Be our guest ...

Everybody says that the invitations "set the tone" for the whole wedding, and being a scrapbooker I'm a huge stationary fan ... so choosing the perfect wedding invites was extra important to me. I briefly (VERY briefly) considered making them myself but soon scratched that idea. With only six months to plan everything, there was just no way I'd have time to hand-make 113 beautiful wedding invitations and get them in the mail on time. So, after searching around and comparing styles, we eventually settled on these pretties from Shine Invitations. We ordered them in a cheerful sunshine yellow, not blue, and we also customized the font but you can get an overall feel for them here ...

I knew that I wanted our invitations to have a splash of color and when I saw these I really fell in love with the damask look. They were elegant and classy, but still "young" ... and Alan was happy that they weren't over the top feminine. (He didn't like my idea of pink sparkly invitations with zebra print envelopes. I dunno why.) These invites weren't cheap, especially when you consider the $175 UPS brokerage fee I got slapped with upon delivery, but they were exactly what we wanted and well worth the splurge. Working with the designers from Shine was a piece of cake - they were all so professional and friendly and they got everything done in record time. 

We also decided to get our invitation envelopes professionally addressed with calligraphy, and we chose Rachel Carl &Co to get the job done. Rachel offered several fonts to choose from and we eventually decided on this look (black ink on white envelopes) -

Calligraphy, in my humble opinion, was totally, totally, TOTALLY worth every penny! It not only saved me a TON of time, but more importantly they look gorgeous. I think calligraphy just adds a little whimsical touch to wedding invites, and I'm so glad we decided to go with it. 


Last week, I had a little envelope-stuffing party with some of my bridesmaids and everything was all packaged up, sealed, stamped, and dropped in the mailbox. Now I just have to hope people show up! :)


Would you splurge on wedding invitations or are you more of a DIY yourself kinda girl?