The Invites, Part One.

It's about that time when we need to start worrying about the invitations.

I'm excited to start another DIY project, but also a little apprehensive. I mean, invites are the be-all and end-all of wedding stationary, right? To start out, we purchased an invitation kit...

Image via Gartner Brides

I know, you're shocked and horrified that I'd do such a thing. I'm such a bad DIY bride. But, in my defense, they're really nice invites and we're going to add things to the invitation suite to make them our own, and we wanted pocket invites but that wasn't in our budget unless we bought a kit, and you'll soon see they're great.

The first order of business was to determine the wording for the actual invite. Easy, right? Not so much. You see, we're footing the majority of the bill for our wedding, but both sets of parents are contributing a solid amount to the budget. Also, our wedding isn't overly formal, and neither are we. That seems to make things more difficult. I can't use the traditional "Mr. and Mrs. Bride request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Ms. Bride to Mr. Groom..."

So, what can I use? Here are some examples of wording that could work:

Together with their families

Bride Name

and

Groom Name

request the honour of your presence

at their marriage...

Mr. and Mrs. Bride Parents
and

Mr. and Mrs. Groom Parents

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of their children

Bride Name and Groom Name...

Miss Bride
and

Mr. Groom

together with their parents

request the favour of your presence

at their marriage...

Or for something more unique:

We joyfully invite you to our wedding celebration.

On this day we will marry the one

we laugh with, live for, dream with, love.

Please join

Bride Name

and

Groom Name

with our parents...

This day I will marry my best friend,

the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love

Bride Name

and

Groom Name

together with their parents,

invite you to share in the joy and

celebration of their marriage

and the joining of their families...

Love was meant to be shared

with parents, family and friends

Bride Name and Groom Name

together with our parents

Mr. and Mrs. Bride Parents and

Mr. and Mrs. Groom Parents

Invite you to share our celebration

of lifelong love and commitment

in the ceremony uniting us in marriage...

I'm kind of torn when it comes to the invitation wording. I prefer the less formal, more unique versions, but I'm not sure how much text will fit nicely on our invite cards.

Do you think the invitation wording sets the tone for the wedding? Or do you think it will generally go unnoticed?

That which we call an orchid, by any other name...still looks weird on my envelopes.

Ok, I think I'm starting to go a little crazy with the wedding details. You see, my FH and I have managed to finish (mostly) our save-the-dates (herein referred to as STDs as I'm too lazy to type it all out) and now just need to address millions of envelopes, affix postage to said envelopes, and send them out.

Problem is I don't like the postage stamps Canada Post offers.

I know that no one will really care what the postage looks like...but I will. We spent hours putting our STDs together. We had a photoshoot, learned how to emboss, printed each card in our malfunctioning printer, cut to size all the photoshoot photos, designed and printed all the little STD stickers (which took hours because Avery templates suck) and used bucket loads of double-sided tape to stick everything together. I don't want to ruin all my hard work with this:

Image via Canada Post

I know they're not horrible, but I hate them. They'd be perfect for a pink, tulle wedding. But my wedding is modern and black and white.

What I want is these beauties:

Image via Picture Postage

Custom postage. You just take a photo (we could use one from the photoshoot), upload it to the Picture Postage website, choose a frame and the format (i.e. number of stamps/sheet) you want and ta-da!!

Now, the only problem is the price. I'd need about 30-40 stamps for my STDs, 50 stamps for my invites, 50 stamps for the RSVP cards, and 50 stamps for the thank you cards. So 200 stamps, or 5 sheets (40 stamps/sheet).  That works out to $201.50, whereas regular postage would only cost $114.00

My FH doesn't really want to go this route, as he thinks it's silly to spend an extra $100 on something that most people won't notice. But I love them.

So, what do you think? Dole out the extra $100 to have stamps I love? Or go with the orchids, and hope no one notices?