Invitation update

So I dashed all over town today looking at paper stock, envelopes, houses and meeting with printers and our very talented graphic designer friend, who I'll call K/B, or B/K, and the invitations are coming together!

My major battle has been an unexpected one: since day one I've wanted cobalt or turquoise blue invitation with white text. Turns out that none of the usual suspects can really print opaque white ink. It's either really faded looking or it's a really expensive process i.e. foil. Not only that, but it's been impossible to find the "right" color paper and envelopes.

Then, finally a breakthrough: it occurred to me that should just do it the opposite way around and print all of the blue and not the text onto white card, so that the white card shows through the blue = white text. Does that make sense? Probably not, it's been a long day and it's complicated, but it's relatively inexpensive, will take about 6 days (2 days of which are drying time because it's so much ink), and it's exactly what I want. Yay! I'm waiting on the official estimate, but I think it's a go as soon as the venue is locked and therefore the layout is locked.

Today I also finally found hot pink envelopes and bought 170 of them (figuring I'd need lots of spares), and the plan is for the printers to start printing the return address on them in white (yes it will be faded but it's just a return address) tomorrow, so that I can start addressing them mid next week (I'm thinking of handwriting all addresses myself with silver ink like I did with the Save The Dates). That way I'll have all of the envelopes addressed by the time the invitations and the RSVP postcards are printed, and they can ship right away, about 7 weeks before the wedding (it's currently 9 and a half weeks before). That would be pretty amazing considering we don't even have a venue yet!

I'm so grateful that I had the time to do all of this running around and exploring different options, rather than choosing the paths of least resistance - either an invitation I didn't particularly like, or spending much more than we budgeted/ seems rational. Hopefully they'll turn out as planned and all my efforts will be worth it!

They're definitely colorful - turquoise, cobalt blue and hot pink - but I wanted them to really set the tone for the wedding, bright, fun, festive, and definitely not your typical wedding! I'll post pictures when they're done!