Our invitations are finished!

Just before the post office closed yesterday I brought our invitations to be mailed! I only had 43 of them so I asked sweetly if I could have them hand cancelled. The tired PO worker thought for a second and then handed me the stamp and ink pad and said, "Here -- you can do it yourself." It wasn't a nasty tone, just she didn't want to do it, but had no problem having me do it. I'm sure it broke all kinds of union rules, but yippee for me! SO, I wanted to share with you my thoughts on invitations and how I managed to keep within my budget without DIY.

I knew we didn't have enough money in our budget to have our invitations custom designed/made, so I started looking at on-line resources like mygatsby.com and others. I was discouraged because I was looking for something with style and an old fashioned feeling (vague I know, but I knew I'd know when I saw it) that wouldn't break the bank.

Then my mother happened to mention to me that the daughter of a colleague of hers designed wedding stationary for a living and I should check out her website. That is how I found Aimee at Creative Montage (www.creativemontage.com). It turns out she has about 25 beautiful "pre-designed/packaged" invitations and that's when I found "the one!" It's their "Brooke." And here it is:

Our Save-the-Date that we mailed in January:



Hooray -- our invitations arrived on April 30th! And this is what I saw when I opened the box:



Invitation:



Close-Up:



RSVP Postcard:





Reception Card:



And finally, the Thank You card:



Creative Montage's prices were competitive with MyGatsby.com, but I found her designs to be fun, varied and classy. I'd highly recommend her! And if there is an item or color you don't see -- ask her and she'll be happy to accommodate you!

She also offers great monograms (5 for $15 -- now there's a wedding bargain). She has over 100 to choose from and you can use them for all your fun DIY projects -- favors, Out of town bags, menus, programs -- really the sky is the limit.

So how did you handle your invitations? "Pre-packaged" from an on-line company, custom by a local designer, DIY?