Invitations: Ordered!!!

Printemps Invitation by Bella Figura

As promised, this is my next invitation post and I am writing to say that we (finally) picked out and ordered our invitations. Yay!! I am really very excited about this decision. I have to admit, that I fell in love with the Bella Figura invitations when I first checked them out. But, they were out of our price range, so I searched and searched for what I wanted instead. I sent my dear sweet patient fiance chasing links to many many invitations. The conversations would go like this:

Me: "What do you think of this?"

Him: "I like it."

The next day....

Me: "Hmmm... I don't love it."

And the search went on. I cannot even tell you how many invitations I have looked at, all I know is that it was WAY too many. A few weekends ago when I was in Chicago we visited Paper Source (there isn't one here) and picked this design. The positive--we could get our invitation letterpressed and the reply card flat printed, saving us money. Pricing it out, it came out to more than we had originally budgeted, but at that point we were willing to pay that price to cross one more item off of our list. And I was satisfied. But not excited. I was happy to have one more thing checked off the list. But I wasn't looking forward to having them arrive in the mail and looking at their prettiness.

We had already decided that we didn't need any enclosures except a reply card, because all the details are on our website and all the enclosures increase the price in muliples, plus it wastes paper. We are hoping that our guests will RSVP online, which left us wondering what to do with our reply cards--do we address and stamp them all knowing that only a few will get returned because most of our friends and family are pretty tech savvy (my grandfather RSVP'd once he received our Save the Date). So, fiance suggested including RSVP information... on the invitation. Gasp! Really?! More paper saved. More money saved. So, I looked--what is the price of a Bella Figura oh-so-pretty letterpressed invitation if all we ordered was the invitation? Slightly cheaper than our Paper Source option. And, Bella Figura's etiquette page has this to say about adding reply information to your invitation:

We've seen this idea become more popular as clients approach letterpress wedding invitations with both budget and the environment in mind. Printing your reply information in the bottom left hand corner of your invitation is an acceptable alternative that can save you money. Reply cards are a relatively modern invention, so by placing reply information on the invitation itself, you are still being traditional.

Sold! Oh, and they are eco-friendly, which also makes us feel like the invitation reflects our values as a couple. The invitation we ended up picking (pictured above) is more traditional and romantic than the designs we had previously entertained. But, I like it and fiance likes it. And I am excited to see them arrive at my door. So, today we ordered our invitations!!!

Thank you for your support as I have struggled with this decision. Now, I just need to figure out what DIY tasks I will take on to get these in the mail: envelope liners? calligraphy?