box part of the tag). I downloaded some free fonts to play around with until I found something I liked, then copied that tag over and over on the page. I ended up only needing to print about six pages, which gave me enough for 64 invites.
NOTE: Printing text using downloaded fonts can cause pixelation, so you may have to play around with your anti-alias settings.
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Once the individual elements were created, I put the entire package together, bound with one piece of twine and luggage tags (which covered the initial twine knots) and finished with a bow. This was left to the fiance. Turns out he's better at tying bows.
I chose to handwrite the addresses on the envelope because I wanted it to be personal and didn't want to mar our envelopes with a sticker. Here's where things went awry...
I began by stamping our return address on the back of the metallic envelopes and let them dry overnight -- they looked great -- then two days later it had turned into a giant black smudge from where the ink bled into the paper. Thankfully, I found grey chevron patterned Post-It book tabs from Michael's which I stamped and glued over the mess. I didn't lose a single envelope as a result!
THE COST BREAKDOWN:
Time: Eight hours spread over a long weekend to make 64 RSVPs, invites and lined envelopes for both -- minus the printing time.
Cost:
- .20 per white linen envelope = $12.80
- .28 per white linen card stock = $4.48
- .40 per metallic card stock = $2.40
- .40 per metallic envelope = $25.60
- $5 per package of chevron luggage tags = $15 (thanks to coupons)
- $3 per package of chevron Post-It book tabs = $6
- $80.64 in domestic (Canada) postage for the invites and the RSVPs
GRAND TOTAL: $2.30 per package (RSVP with lined envelope, invite with lined envelope, two luggage tags, twine, postage)
Add the .90 it cost us for the mailed STDs and we're looking at $3.20 for the whole thing per guest/couple.
*Note: I'm not including the price of the computer paper and some supplies (such as the twine and luggage stamp) because we already had them and will be using them in future projects.
