Weddingbee Blog

I know I am very late (sorry!) but here are the details and breakdown for my invitations. Here is a snapshot of the finished product for reference:

At the start of the invitation-planning process, I knew that I wanted something like this:

I sent this simple mock-up to several paper and invitation vendors who gave me quotes upwards to $12/invitation…and that wasn’t including the inside paper!

In the end, I ordered the pocketfolds from Cards & Pockets. Since having the above design cut from one sheet of paper would waste too much and be too costly, we decided to have the fold-out sides cut separately, folded into thirds, and then taped to the back of the Vertico pocketfolds.

There is, however, one thing I should mention. I had specified that the length of each fold-out piece should be 7″, which is the length of the Vertico midsection. However, when we folded each side, we found that due to the thickness of the paper, the bottom and top sections would not close! We ended up having to snip off 1/8″ from each custom fold-out using a paper trimmer.

We also decided to order the cream invitation paper, the cream inserts for the pocket, and the gold mat (the gold trim around the cream area) from Cards & Pockets. Here was the breakdown for 250 invitations:

As you can see, the total was quite large so I asked for a bulk discount…and they gave me one! So with the 10% discount, the final total from Cards & Pockets, including shipping, was $1,556.83.

I ordered both the inner and outer envelopes from Paper Presentation:

With shipping & tax, that came out to be $173.05 at the end.

Now, on to the frog buttons. These were a bit of a challenge since most stores (brick & mortar as well as online) had less than 50 in stock, and at high prices. At the end, I found an online retailer called Buttons4u.com who carried them in bulk.

I saw that on their Chinese loop frog buttons page that they had quite a selection available. I really couldn’t decide based on pictures, so I ordered samplings of the ones I liked.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received the samples - the pictures on the website are very accurate! At the end, we decided to go with the “Put-up 1 dz. - 2 ” Wide - $0.60/ea. - off White” which is the first item on the frog buttons page. Although this was the flimsiest (and therefore hardest to control and glue) of the buttons, this was also the thinnest….and I wanted to make sure the invitations could go through the postal system without much problem.

Attaching the buttons onto the invitations was a whole other story. We went through several types of glue before finally settling on….superglue. Yes, you read that correctly. This was the only thing that would stay! Believe me, we went through many nights of sticky hands and glue fumes in order to get these suckers to stick.

The Swarovski crystal at the top of the middle, English portion of the invitation was purchased at a local Joann’s and I hand-ironed every single one. I couldn’t find a product page online, but if you Google “Pure Allure Hot Fix Crystals” you should be able to find them through various retailers. Here’s a picture so you can see what the package looks like:

At the end, each invitation ended up costing about $11 (including postage, all the supplies, and ink for the printer). Yes I know that’s a lot of money! But I like to think that the guests appreciated the multicultural aspect, as well as all the hard work I put into making them.