Be our guest be our guest be our guest.

One of my biggest projects for the wedding has been the invitations. The insanely expensive type of invitation that I wanted was not in the budget. I have a love-hate relationship with Adobe Illustrator. It has amazing functions but some things are just so damn complicated. After designing it, I let it sit on my computer for a few (several) months, since invitations did not need to go out until December. I figured the easy part would be printing and sending them out.

Well, December crept up quickly and I ran into several issues during the printing. First of all, the paper was too thick to print on our own printer. Gah. Thank you, mrs. a, for letting us borrow yours! Then, the yellow I used in Illustrator was printing brown the on the printer. Gah. Finally, though I set the size on Illustrator to the size of the paper, it was getting enlarged in the printing. Gah. I am easily frustrated, especially when technology does not work. Lucky for me, I have a very patient, computer-savvy, perfectionist fiance'. He spent several painstaking hours fixing each page. Thank you, mr. c for doing everything for me that I don't have the patience for. You spoil me.

While he printed, I made address labels and return address labels. We used our customizable stamps by Stamps.com purchased from Walgreens during the summer upon a deal alert from this guy.

4 different engagement photos taken by our wonderful photogs, Chris and Erinn Austin.

After printing, we folded each page and perforated the RSVP postcard and it was ready for assembly. I went back and forth on how to bind it. I tried ribbon, I tried thread, I tried staples. I know it wasn't the best looking option, but I went with staples because it was the easiest and I was already behind in mailing them out.

i love this thing. thanks, mrs. gb.

ready to assemble.

The invitations finally went out last Tuesday, with, of course, one more complication. Unfortunately, when mr. c went to mail these out, they weighed 1.2 ounces, 0.2 oz over the 44 cent stamp rate. Gah. So, he had to purchase 17 cent stamps and stick them on each envelope:


I am completely happy with the final result:

it reads: leave us a message...but nothing boring.

Invitation Cover: Kelly Paper Solar White Classic Column $32.59/250 pages
Invitation Pages: Kelly Paper Solar White Classic Crest $21.90/250 pages
Envelopes: Kelly Paper Pewter Class Crest $55.95/250 envelopes