Our Finished Invitations (Home Reception)

Although they have end up quite different to what I had planned in the beginning, instead of rustic wine corks & copper wire they are lace & ribbon, I really like them.

The biggest difference is the outer wrapper as some have chocolate or natural wood grain paper & some have a soft chocolate tissue paper.

A huge thank you goes out to my Dad, who patiently threaded all the peals onto the ribbon wrap around ties for me. A long and boring job and I’m so grateful for all the help xx







Inside







Main Invitation & enclosures







Envelopes



ETA ~ Tuesday 18th January 2011 ~ A pro picture of our invitations

We have our Invitations supplies !!!!!

We have our Invitations supplies !!!!!

I found two great bargains today at the Stitches & Craft Show, first almost an exact replica of the designer lace I love, only this one was on sale at $1.28 per meter vs. the expensive one at $22.95 per meter. As each invite needed ½ meter the designer lace is out & the new lace is IN.

Then I found a mixed bag with two types of textured A4 paper, one was soft like tissue paper, the other very thick & rough, and only a $1 per sheet. This will be perfect for wrapping the invites, before the go in the envelope.

I decided to cheat and I purchased the chocolate envelopes from cards & pockets for $1.05 each. It saved heaps of time and was cheaper than if I had made the pockets myself.

I found textured thick card stock paper in crème & purchased it in bulk $42 The A7 & C6 envelopes I purchased from an invitation store, 200 in total for $66 I couldn’t find a green that worked with the new design and chose a brushed metallic paper instead. 2 Invitations per A4 sheet = 50 were $38.50

Ribbon – I have heaps of left over pink ribbon from our pink ribbon fundraiser

Pearls – I picked up a bag of pearl beads to thread onto the ribbon (to jazz it up a little) $2.49.

Seals – I used a variety of seals I had left over from other projects, I needed 200 in total and only needed to buy one box for $15.95

Here are all the supplies

The Invitation Quandary

Getting my gorgeous, absolutely perfect invitations (that I had been dreaming about for the last 3 years) vs our budget, was a tricky one. Stationery is my obsession, I love it! and you can never have too much of it in my opinion. The thought of sacrificing my perfect invitations, for the big bad budget man was not something that was happening without a fight, the cake would go first!

So to recap what invitations did I want… chocolate brown textured pockets with 4 inserts & the main invitation panel (all on crème card stock with a sage backing page).

Around the outside of the pocket envelope I was going to wrap a band of textured paper (in a natural shade) and have a split wine cork with twisted copper around it as the centre piece.

To keep them safe I was going to put them in boxes with paper wood shavings. They were going to be gorgeous only problem ….. COST.

A while back I realised that if I was going to pull off two jobs, two weddings & planning an international holiday for our guests, certain things were going to have to go, especially as I don’t have an army of BM’s or helpers in the wings, DIY absolutely every project was out.

So we bit the bullet and got several quotes………….. the best of which came back at $38.45 per invitation !! before postage, so added to this was $5.60 per invite to post, plus 0.55 for the RSVP ……… ahhhhh $44.60 per invite x 100 is definitely NOT in our budget.

So with no choice but to find a cheaper option, I cut the cost per invite in half with 3 things:

1) Doing this project myself was essential

 

2) Invitations had to be mailed in envelopes & not boxes (which reduced the postage cost from a total of $615 to $165.

 

3) The cork & copper wire idea was out and I was planning on just sticking our monogram sticker over the front fold, to keep them closed. Although disappointed I had already had saved over ½ the cost from the best quote.

 

So now I need to collect the supplies:

* Chocolate pocket fold envelopes

* Crème card Stock

* Sage backing card stock

* A7 Envelopes

* C6 envelopes (for the RSVP)

* Ribbon

 

Depending on how much the materials cost, hopefully I will be able to add some sparkle & extra bling.

Disney Cruise Pack

Our Disney Wedding Invitation & information pack for our Disney Cruise Guests, it has a DCL book, DVD on the ship; details of ports we will stop in, postcard, pen & the invitation.

