DIY invites have been a bit of a nightmare for me. It started off when I couldn't decide what style of invites I wanted and whether or not I was going to DIY them. Then I started looking at prices of invitations online and quickly realized that it was just asinine not to do them myself.
Next was the great pocketfold debate. I saw them in knottie bios and knew that I really, really wanted to do it, but I couldn't justify the cost. Especially when we cut back the budget. Spending close to $100 on paper was just insanity.
So, considering there is way too much time in an 18 month engagement to continually change your mind and look at the same things
over and over again, I finally decided, I don't care. I'm going to have pocketfold invitations. I'll make room for them in the budget somehow and no, I just don't care that the invitations are not really an important part of the wedding because they just get thrown away. Damn it, I want pocketfolds!
When cardsandpockets.com had a sale, I was ecstatic. I read on theknot that its not very often they offer a sale and that everyone who was anywhere near close to needing to order invitations should really take advantage of this awesome deal. Of course, I ordered the invitations that night.
I've always been a bit of a paper geek. Ever since I was a kid, I've always liked school supplies and paper is just another one of those things. When my invites came in, all boxed up and pretty, I took them out of the box and just stared at them for a few minutes. Pretty new paper in pretty colors just waiting for me to print my invites on them.
I finally decided after reading FutureMrsDudley55's bio with instructions on how to emboss invitations that it was the route I was going to go. Ironically, its what I originally wanted but I thought it would be too difficult and couldn't find good directions online. During the last blizzard I ordered my heat tool, embossing powder, embossing ink, and stamp buddy.
After I made the definite decision to emboss the invites, I knew that I wanted to give myself enough time to get them printed out and assembled. Knowing that I only really had the weekends to work on this stuff and the summer is typically a pretty busy time for me, I decided that I wanted to start printing the invites in March.
Since the first I've stared at the calendar and then at the box that holds my invite pieces and hesitated. Yes, I was scared to print out my own invitations. I didn't want to mess them up. I didn't want to take the nice new paper out of its packaging and put it into my cheap printer because there was a slight change that the printer could mangle it to shreds and I would be out lots of money.
This weekend is ugly, cold and rainy. About two hours ago i decided that it was time to print out a mock up invitation, even though I want to include entree choices on the RSVP cards and we don't have that finalized yet. Still scared to actually print the invites that I created months ago, I started googling to make sure that my wording was correct, reading the invite forwards and backwards to make sure that there weren't any typos, and looking at as many versions of pocketfold invites online as humanly possible.
Taking a really deep breath I opened the new pack of pre-cut invitations and loaded it into my printer. I clicked on print, sized everything, crossed my fingers and clicked on Ok while closing my eyes and hoping for the best. No, I'm not just being dramatic for the sake of this blog, I really did do that!
The invite printed out perfectly. So I exhaled that breath I had held for about a minute. Tentatively, I loaded the printer with two sheets of paper this time and tried it again. Success! Then 5 sheets! Then 6 sheets! A few prints later (with 6 extra prints for mistakes), I had printed all of the invitations I needed! Scared that something would happen to them, I immediately went to the kitchen and got two freezer sizes plastic bags and put the printed on and leftover invitations into them.
Now I was excited. I had one part of my invite done and since that was successful, I figured it was as good a time as any to make an actual mock up of the invite. I opened the directions insert and checked carefully for typos before recalculating the route on mapquest and making some changes, since apparently in the last two months they have changed their minds on which is the best way to get to the damn winery thats in the middle of nowhere! Satisfied, I printed the directions insert.
Next is the Information insert. I have the hotels on there with their phone numbers and our wedding website for all other information. This was definitely the easiest. Cutting this insert to size compared to the directions one wasn't that great, so I'm not sure if I'm going to buy a paper cutter or see how much it would be to have it done at Kinko's or Staples.
Next is the RSVP insert. That was also easy to print. I assembled everything into the pocketfold and my OCD self could not stand that there was such a space gap between the height of the Information and RSVP insert. I knew its because these pocketfolds are made for 3 inserts plus the RSVP card and it didn't help that my Directions insert was full size of the insert. So, I decided that regardless of the fact that the winery is in the middle of no where and a map is going to be quite pointless, I needed something to fill that space.
About 45 minutes later, I finally had a decent looking map that I felt proud enough to put in my invites, even though it hardly shows any information because of the winery's location. But whatever, it cured my OCD compulsion to have things equally spaced apart.
Finally, all of the inserts were printed and lined up all nicely in the pocket. I do still need to adjust where the words are for the top of the inserts because they don't line up properly, but I'll do that at another time.
I had a seller on etsy.com create a monogram for me that we could put on the belly bands of the invites. At first I wasn't sure how I waned to seal the invites, but belly bands seemed to be the easiest solution. Hopefully that bit of string and cardstock monogram won't take me over the $0.61 weight. Fingers crossed! I'm going to take it into the office on Monday to double check.
Okay, well after reading all of that I'm sure you're thinking Jeez lady would you just post a damn picture of your invites! So, here you go:
Ignore the wet spots on the pocketfold, I'm the idiot that didn't make sure the counter top was dry before putting the invite on it to take pictures.
I didn't feel like getting out all of the tools to emboss the invites, so I just used the purple ink pad I have and the stamp that will be used for the embossing. The color of the ink and the embossing powder are pretty close so this should be really similar to the actual colors on the invite.
See how the words Directions, Information, Map and RSVP aren't quite lined up? That will drive me absolutely crazy so I need to fix that and get everything to line up before the actual invites are printed.
I just wanted to show you the pathetic-ness that is the map. See that spot where it looks like a dark blob, well, that's where the winery is located. Smack dab in the middle of absolutely no where. Honestly, there are nothing but other wineries and farms around it.
I'm sure my direction challenged (even with a GPS)) mother is going to have a hell of a time finding it.
And a close up of the monogram. Its printed on a mistake sheet of cardstock (I don't have white cardstock yet) and I used a 1.5" square scallop nesting hole punch to do it. Oh, and advice - if you are going to use one of these, punch upside down so you can see what you want to show up in the square on the underpart of the punch.
The ribbon comes from the Anna Griffin Wedding Studio line. I found it as prepackaged cut ribbon in packs of 20 at AC Moore. They're 3.99 each, but I bought them individually with 40% off coupons on different days to save money. I figured it might be a bit more expensive than buying a spool of ribbon, but they are the right color and width that I want and even though precut they are too large, they are easy to cut to size without fraying.
And now for Stuff that You Might Care to Know:
* I created my invites in Word 2007 and set the paper to the exact size of the invites, by clicking on size and then entering a custom size. I also made all of the margins 0.
* When printing, I set my printer to print on the size of paper that the invite was, custom or not.
*The font for our names is Monterey BT which was emailed to me by another knottie. Let me know if you would like me to send you this font.
*The font for the other wording on the invitation is Copperplate Gothic Light which is standard in Word.
*The font for the names of the inserts is French Vanilla Swirl. This was also emailed to me by another knottie.
*The font for all of the wording on the inserts is Gabriola, which is standard on my Word 07.
*The invitation wording is as follows:
Pebbles Flintstone
and
Bam Bam Rubble
together with their parents
Wilma and Fred Flintstone
Betty and Barney Rubble
invite you to share in their joy
as they unite in marriage
Friday, the seventeenth of September
two thousand ten
six o'clock in the evening
Ye Old Rock Winery
123 Cobblestone Road
Dinosaur, MD 21162
*The map was created used weddingmapper.com and I followed the directions on there for how to print it.
