While I wanted to have nice invitations, I also didn't want to break the bank on essentially pieces of paper that would get thrown away. I realized if I bought my invitations and folders/envelopes separately, I could save some money. However, this wasn't as easy as I thought. I wanted cards with different information on it (i.e. Response cards, cards for the brunch, and cards for the two dinners I have ADR's for), but places like Zazzle and Vistaprint didn't have a wide variety of sizes of cards. You basically have your 5X7 card and then the same size smaller cards.
I ordered the shimmery gray pocketfolds, envelopes, and "watermelon" response card envelopes from
www.envelopemall.com for a total cost of $57 (I bought them all as samples and paid only $1 for shipping).
I designed the invitations through a template I found on Vistaprint. Then I got creative with all the other little cards and edited them for what I needed. For example, my "Family Dinner" card was a Save the Date card.
Then I borrowed my parent's 30-year-old trusty paper cutter and cut them all down to the size I needed to fit my pocketfolds. The invitations are 5X7, but so is the inside area of the pocketfold. I also picked up some blue cardstock at Michael's (which was 50% off so I got a bunch of sheets for less than $10) for the background of the invitation. I also picked up some fancy schmancy paper adhesive, but the next day everything barely stuck together so I went back over it with a glue stick.
The cutting was the tricky part as I wanted everything to look uniform and not like I had just gotten a bunch of 5 year olds together for Arts and Crafts.
Here is all the stuff in its blurry glory (I can't find my camera so my cell phone camera had to do and I'm one of the only people in the world that still doesn't own a smartphone, so it's not very high-quality):
From Vistaprint's website:
When I was creating these I had to remember to keep the words away from the sides so I could trim them later.
Front side of brunch info:
Gah! A misspelling!
Honestly, even when I saw it, I wasn't too stressed about it. No one reads to the end anyways
.
Back side of brunch info:
Front side of response card:
Back side of response card:
Front of "Family Dinner" card (I only ordered 10 of these as it's just for immediate family, now let's just hope they get put in the right invitations!
):
I deleted my email address and cell phone number. Not that I wouldn't love for all of you to call and email me...
Back of "Family Dinner" card:
I really wanted another color, but my only choices were pink, blue, and gray and I had already used the other two. We're paying for the dinner at 'Ohanas, but not the dinner at Biergarten (well, we may, it all depends on how generous we're feeling at the time
) so I listed the prices of the meals at Biergarten.
They also have thank you cards that I may go back and get after my bridal shower. I was just tired of designing these things at this point.
Total cost from Vistaprint (with a retailmenot.com promo code): $82.64
My invitations (without postage) came to: $149.64
I had wanted to stay under $150 with postage, but I'm still happy with what I got for the money. I paid extra for the color backsides and extra to have a "linen finish" on all the cards/invitations, which I think makes it look really nice. I'm still finishing the invitations up, but it's my goal to have them all in the mail by this Saturday!
. Thanks for reading along!
. I watched your video on the Tamu Tamu Courtyard (which came up in my frantic search for more and more Tamu Tamu pictures) and it was great! Thanks for reading along 
.
.
I think my dream of seeing the Osborne Lights the night before our wedding just got dashed (although, I'm pretty stubborn and will probably still try to squeeze it in...). 
