Get out of my house!!

Finally those invites are done (all but maybe ten or so...) and out of the house.

In fact, today I got a phone call from one of my aunts in Texas just to let me know she got hers and it was, to use her word 'awesome'. ;)

Here's a bit of the process:
We started out with our invite we printed at kinkos and wrapped it with a 2.5" strip of moss green card stock. It had a really nice linen-y texture to it which made it seem much fancier than the regular smooth. (And it cost the same so of course, we went with textured).


The insanely perfect ribbon we found at hobby lobby in a CLEARANCE BUCKET. (All hail the clearance bucket!) It was actually a yarn (how?) so its a reeealllly long piece and it only cost us a $1.50. Woot! We shot the works and grabbed two.

Word of advice, and this may be obvious to the rest of the world but Tanner had to tell me to do it, if you're doing the paper w/ribbon wrap around a card cut slices for the ribbon to thread through your card stock so it stays in the center and doesn't slide up and down. Never occurred to me but what genius.

Then we moved on to our wax seals...

We used a glue gun format wax and it really wasn't brittle at all. Regular wax will break in the mail, but this was nice and pliable.

Then we stamped them with the brass F. I love that little F. Remember to let that little thing sit in cool water (and shake it all off before you use it!) or you'll end up with a bloppy impression. Not so good.

Here they are! Our little army of invites!

Mind you, this is without the RSVPs & other inserts added behind the belly band, but I wanted to get a shot of the little babies when they were fresh. I'm so proud of them. They were so much work! But thankfully my fella did at least half of it! Bless him.
And now we're officially inviting people to our wedding!! I'm so excited!

Rats.

Well we blew our chances with 41 cent stamps on the invites. My fella took a dummy invite to the PO and it turns out the wax seal makes it too lumpy & they won't fit through "the slot" whatever that is.

So now we're stuck with those pastel heart wedding stamps. They're ok and they'll get the invitations where they need to be... but we were both really looking forward to using the Marvel Comics ones. But I'll live, they're still going on the RSVP's. ;)

Tonight we're putting our invitations together. It's an all out invitation blitz. I have my station: right in front of the computer addressing envelopes. And my unbelievably helpful Tanner will be at our far-too-small kitchen table folding our belly bands. As soon as I get a few put together I'll take a photo and show you all a finished product. (Please forgive my lack of photography! My time is being devoured by the guest list monster.)

Edit: Here is a hastily taken teaser photo of poor quality... It's our first invite (so excuse any goofiness please!) I got excited and wanted to share. :)

Man, that flash really shows off that unwanted glossiness. :/
Oh well, better pictures later. Back to work!

Invites!

Yay!!
We picked up the invitations today! They're (as much as I hate to say it) not exactly what I had in mind. The invite is way too glossy but that's ok because I'm my own worst critic and Hubs loves them.

First let me show you our inspiration:

This is an invitation by Oblation Papers that we saw in the latest issue of Weddings InStyle. The one in the magazine was actually in shades of green, and Hubs liked it so much he took a photo of it with his camera phone so I could work from it at home.

So using that layout and then adding what I wanted our invitations to have we came up with this...

I designed them using Photoshop and we had them printed at a Kinkos in Mobile, AL (such a drive!) by the sweetest guy ever. If you're ever in there and Antwon helps you out, tell him we said Hi. :)
I gotta say, the color of the RSVP's paper doesn't really knock my socks off. The flecks are far too blue for me. But it was either that or stark white, and I wanted some texture so I went with it. And I'm learning to roll with the punches so there they ya go. Also there is a tree that you can barely see behind the words on the invite, it blends in with the background a bit now. But, if you know its there you can see it! Oh well.
Printing our own invites and RSVPs came to about $200 for 125 sets. Which ain't bad. Now all I have to do is make the belly bands out of some delicious card stock, find a coordinating ribbon and order the wax seal stuff. I'm thinking of getting this glue gun-able wax from NostalgicImpressions.com because ordinary sealing wax breaks when it goes through the mail, and this should be much more durable. Also its offered in an array of beautiful colors. The 'granite pearl' does things to me.
Then when all that is said and done Hubs and I will assemble our brains out. Hopefully my total (including the invites and without stamps) will be less than $250. Hopefully. I may nix the ribbon if it starts to get pricey.
Stamps is going to hurt, those things are expensive when you have to buy potentially 250 of them. So to ease our pain we're going to get the Marvel Superhero & possibly Star Wars editions.