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The invitations embarked on their journey into the world last week.  I had been steadily working on them since before Spring Break and had started ordering paper samples even earlier than that in February:

Turns out that the color peacock, while difficult to match in all other aspects, is also difficult to match to paper.  We ended up settling on just a navy blue linen cardstock for the pocketfolds, white linen cardstock and text weight paper for the announcement and pocket inserts, and shimmery onyx (basically shimmery black) envelopes.

I ordered my paper through several sources:

Recycled White Linen Cardstock/Text Weight Paper - Anchorpaper.com

Patriot Blue Linen Cardstock - thePapermillstore.com

Stardream Metallic Onyx Envelopes - Envelopemall.com

And what resulted what this:

I figured that if I wanted to do a darker envelope, I needed to find a way to print on them because there's no way in hell I was going to be practicing my calligraphy in the next few weeks. I also refuse to pay someone to do it.  I chose to make wrap-around address labels because I think they are fun (and what I think really is most important!).  Adam helped pick out the style and fonts and after that it was time to get a-typin'.

Let's step indoors, shall we?

Looks quite a bit different than that top one I started almost a year ago, huh? 

I made about 10 different templates and had Adam pick the style and fonts he liked best.  Since both of my sets of parents are paying for their respective halves of the wedding, we included both of their names.  According to my lady Martha (Stewart, of course), we were supposed to put "at the marriage of their daughter Lindsy Nicole TO Adam Shaun, but we liked the ampersand better.  If you read it through, it kinda sounds weird, but it made it to the final printing stage so it stays.

As for the inserts, I had originally designed them to be the different staggered sizes, but when I took the paper in to get cut at Staples, they kind of butchered my paper (for lack of a better term) with their cutter.  Since they fit so snugly in their pocket width-wise, I just arranged them how they were supposed to actually look height-wise even though they weren't cut that way.

For the Obamas and our non-technology-friendly family members, we sent postcard RSVPs as seen above.  I made sure that the card was 3.5x5 (the minimum), bought postcard stamps which are only 33 cents and slapped a return label on them.

However, most of the RSVPs look like this.  

It tells them to go to our wedding website and RSVP from there.  I am actually using Google Docs to compile all the RSVP information so anytime someone responds, it puts int in a nice spreadsheet for me.  I debated doing this, but I think eRSVPing is becoming more popular and more acceptable because it provides automatic feedback and saves the cost of postage.

Another thing we had to accomodate for was the fact that the pocketfold was technically our inner envelope.  With typical invitation etiquette, you write the official titles on the outer envelope and then include everyone's first names on the inner envelope.  Since we weren't going to write their names on the pocketfolds, we needed another way to make clear exactly who was invited to the wedding.  We decided to do this via the RSVP form by indicating how many seats we are reserving for them.  I imagine that everyone can figure out who is included in their particular number, but if we end up with some randoms in exchange for actual family members, then I suppose it's our own fault.

I made the belly band with left over scraps and printed our logos off onto linen text paper.  I backed the logo with the same shimmery onyx paper as the envelope to give it a little cohesion.

And here are all my babies in their bassinet.

I will say that it took quite a long time to put everything together.  The pocketfolds were hand-cut/folded/glued, everything was personally designed in Microsoft Publisher and printed at home, the paper was massacred at Staples (I'm not ready to talk about this yet), reprinted at home and then hand-cut, and finally stuffed, weighed, licked and stamped.  

However, I am so happy to have these finished and to have been able to make these myself. 

Are they perfect? NO  

Would I do it all over again?  YES (except the Staples part, definitely a NO there).

I will try to get a tutorial going for these sometime in the near future.  I didn't take pictures when I initially made them, but I'm sure I am going to need a few more (and I didn't accommodate for any extras at the time).  Stay tuned!  I will also share my sad Staples story (say that 5 times fast!) and perhaps a price breakdown in the upcoming days.  

Hope you like my blood, sweat and (literally) tears! Did you attempt to make your own invitations or think that is a path you are willing to go down?