Postcard Guestbook-take 2

So, in my last post I told you about my guestbook postcard fail and how I filled the rest of my album with purty postcards. Welp, I did find something else to fill my album up...

Our postcard RSVP cards! We had left a space on our RSVP cards for our guests to write something back to us. Not every guest did this or got the concept, but the ones who did had written some sweet things to us.

I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with them; keep them? throw them out? This was a perfect solution!

Yay!

Inserts and Price Breakdown

Insert wise, I wanted to keep our invites clutter free. I figure that if there was any additional information that I needed to send out I could mail out later to my confirmed guests.

First, to answer a couple questions:
Mochacoca asked, "Looks great did you Gocco everything? I can’t wait till I pull out my Gocco. I have been stocking up on supplies"

Answer: I did not Gocco everything. I've been trying to save and savor my supplies so I printed the invite, inserts and labels with a laser printer. The only thing I did Gocco was the return addy on the envelope. I do plan on Gocco-ing thank you note cards though and can't wait to do so!

bugaboo said, "I would love to learn more about the wording you used on your invitation if you don’t mind sharing; it seems to be uniquely worded and I just love that!"

Answer: When I was searching for the right wording for our wedding invites, I wanted something heartfelt, not too, too cheesy and nothing that refers to "Husband and Wife". Verse it has some great suggestions and many, many verses to choose from.

Our invite wording:
Please accept our invitation to join family and friends, in witnessing the sanctity of our love, devotion and dedication to our new life.

For a better view of how I organized the wording:


Onto the inserts.
Although majority of our guests are from the mainland, we do have a few local Hawaii guests that we are inviting so we made two versions of our postcard RSVPs; one for the local guests and one for the OOT guests. The OOT RSVP has a spot for the guest to put when they are arriving and where they will be staying at. We're getting married on a weekday rather than a weekend, so for our local Hawaii guests we gave them the option of coming to the ceremony and/or the dinner afterwards. Our ceremony is during regular work hours, so we had to factor in that our local guests might not want to take off of work to come to the ceremony, but might be willing to join us for the dinner later.

OOT RSVP

Local RSVP

The back of our RSVP postcard was the same for both cards. It just had our return address and a spot for our guests to write something back to us.

We also had an invite and directions insert to our Welcome BBQ.

As a budget bride, I can't go on without sharing the price breakdown:

Bright White Linen Cardstock (100pk)	Paper and More	$15.99
Japanese Paper (5- 25 1/2" x 19"sheets)	Paper Source	$47.00
60 Jackets	Paper Presentation	$79.40
Envelopes (2-50 packs)	Paper Presentation	$27.35
TOTAL Total includes shipping		$169.74

That equals out to $2.83 an invite. Plus Postage and Gocco supplies.

And I still have left over paper and envelopes for future projects.

Could I have made them cheaper? Sure. But for being "custom", I think I did pretty good on price.

You're Invited!

So let me start the New Year for apologizing for my...um...lack of existence lately. The holidays swallowed me whole and just finally spit me out. My last post left off with the send off of my invites. This is the follow up...my invites!

These are the labels that I wrote to Miss Etiquette about. I printed these out on 8.5x11 label sheets (6 on a sheet). Mr. Mek and I cut them out individually by hand. I am sooo glad we did; I might be a lil' biased, but I think they came out quite nicely.

Return addy was gocco'd on the back of the envelope.

This is what the guest pulls out of the envelope. A jacket, complete with bellyband!

Invites gets pulled out of jacket and ta da..."You're Invited!"

Close up of our invite; it's printed on bright white linen paper.

Next up: the inserts.

And They're Off!

My invites are officially sent. Finally after some delay and procrastination, I finally stuck them in the mail box today. Not only did I use labels on my envelopes, I also used non-matching stamps. Ohhh the horror! I was hoping to be able to use these:

source

They would have matched very nicely with my red envelopes. But low and behold, my invites needed 59 cent stamps. These were my options:

source

At the first post office I went to they did not have any 59 cent stamps; they were going to order them for me, but when they called to put in an order they were told that because of the holiday rush, they wouldn't make it to the post office till January 9th. Since my RSVP date is January 15th, that was a no-go.

The second post office I went to did not have the heart stamp, but had plenty stamps of Mr. Michener. At this point, I could care less what stamp was on my invite, I just needed to mail them out. The lovely post lady pointed out that the guy was wearing a lei, I said, "Perfect, since my wedding is in Hawaii". LoL. When I got home, my curiousness got to me and I googled James Michener. Not only is he originally from Pennsylvania but he wrote "Tales from the South Pacific" and "Hawaii". Coincidence? I think not.

Invite Prep

Without showing the whole entire invite, just yet, my invite inspiration is a combo of:

knottie: redshoegirl

+

source

Sheesh! Invite prep takes a loooong time. And I'm not just talking about making an invite list and trying to gather address from everyone (although that takes forever too!). Here's a lil' of what I've been doing the past few weeks...

My supplies: Jacket Invites, Pretty Japanese Paper, ATG 700 tape gun and a trusty paper cutter.

Apply tape across opening of Jacket invites

Stick pre-cut liners inside Jacket and on top of tape.

Rub off extra tape.

Tada!

Now for the belly bands.

Before (Japanese Paper and shimmery paper)

After!
(our names will be on the bellyband, the alias was photoshopped on)

Of course none of this was difficult, just a lil' tedious (and repetitive). Nothing a new episodes of reality TV couldn't entertain me through.

How much prep work are you doing on your DIY items?

Yes, Miss Etiquette, I'm using labels.

Dear Miss Etiquette,
I am doing the unthinkable; I'm using envelopes to address my wedding invitations and I don't care what you think. In my defense, I was planning on using a calligraphy type to print onto my envelopes but my dark red envelopes makes it difficult to see the address, so labels it is. You may judge all you want but Martha Stewart doesn't think it's so bad and neither do I.

Sincerely,
Ms. Mek

Wendy Wedding Invites!

I am officially the wedding invite designer/creator/printer for all my friends. And I love it. In the last twelve months I have done 2 wedding invites, a birthday invite, and a housewarming invite for various friends. The wedding invites were "gifts" to the brides (saved them much $$), for the birthday invite, I got paid in Hershey Park tickets. And the housewarming invite was done as a favor.

Last week, one of my bestests, Wendy, asked if I could quickly make and print invites for her. She and her hubby are planning on a small ceremony (immediate family members only), with a reception to follow a few days later with family and friends on Labor day. Well, if you check your calenders, Labor day is less than 2 months away! Wendy sent me an image she found on a website that she liked. It was a cute, modern, simple design that I "borrowed" and layed out her invite in less than an hour!

Wendy's Invites!

The invite is printed on white linen paper.

The RSVP card is attached to the invite, but it's perforated, so the guests can tear off the postcard sized RSVP and mail it back. The couple's addy is on the other side. I love it!