The Doxie Invites: From the Outside In

From day one, making the invitations was the part I was most excited about in all of wedding planning.  I must have designed 15 different invitation suites before I decided on a design, and even still I questioned myself.  When there's an endless amount of amazing wedding invitations on the internet, it was hard to believe that anything I could make would live up to my inspiration.  

Anyway, after about eight months of designing, second guessing and redesigning, I came up with a design that I think conveys the feeling of our wedding and our personalities pretty well.  They're not perfect, and if I had more time I would have added a few more details, but they are what they are, and I think the turned out well enough!

So let's begin with the outside and work our way in.  That's how our guests will experience them, after all!

I knew that I wanted our invitations and STDs to "go" together without being too matchy-matchy.  One of the ways I did this was by using the same color red envelopes from Paper Source.  I know Paper Source isn't the most budget friendly option, but the paper they use on their envelopes is so thick, and the red is so perfect.  

As far as postage goes, I wish custom stamps from Zazzle.com were in our budget, but they simply weren't.  I had already spent more than I wanted on the paper and envelopes!  We lucked out, though, because the King and Queen of Hearts love stamps are pretty perfect.  They almost match, and the overall feeling is very similar to our invites.  We had to use two per invite because USPS told us they were non-machinable.  

Unfortunately, the Canadians didn't get cute stamps.  Postage was a dollar to Canada, and the only dollar stamps available were these Wisdom stamps.  Yeah, they're ugly.  But at that point I didn't care.  I also had to add those airmail stickers to muck up the envelopes even more.

Do you remember Miss Poodle's amazing sewn-on address labels?  Well, I loved the look and I knew they'd be perfect, but I was far too lazy to disassemble our envelopes and actually sew them on.  The solution?  I printed each label, cut them out, sewed a border around each one, and used spray adhesive to glue them to the envelope.  Half the work, and I think they turned out pretty nicely!

Of course I had to make the labels wrap around!  Our return address folds around the back of the envelope.

Up next: We open them up and look inside!

p.s. do you notice I didn't make envelope liners?  I really, really wanted to.  I had them all planned out, but I ran out of time and energy.  My dad kept adding more invitees, and by the end of it all I was just relieved to have them finished.  So far I've only heard positive comments about them.  I'm sure no one will be expecting liners.  Oh well!

Invitation DIYers:  Was there an element you had to leave out of your invite suite?  Did anyone even notice it was missing?