AW: Invites are ready(pretty much)

[Deleted User]

The pretty much has to do with one of my bridesmaids who decided to enlope while I was away and now I need to get her address.




I am so glad these are done.  My FMIL helped out quite a bit.

xxquemirasxx

They LOOK BEAUTIFUL!!! The color the whole thing

Congrats on this HUGE CHECK!!!!!

[Deleted User]

Thank you so much for the encouragement

jagore08

Those are so pretty!  I hope your guests know how much work went into these!

garavito_16

Very pretty!

CANDEE43

Beautiful!

chinchilla2284

gorgeous. Love the look. Congrats for a huge check!

dawnbeatty

The look GREAT - so happy for you!

Melistar85

So Pretty! I love the Pocketfold color.

[Deleted User]

I finally got in touch with my bridesmaid tonight!   So out they go tomorrow

The pocketfold color is Stardream Punch.   What's funny is that it matches my bridesmaid's dresses which is a David's Bridal Wisteria.

futuremrskelliott

Can I ask where did you get the items for your pocketfolds?

TysWife2Be

LOVE them!

Twisted06

Very very pretty!!

[Deleted User]

These invites ended up being a slurge, but it's okay because other things have ended up being under budget.

There were two places I looked for pocketfolds.  Originally I had priced envelopperinc.com for them.   I have approximately 80 invites going out, so it would have cost me around $135.20 for all of them there.  Then I looked at paper-papers.com which had the same cardstock, but in a large enough size I could cut it and make the roughly 7.25 x7.25 cards myself(my template is at home so right now I don't have exact measurements.   So I bought a ream of stardream paper from them for just under $90.  I marked them with pencil and was able to pull out around 4 pocket folds per sheet with leftovers for my escort cards and programs. I was able to do the cutting at the student copy place of my local community college so I didn't have to buy any cutting tools.

The pocket is held together by the Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, which I got at Michaels.  It was a pain to glue and when I glued them I used phonebooks to hold them in place.  I also used the same adhesive to glue the Invite to the pocketfold and to stick rhinestones on the edges.

The belly bands put me over budget.  I did a google search and found an old bridal thread where a bride had purchased rhinestone buckles for her invites, she had gotten them from an importer at a significant discount.  I found the importer online:
http://www.jablonex.us/ They usually sell to businesses but if you call them and order at least $100( which is about $3 short of what I ordered).

I could not find ribbon in a color I wanted from anywhere and since I had slurged on the buckles I went ahead and ordered a fancier velvet ribbon from www.artistic ribbon.com in a plum color.  The bands required approximately 3  11 yard spools of 1 3/8" inch Nyvalor Ribbon which they sell for $17.72 per spool.  I cut them, put the buckles on and sewed about 20(in a week) of them by hand, then my FMIL who was watching me do it said I was crazy and watching me do it by hand was driving her crazy so she pulled out the sewing machine and we zipped through the rest of them in less than a day.

The invites ended up being more expensive than I originally expected.  I gave myself a $400 budget at first.  The original design was $226.00 from American Wedding(I used a 15% off coupon).  The material for the pocketfolds was $90.  The Adhesive was around $5.  The rhinestones were another $70.  The ribbon ended up being $65(I bought an extra spool to make sure). And the buckles were around $100.  So roughly $556 total.

  I will say that my inspiration for the design was something similar I had seen at the Bridal Expo at Nidasboutiq.com(but after looking at her designs and how much she charged for something like that [roughly $12 per invite] and having the lady at the Bridal Expo mutter something about I shouldn't be asking how much postage is on her invites when they are like upwards of $20 per piece, I was like "okay, lady thanks for the inspiration! You're not the only person on earth that is crafty."

xxquemirasxx

WOW Tillea! I think you deserve a around of applause...you put so much work on those invites no wonder they are amazing Good job! You get a gold star! Though u did go over budget I say it was worth it since the invites look great. Man reading all the work you put in to it, made me sweat!

btw- how much is postage on your invites?

[Deleted User]

They came in at $1.22 a piece.  So two 61-cent wedding cake stamps did the trick.  They were heavy, but I was pretty relieved they weren't more(I was afraid I was looking at upwards of $2 a piece).  Postage came in at just under $100, not counting the return address stamps(I had some left over from my save-the-dates).  I have to send Christina the guest database tonight since she is keeping track of my RSVPs.

The extended period I am staying out here to secure the house has made it so I have to rely on her to keep track of them.