Invitations: DIY??

Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 4:25 PM

I'm sitting here waiting for Alfred to wake up (ha, yeah right) so we can start our day and head off to the East Bay and finally to Tahoe.  I guess I might as well use this time to ponder about invitations.

Back in May, the 2 of us headed to SoCal to scout out our wedding cake vendor and photographer, but we also had some time to check out what was available in the world of invitations.  The world is big, I tell you.

I love the thick, textured feel of good paper.  Pair that with pretty colors and beautiful fonts and I'm a goner.  I love beautiful things, can't help it!  Sometimes I call myself a raccoon...all attracted to pretty, shiny things, haha.  Anyways, I envisioned having a good looking invitation, modeled after some of the things I've seen online on ppl's blogs and all (there's a LOT of bloggers getting married, especially food bloggers, of which I am one ).  Nobody ever mentioned how damn costly having a pretty piece of paper announce your good news could be!

My mom found a printer who could do our invitations (English and Chinese) for $3 a pop.  The downside is that we don't have a lot of room for customization.  Hm, do I care so much as to do something about it....

So I've been looking at semi-DIY methods.  This post on weddingbee (my wedding crack) is making me seriously consider choosing this route.  I don't want to have to settle and compromise with so many things because of cost, which is unfortunately an issue I'm constantly dealing with .  And if I can't get it done professionally at a reasonable price, I don't see why I can't add a few of my own touches to create an invitation that I really like.

I have a list of vendors that I've checked out (via their websites) in order to find out how much my "dream invitation" might cost.

Stamps to gussy up otherwise plain envelopes: Impress
Custom designed monograms: Creative Montage
Pocketfolds (not sure if I want to create this style of invitation)

The other big thing to research will be the printers themselves as I'm not sure I want to deal with printing cardstock and cutting to the dimensions I need.  Although if I wanted to bring the cost down further, I could try to find stationary I like and get the printing done at Kinkos, hehe.  We'll see.  I've already had a few harebrained schemes that just didn't turn out to be very practical at all.  I just need to sit my butt down one of these weekends and call/email some of these printing companies.  Just like I need to sit my butt down one of these same weekends and get my grad school application into gear.  Uh oh.