Wedding Blog

Back in June, I brought our invitations to be mailed just before the post office closed. I only had 43 of them, so I asked sweetly if I could have them hand cancelled. The tired PO worker thought for a second and then handed me the stamp and ink pad and said, “Here — you can do it yourself.” It wasn’t a nasty tone, she just didn’t want to do it, but had no problem having me do it. I’m sure it broke all kinds of union rules, but yippee for me!

I wanted to share my thoughts on invitations and how I managed to keep within my budget without DIY. I knew we didn’t have enough money in our budget to have our invitations custom designed/made, so I started looking at on-line resources like mygatsby.com and others. I was discouraged because I was looking for something with style and an old fashioned feeling (vague I know, but I knew I’d know when I saw it) that wouldn’t break the bank.

Then my mother happened to mention to me that the daughter of a colleague of hers designed wedding stationery for a living and I should check out her website. That is how I found Aimee at Creative Montage. It turns out she has about 25 beautiful “pre-designed/packaged” invitations and that’s when I found “the one!” It’s their “Brooke.” And here it is:

Our Save-the-Date that we mailed in January:

Hooray — our invitations arrived on April 30th! And this is what I saw when I opened the box:

Invitation:

Close-Up:

RSVP Postcard:

Reception Card:

And finally, the Thank You card:

Creative Montage’s prices were competitive with MyGatsby.com, but I found her designs to be fun, varied and classy. I’d highly recommend her! And if there is an item or color you don’t see — ask her and she’ll be happy to accommodate you!

She also offers great monograms (5 for $15 — now there’s a wedding bargain). She has over 100 to choose from and you can use them for all your fun DIY projects — favors, out of town bags, menus, programs — really the sky is the limit.

So how did you handle your invitations? “Pre-packaged” from an on-line company, custom by a local designer, DIY?