These were probably the only thing so far that I haven't spent ages thinking about and researching which, to be honest, was a bit of light relief! Although I am absolutely loving all of the planning and researching I am unbelievably indecisive and I know that over the next 14 months I am going to be over-thinking every last detail and changing my mind over and over again! I'm not sure my fiancé knows what he's let himself in for! So it's nice to have at least one detail nailed and in choosing the invites I have also chosen my main colour and a design that I might carry over into other things.
When I started looking into prices of invitations I was a bit shocked, it seemed like I was looking at paying at the very least £2 ($3.25) an invite for a small, basic card and the sky seems to be the limit! I thought for a while about making my own as I'm quite crafty but I wanted something that looked professional and was put off a bit by what a mammoth task that would be given we are having around 120 guests.
I also had the fight in my head of "your invites are the first thing people see regarding your wedding and so it's worth spending the money to make sure they are beautiful and elegant" versus "there is no point spending hundreds of pounds on stationery when it's all going to end up being thrown away after it's served its purpose". My friend told me she knew someone who spent £3000 ($5000) on wedding stationery. Seriously. Whilst I want mine to be nice and in our colours I really don't want to pay a lot for it.
So, as an in-between, I have ended up with some DIY invitation packs from the Brides collection at Michaels. I absolutely love Michaels and I wish they would come to the UK. My Mom and I recently visited some friends in Minneapolis (and the Mall of America!) and we took a trip to see what Michaels had to offer in the wedding stakes. I got three packs of 40 invites for $120 (plus tax) and three packs of 40 matching thank you notes for $30 (plus tax). Bargain!! As we are having a civil ceremony we are not bothering with orders of service but they did have matching packs of these. Here they are:
They were a bit of a spur-of-the-moment buy and my fiancé didn't get to see them before I bought them (!) but he said he trusted me to get whatever I saw and in the end loved them, phew!! The invites come with reply cards and envelopes but I am thinking of putting all the information about our wedding on a website and asking people to RSVP through that so I might use the reply cards/envelopes as save the dates.
I'm really pleased with them and can't wait to print them all nearer the time. I'm going to see if we can incorporate the design on our cake and I'm thinking of using any left over invites as a backing for our table numbers.
I also got some really cute little bows with pearls in the middle in a matching colour for a few dollars, I'm going to stick these to our place cards:
gorgeous!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks lovely!
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