We Request the Honour of Your Presence‏

Our invitations are almost ready to be sent! This is the cause of much rejoicing, because although they have turned out to be quite beautiful, they were definitely a pain in the neck from start to finish.

Being somewhat crafty, I knew I couldn't just order standard invites from any old place. I wanted them to be my own personal work of art, albeit a somewhat thrifty work of art. I gathered ideas from catalogs, magazines, the internet, Paper Source, Archiver's, Hobby Lobby...you name it, I probably looked at it. Finally I decided I would go for a simple piece of cardstock, printed with our name, and some sort of intricate and flowy corner design.

White and ivory are the standard when it comes to cardstock, but I am a huge fan of color, so my first thought was to find blue paper and print it with silver ink. Enter road block #1 - silver ink for home printers is an elusive beast, nearly as difficult to track down as a two-headed polka dot unicorn. Silver ink at the printer, if they even do it, is rather expensive. So, I flip-flopped, determined to find silver paper that could be printed with blue ink. I found an absolutely wonderful site (probably one of my all-time faves) called paperandmore.com, which is not only simple and straightforward to use, but also has great prices, reasonable shipping, and stellar samples, not to mention useful hints and tips for designing your own invites and other wedding accoutrements.

I ordered a boat-load of samples in various styles and colors, including some paperweight silver and some cardstock weight silver. My printer couldn't print on the cardstock but it could on the paperweight, and playing around with it allowed me to decide against blue ink after all - it just didn't pop. I decided we would do black ink (cheaper anyway) on the silver cardstock, and then do our stamped design in blue ink. A lovely compromise.

Note that at up to this point Andy had no input or involvement whatsoever.

But as you may know, he has a lot of free time lately, which really comes in handy between the hours of 8 and 5. He was sent on a mission to find an economical printer for our silver cardstock. Luckily, Kinkos said they could do it for less than $30, including cutting. Score!

I went along my merry way, ordering 100 5x7 sheets of silver to fit in the A7 blue metallic envelopes I bought on clearance at Paper Source (bargain hunting is my forte), and 100 sheets of 8.5x11 silver for our enclosures.

Then I got to work actually designing the invitation itself. I had found a delightful stamp at The Scrapbook Page, so I carefully measured my margins to make sure everything would fit with the wording I had chosen. I even downloaded some free fonts to get just the style I had imagined. I made a cute little RSVP postcard so that we wouldn't have to worry about another envelope, and devoted hours (way too many hours, for that matter) on a map of Fort Scott. The town is not at all difficult to navigate, so I don't know why I bothered, but I had fun, and I like to think the result is somewhat impressive.

Finally, one Sunday I trundled off to Kinkos with my PDFs on a flash drive and a boxful of paper. This is where the story takes a turn for the worst.

The two guys working there were at best 18. Friendly enough, sure, but I didn't enjoy standing there for 20 minutes before they actually printed my sample copies. I imagine the four other waiting customers didn't enjoy it much either. I have no idea what was taking so long. They seemed to be doing something for somebody, but it was a little unclear what made that task so time-consuming. At long last, they printed my three sheets of paper.

It turns out, Kinko's can NOT effectively print 107# weight metallic (in other words, slippery) cardstock. The paper sort of went through but it got all crinkly and had to be pulled out when it jammed at the end. I was so mad I could have cried. Who tells you they can do something when they clearly can't?!?

This meant Andy had to be sent back out into the field to find a printer who could actually print. Luckily, he found Z3 Graphix, who actually could do what they said they could. They used presses instead of lasers to get the job done, which was neither terribly cheap nor terribly expensive, so in the long run, I suppose no lasting harm was done, other than that I have a less-than-fond opinion of Kinko's now.

Now we were ready to do the real work of decorating and assembling the invites. My paper-crafting whiz of a roommate, Cortney, convinced me that embossing powder was the only way to go - and she was right, they looked stellar with a raised motif. However, this was a rather time-consuming endeavor. You see, you have to first stamp the paper with clear ink, then sprinkle on the power, then heat it with a special embossing tool. But it was worth it, if I do say so myself.

Surprisingly, Andy had a natural affinity for this stamping process. I was impressed with his diligence.

Meanwhile, I worked on hand-addressing each of our 105 or so envelopes with silver marker.

In hindsight, perhaps it would have been smarter to just have ordered everything in its completed form, including address labels. But where's the fun in that?

Oh, and of course the final detail was the purchasing and application of the stamps. I was excited to get the new wedding ring ones (thankfully we didn't need to shell out the extra 17 cents for the equally charming wedding cake stamps). However, I am still a little miffed that the only option for our postcards was a polar bear. That's practically the definition of incongruous.

But oh well. All in all, they look pretty stellar, no?