Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Invitations Part II

It's about time I continued my previous post about invitations with an aptly named Part II.

Remember, we had nixed the full invitation suite in favor of keeping costs and effort down, but I still wanted to do something casual yet fun. I googled "free wedding templates"—no shame, guys—and found Wedding Chicks, who has some really awesome custom wedding printables and downloads. Take the work out of it and get something personalized for free! Granted, this does not mean you're the only person to ever use that invitation. I know that—although I figure the chances are slim that someone would receive two invitations using the same template, so I decided to go with it. 

I wanted something casual and cute that was at least vaguely in our wedding colors. I think the bunting invitations were instantly my favorites.


Image via Wedding Chicks

Of course, we're not doing RSVP cards so all I downloaded was the invitation template. They had escort cards and table numbers in the same theme though, along with more in other themes.

They have a fun coral and yellow vibe to them and preserve a little bit of traditional wording and presentation along with a casual feel with the fonts and design. After messing with the wording for forever, we came up with the following. (I'm not showing a picture of ours because it would be so blurred, but it looks just like the one in the pictures with our names and information.)

Miss Lemur's Parents
Along with Mr. Lemur's Parents
Invite you to share their joy at the marriage of
Miss Lemur
to
Mr. Lemur
Saturday, May xx, 2013
at 11:00 in the morning
Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center
Address, Marietta, South Carolina

One other note on wording—I left this up to my parents. Because they're technically hosting the wedding (paying for most of it), tradition dictates the invitations should come from them. However, Mr. Lemur's parents are also helping us, and they're just a huge part of our lives, so we decided on essentially a joint invitation. My mom nixed wording like "Request your presence" because she felt it was too formal—they eventually decided on "Invite you to share their joy," which was actually my favorite from the beginning. So simple and happy!

A note on printing—we had ours done at my campus print shop and got an incredible deal on it. They also did a really great job. Breakdown on costs turned out to be $0.47/sheet for color printing plus $0.04/sheet for the ivory card stock. For 75 sheets (150 invitations) that was just under $40, but we got a 30% wedding discount, which put us just under $27 for all of our invitations. I'll add this and more information to our budget post at the end!

Also, I now need to have bunting somewhere at the venue. I'm thinking draped along the mantle? For real, how perfect would that be? I can match the colors pretty closely with tissue paper I'm thinking and pull in the invitations to the decorations. That's a huge victory for an obsessive-compulsive bride like me.

Don't worry, we still have to discuss assembling the invitations and printing the envelopes. Much more to come, so stay tuned for Part III!

Anyone else go the simple free route? Anybody go the opposite direction and order custom design? Those invitations are always so pretty and I love the customization! Tell me about your experiences with wedding invitations—sending and receiving.

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