Invites Assembled

Invitations are officially assembled and just need to be taken to the post office.  Here is how everything turned out!

Outer Envelope:

 The sealed inner envelope!:

The RSVP return envelope:

Envelopes Arrived

Our outer envelopes have arrived.  We ordered them from Jampaper.com this Saturday (2 days ago), it was processed on Monday (yesterday) and arrived today - talk about awesome service.  They were packed very nicely and arrived in perfect condition.  I could not have been happier.

Side note:  As you know, I ordered my free samples of envelopes from envelopesexpress.com.  I ordered my sample in Dark Purple and it was a perfect match.  However, Jampaper.com was cheaper, but didn't offer free samples.  They also offered Dark Purple envelopes, so I decided to just to for it and order without seeing  sample.  The Dark Purple envelopes from both sites were identical.  I don't know if this is always the case, but it worked out in this situation.

Seal of Approval

After assembling an invitation my fiance decided that he wanted to incorporate a wax seal into the invitations, so that's what we're going to do.

We plan to do a dark purple seal on the inner white envelope for some nice contrast.  Before finalizing our decision though, we plan to do one and then send it to ourselves to make sure that it doesn't get ruined in the mail.  When we get to that step, I will let you know how it goes!

Note:  Do NOT put a seal on the outermost envelope.  It will get caught in the machines at the post office, causing your envelope to wrinkle or rip.

All Tied Up

We officially assembled our first invitation and here is what it looks like.  The outer envelope is just a sample, we still have to decide where we're getting them from.

Outer Envelope:  Dark purple 

Inner Envelope:  White

Invite, RSVP and envelope, and Insert all banded together with light purple ribbon.

Elements of an Invitation

About a month ago I finalized my invitation suite....or so I thought.  While on Pinterest, I stumbled upon the following:

That's when I realized that I needed inner and outer envelopes.  Vistaprint only came with one envelope per invitation (as any normal person, myself included, would expect). 

If you decide to go with Vistaprint for invitations you have two options:

1) Use the Vistaprint envelopes as inner envelopes (since they just fit the invitation) and then buy outer envelopes from somewhere else.

OR

2) Don't use Vistaprint envelopes at all and buy a matching set of inner and outer envelopes.

We have opted for Choice #1.  Since our wedding colors (and therefore our invitations) are dark purple and white, we will be using the white Vistaprint envelopes on the inside and will get dark purple envelopes for outer envelopes.

Michaels Madness

If you have a Michaels near you, it might be worth stopping by today.  They have a huge clearance event going on - their already clearanced items are an additional 70-90% off!!  Schools were closed today due to snow, so I talked my fiance into taking a trip over with me.  They had a decent amount of wedding related items included in the extra 90%.  One of the best deals that I saw were on invitations.  They had 30 count invitation sets that included the invitation, inner and outer envelope, rsvp card, envelope for only $1.  Yes $1!  So if you still need invitations (or are planning on doing any sort of DIY for the wedding) I suggest hitting up Michaels today and checking out the clearance deals!

I already have my invitations ordered and they didn't have anything in our colors, so no luck on that.  However, I did pick up two pairs of black tights for myself for under $1.  They also had some shirts and bedazzling material if you're going that route for anything.  Also some nice favor boxes, etc.

The Honour of Your Presence

So as I mentioned here we decided to design our own invitations, etc. for the wedding.  As promised, here is what I came up with using Photoshop.  PLEASE leave your opinions.  I haven't ever designed anything before, so I'm worried that it doesn't look to great.

I am not completely done yet.  I still need to design an insert to mention our wedding website on.  I plan to band together the invite, rsvp card, the insert, and the rsvp envelope together with a dark purple belly band.

Also, as far as envelopes for the whole invitation do you think plain old white envelopes would work (free with the order) or matching envelopes ($90).  

The Invitations
Front

Back

The RSVP Cards

Front

Back