Beagle Invites

Our invitations were semi-DIY. I ordered the actual invite and rsvp card from the White Aisle. Rebecca was really sweet and easy to work with- our invitations arrived in perfect order and on time! I decided to DIY the map and assemble them myself to save some money... although looking back I think what I saved in money was eaten up in the time I spent putting them together.

I originally planned on buying scrapbooking paper or wrapping paper to cut into liners, but I was unsuccessful. I finally gave up and decided to make my own. Our invitation envelopes were an odd size (5.5 x 7.5- the liner templates from paper-source DO NOT include this size :( ), so I created liners by tracing the envelope and trimming 2cm off all of the edges. I then stamped the design shown below onto each liner using some purplish ink. I bought all the paper products from Hobby Lobby. This is what our guests saw when they opened up their mail:

Instead of using an inner envelope, I used left over lace (from this project) which I cut into 2" wide strips to wrap around the envelope contents. I wrote the individual guests names on the square center piece of paper that also held the lace together.

There were two main parts of our invitation: the formal invite and the map and rsvp card, which I bundled separately. I also matted our invitation on purple scrapbooking paper. All the paper products were shades of purple.

I was actually intending to use this design from the White Aisle; however, at the last minute I decided to search the site for invitation wording and discovered that a new design had just been posted. I emailed Rebecca to change my design and I haven't looked back. :) Momma Beagle really wanted thermographic printing (raised/ embossed), so we went with that. It turned out really elegant and it's a nice compromise between digital and letterpress. Close-up of the matted invitation:

The bottom side of the map/rsvp bundle:

This map was a pain. I originally wanted to hand draw it, then scan it, and edit in photoshop. This was a big fat FAIL. I finally just used AutoCad to create our map. I print-screened the google map of our reception/ceremony locations and pasted it in a new dwg file. I then traced over the lines using a line tool and increased the line width of the route we wanted our guests to take. I converted it to a jpeg file and inserted the street labels and colored the lines using photoshop. The heart and butterfly were hand drawn.... I found out later that there are really cute free fonts online that could alternatively been used, but at that point it was too late.

The RSVP card:

The Ensemble:

Details:

I hand addressed all of the envelopes, using the same method I used for our save-the-dates. Surprisingly, it only took 1.5 ink vials to address the ~100 invitations we sent out. I also found some really cute stickers at Michaels that were on clearance that I used to seal the envelopes (I had hoped to encourage people to gently open the envelopes at the seal instead of cutting open the top and defeating the purpose of the liners).


I really hadn't intended on spending such a large amount of time on invitations, but I received many compliments from our guests about their uniqueness, so I'm hoping most of them will be keepsakes!

Was there a wedding project that took an unexpected turn for you?