Invitations have left the building

... and by building, I mean my house! Now they are out there in the big bad world. Ah, I really hope they don't get too mangled in transit.  I felt like a parent dropping off a kid at pre-K for the first time. Over INVITATIONS. Pieces of paper. Stupid, I know. Thank God I have the lovely and non-judgemental ladies of the hive.  

invites in the mailbox!/ personal photo

Anyways, I am NOT going to give you the whole "they were a labor of love" crap because, frankly, it felt more like the Herculean task and I was just so glad to be done with them and move on to something else!

First, let me start off by saying that I am not one of those "paper loving people". I mean, sure, I appreciate how pretty and fancy paperie looks, and I agree that it gives everything such a luxurious feel, but to be honest, I've just never been the one to get excited over stationary. So, I knew early on that paper products were at the very bottom of the priority list for the Waterfall wedding. Then, over one of my many initial rants about how much everything costs when you put the word wedding in it, MOH Long Legs suggested that we make our own. She could put her legendary graphic design skills to work and all we would have to do is print and assemble everything! Easy Peasy!

Ha! I want to go back in time and slap some sense into BOTH of us for being so naive! Long story short, MOH Long Legs had to bail at the last minute and I was left invitation-less. After a quick search on Wedding Paper Divas, I figured that it would cost me beaucoup bucks to buy the kind of invitation I wanted, so it was back to DIY. 

Let me just say that I am super impressed with all of you ladies who have designed your own invitations! That sh*t is harder than it looks! It took me a week of fiddling around on Illustrator just to get the glyphs in our names the way I wanted them! To be honest, a part of me has invitation regret. Not because I don't like our invitations, I am quite pleased with how they turned out, but because after all was said and done, I kind of wish I would have done the practical thing and just PAID someone to get them done.

Confession time: The Waterfalls used an invitation kit from Omer Deserres (Michael`s snobby, French Canadian Cousin Store). Please don't disown me, every one. We used the kit for the paper and enveloppes, but I actually designed the invitation on Illustrator, and that alone took longer than I care to recall.

I should have stopped there and called it a day, but, of course that would not be enough! So, we purchased some gold cardstock, cobalt blue ribbon and a stamp kit and went to work.  

I also purchased a bone folder to fold the cardstock. I highly recommend this, if you try to fold a heavy cardstock without scoring it first, it creases and sometimes rips. I started by marking out 100 pieces of cardstock, then scoring along the traced line and finally folding. This took a few hours, but I was watching a movie so it went by fairly quickly. 

 

After the cardboard was scored, I glued the printed "invitation" with double sided tape and finished it off by gluing on the cobalt blue ribbon and gold seal.

To create the seal, I purchased a wax seal kit at Michaels with a fleur de lys design. This was befitting because the lily is the official Quebec flower, and it also goes with our Versailles themed venue. I chose the kind of wax sticks that go in a glue gun for added control. I also read online that you should not attempt to put the seal directly on the invitation in case you ruined it. Instead, I made a bunch on a china plate and waited for them to cool, at which point it was easy to peel them off. I used a low temp glue gun to stick the seals and ribbon on the invitations; the high temp gun was melting the wax!

Wax seal assembly line

100 wax seals, ready to be used

Though these invitations don’t look it, they took HOURS of work. In the end, I’m really happy with how they turned out, and have gotten a ton of compliments from guests who said they couldn’t even tell that they were homemade, I just wish they required less effort. 

Is anybody out there considering making their own invitation? 

All photos personal unless otherwise specified