The Invitations

I made our wedding invitations as simple and cheapo as possible. Like I said, some things I just didn't care that much about. I looked online and folks seriously get into their diy invitations... I didn't have the time or the inclination to get off on them that much. Still, I am happy with the end result. Perfectly acceptable. We also decided to send out an evite, using Purple Trail. This way we were sure to cover everyone... most of my friends are online, most of Stu's are not. For some folks we had emails but no street address or vice versa. So, we just sent both types to everyone.

I decided the cheapest way to do the printed invitations, was to format them so they would fit into a standard envelope. I chose the parchment card stock and blue paper to go with my wedding colors and theme. The parchment looks kinda sandy and I liked that. I just cut two rectangles and glue-sticked them together (if I were to do it again, I would use rubber cement for a better stick job). I did spend a good few days formatting the info onto the card, but really there isn't that much info that goes into an invitation. Since I did these in Word, the tricky part was getting my Wave logo positioned behind all the text properly. I also tried printing little waves onto the envelopes (which looked way fancy), but my printer kept eating them. Bummer. Oh and I bought self-sticking envelopes which made the process that much easier. Not pictured are the RSVP post cards, saving even more money on postage and no extra envelope.


Instead of bringing gifts, we asked everyone to participate in our Wedding Raffle, "Win fabulous prizes created by our talented friends!" It was a huge success, with 20+ impressive prizes. The little box on the invite has this info, and I also added a check box to the RSVP for those who wanted to donate to the raffle. I was surprised by how many folks did! I'll do a separate post with more details about the raffle later.

Ok, so the cost of the invitations (card stock, colored paper, envelopes) was about $35, not including postage. There was a ton of extra paper and card stock for the bar signs and info cards for the raffle, as well as thank you cards. Hell, even Mermaid hang tags and business cards for the next couple years.

I made the thank you cards using a quote from our ceremony and our Wave symbol, and formatted them to fit into the leftover standard envelopes.