I realized I haven't posted pictures of our invitations yet! And I wasn't even paranoid about wedding crashers. Anywho, I really wanted letterpress invitations more than anything else and it was my big splurge. But really, not that bad. I used someone local, Jenny Barry from Press Charming, and I brought in some art nouveau books I'd bought to try and figure out a design. Jenny sent me back so many possibilities and this is what we finally decided on!
We got a 5x7 invitation with a postcard size reply card (saved on postage for the envelope and the reply! One regular 44 cent stamp was enough for the invitation (we liked the king & queen so that worked out) and we used polar bear postcard stamps for the postcards (not my favorite but we didn't really have an option and the colors didn't clash).
One annoyance with the reply cards was the post office. Their machines consistently tore off parts of the card on its journey to us, I'm guessing because of the paper used. It was pretty thick but you might need to ask for an especially hard or thick paper to avoid this if you choose letterpressed postcards. Oh, and I didn't hand cancel the invites because it would've been an extra 20 cents each, I couldn't do it myself, and the 20 cents would have to be added as extra postage. No thanks.
The reply card says
__Let us eat cake
(We'll be there)
no. Attending ___
__Off with our heads! (We can't make it!)
I didn't hear any complaints and we definitely had a few people that were tickled by it. When Garrett's mom was planning the Friday night BBQ her friends mentioned having a tagline of "let us eat BBQ".
The envelope liners. They really made the invitation in my opinion, since they added some color and pizzaz, but they were a little bit of a pain to print. Note to all who undertake such a thing: make sure you have a printer that lets you replace the ink colors indvidually. Otherwise you will end up with a bunch of ink cartridges with just magenta and cyan ink left in them, a thinner wallet, and a frowny face. Jenny was so helpful though, she designed the page and cut them for me, I just had to print and place in the envelopes. I used one of those mini adhesive dispensers (works much better than a gluestick and you get in a rhythm so it's easy).
I wish I had a picture of the addressing, but I did it myself with an ink pen (I thought about using a calligraphy pen but I liked the look of the script I chose with a pen better) and it's probably better not to let you see what I was willing to send out.
The invitation itself was a double whammy. We waited a while to order the invitations (and I'm so glad we were able to get them in time to send out 6 weeks in advance!) and so by that time we knew we'd be getting married in San Francisco and wanted to include it so that people wouldn't feel slighted or think they just weren't invited to the wedding. So, it reads:
Together with their families
Kelly Scott Merrill
and
Garrett Barton Cummings
Joyfully announce their marriage
Thursday, August 13, 2009
San Francisco, California
Please Join them to celebrate
Saturday, October 3, 2009
7:00 PM
The Summit Club
Birmingham, Alabama
Cocktail Attire
Plenty of people asked about cocktail attire because apparently it's different in everyone's mind but Garrett and I were wearing a wedding dress and suit, our mothers were wearing standard mother of the bride dresses, and my bridesmaids were in knee length silky wrap dresses. So I felt like something you would wear to a cocktail party would suffice. We didn't want people to be formal or in jeans, and I didn't see anyone inappropriately dressed. So we win. Oh, and usually you announce separately but we wanted to save money and time and breaking the rules is more fun. And it was such a tiny way to break the rules.
So, I couldn't be more pleased. We got custom, not too expensive (I think it was 3.75 for each invitation?) letterpress invitations and they were lovely! Jenny even let me crank a few because I have a not so secret crush on letterpresses.
How did you decide on your invitations?
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