Mr. Lollipop once tried to add up all the time I spent on our invitations. I had to stop him because I couldn’t contemplate the amount of time I put into them without losing my mind a little. I started sketching in November, did the design in April, screen printed in May, letter pressed in June, and finally mailed them in July. Of course, I had lots of help on the last three, but the point is that I spent lots of time in the print studio that could have been used to learn a martial art or a new language.
Still, I don’t think I could bear to let anyone else design our invitations.
I put invitation page together to carry on the tree theme we used on the cover:

My original digital mock-up:

Luckily, our parents were really understanding when we couldn’t get the letter press calibrated to add everyone’s first names.
Also, I drew dozens of trees (one can be seen on the cover), but ended up buying the rights to use a much nicer one from istockphoto.com. That website is a great place to legally obtain the rights to all kinds of vector images for those who like to design, but have trouble drawing. Our map and directions page:

I drew the map using an old copy of Macromedia FreeHand. We used the pattern at the bottom of the page to register the layers of ink.
The full package, including a rehearsal dinner invitation and a website card:

An assembled invitation:

beautiful!