EAD: The Invitations

From Elizabeth Anne Designs:

They were only 2 weeks late with 2 months to go until the wedding but this weekend we finally finished and sent the invitations.

We wanted our invitations to be beautiful but practical. Much as we love letter pressed designs and intricate professional designs, we knew that our reasonably small budget couldn’t buy everything that we wanted. So we chose to spend money on beautiful and high quality cards and envelopes but cut the costs as the design elements were done by family members (although he is a Graphic Designer so we knew we were in safe hands) and we did the printing ourselves using M’s parents’ home printer.

Yes, the invitations do set the tone/theme of the wedding but this doesn’t mean that they have to be professionally made. The theme of our wedding is peacocks so I think this comes across through the invitations as the peacock motif ties each part together. The tone of our wedding is intended to be a semi-formal family gathering with lots of diy elements yet not at the expense of some luxury and details. I think (hope!) that this comes across as well.

Each envelope contained the invitation (4), a response card (6) and map (3) and was then hand addressed (1) and sealed with our peacock motif stamp (2) on the back. They were posted at the weekend so should begin arriving at our guests addresses today onwards.

Cost breakdown:

• Peacock Stamp from Baby Jewels - $21.00
• Black ink pad - £2.50
• 75 cream wove Smythson plain envelopes - £25.00 (bought with 20% discount)
• 100 cream wove Smythson correspondence cards - £16.00 (bought with 20% discount)
• Turquoise card - £4.00
• Guillotine* - £9.00
• Plus use of a printer and ink cartridge and 75 sheets white A4 paper which M’s parents already owned and did not charge us for.

So, excluding postage costs we spent £71.50 ($105) {so £1 ($1.50) per invitation} which I don’t think is too bad. And, if I say so myself, if you ignore the fact that there is no texture to the printing, they look professionally printed. I am so pleased we decided to use good quality paper and envelopes as that really reduces the home-made aspect.

Yet getting the invitations designed and finished ourselves wasn’t an easy task. It required lots of organisation and re-thinking of ideas until we settled on a design and method of printing which was workable. We had almost given up as the cards wouldn’t print landscape until I realised that they would print portrait and sister-in-law-to-be came to the rescue in pointing out how easy it was to rotate a pdf image clockwise, so it printed vertically but read horizontally. It gave M and I an opportunity to be creative and really work together as a team to get the invitations from an idea to a reality, far more so than if we had paid for a finished product. Overall, we were really pleased with the result; I hope our guests are too.

—

* By far one of the best equipment purchases we made. No more rulers whose edges are not straight and knives with blades that aren’t sharp. Plus, I can use it for card making in the future, perhaps even for our thank you cards (utilising the peacock stamp to continue our motif through to the end).