 

    
 

 

 

DIY Project - Save The Weekend Part 2

We decided that we wanted our bridal party to receive their “Save the Weekend” cards in style, after all first impressions count!

So we packaged them up in silver & pink boxes together with a mini bottle of “Pink Blush” champagne from Peterson’s Champagne House.

DIY Project - Save The Dates (well actually weekend!)

With the help of my MOH we finished our Hunter Valley Save the Weekend cards yesterday !

I finally worked the design so I was able to use our colours, logo and the gorgeous paper & brads we found on our Melbourne trip.

With a small magnet on the back and a piece of sage ribbon tided around them, they are ready to be mailed out !

Disney Save the Date Invitations

As the big decisions for our Disney wedding celebration are just about finalised, I though I would spend some time over the weekend, making a start on our official Disney Save the Date packages.

 

As we are only inviting a very small number of our closest family & friends to WDW, I wanted these Save the Dates to be special.

 

The idea is that the magic begins when the guests receive their save the date in the mail and continues right up to when we leave for WDW, finishing up, after we get home.

 

I have several follow up packages for guests that I am going to send out leading up to the trip and one as a final 'thank you' when we get home. Each package will have a handmade travel item included so that by the time we leave; everyone will have accumulated a travel set for the trip.

 

I was contemplating either making scrolls, passports or boarding pass invitations and decided on boarding passes & envelopes. I experimented with several different styles, fonts and colors before I found a design that I liked and that worked well together.

 Unfortunately the pictures did not turn out to be very clear, but the cover design is quite simple with Cinderella and a trail of starts around the ‘D’ of ‘Date’, our initials in the bottom corner and swarovski crystals on several letters.

 
On the inside cover is a pink & silver castle with the words “add a touch of sparkle" & more swarovski crystals over the letters.

The Boarding Pass

I still need to make the luggage tags that we are sending out in the save the date packs, and will post a photo when they are finished.

Then in a few months we will send out a follow up package (with booking info etc,) and I think the travel item we send out with this will be a travel wallet.

The last pack before we leave, will be a welcome folder with all the ceremony, parks, activities and contact number information. The handmade part of this pack will be a scrapbook / travel journal, as a keepsake to record the trip.
 

The final pack will be sent out when we return home, with a thank you note and hopefully some great photos & mementoes that we collect on the trip.
 

Engagement Party Invitations

Woo Hoo !!

We finally finished our invitations tonight YAY !!!

I was starting to get nervous as it is so close to the party and we still need to do all the resizing, assembling, cutting and addressing ourselves. None of which could begin until the stationery store printed the cards! after proofing them nearly 4 weeks ago they still had not started printing them!

So, we went in yesterday and stood in the shop until they either printed them or refunded our money. Needless to say 45mins later they were printed and I was on my way home planning our DIY day ! and they turned out great !

Now we just have to take them to the post office on Monday

Our Engagement Party Invitation Design

I'm finally making headway on the invitation front. After we settled on a chocolate and pink theme we visited a few specialty paper shops today and have selected our materials :

Pink Card stock

Wrapped in translucent Marie Antoinette paper

Then ties with golden chocolate rat's tail satin ribbon

Then I have a chocolate envelope & a silver seal

We have decided to let the supplier print the invitations on the card stock and MOH and I will give the assembly a go ourselves!

As time is running out we wrote & proof read the cards today and they should be ready in 2 or 3 days!

How do you choose?

With so many gorgeous papers and invitation designs, I have no idea how am I going to choose just one for our invitations! Let alone the actual design & paper for them! I adore stationary & paper crafts so I knew it would be a tough decision, but this is going to take a while :) So far some of my favorites are :

 

 

By Papel Vivo

 

 

Studio AYT

 

 

Oh Happy Day

 

 

I have already lost track of how to find some of these again, so I really need to start adding them to my favorite websites list! - that will be the first project after our e-party.

 

We are going to getting working on our theme & colors this week as we need to have this finalised before we are able to make the final choice anyway. So until then I will keep searching for the perfect invitation!