Invitation Proclamation!

Hive, I have a bridal confession to make..... my lovely bridesmaids did a huge chunk of the heavy lifting on my invites.  Phew, I feel shame and relief saying it out loud.  The CukeSammie BMs were in town for my bachelorette party (coming soon!) and I most certainly put them to work to get these puppies out.  I am so thankful to my very cooperative BMs for all their help but part of me feels a little upset that I didn't do it all myself.

I think sometimes I struggle with delegation not because I am a perfectionist but because I want to be able to say 'why yes, I assembled each one of those invites by hand'.  Now don't get me wrong I was not sitting around eating bonbons yelling at them to work faster but I still feel like I should have done more myself.  I think sometimes as brides we put so much pressure on ourselves to do everything and to make sure we touch each detail that we lose perspective (for me at least).  My invites would never have gotten in the mail on time without their help.  But that didn't stop me from glancing over while I was typing the labels to feel a little bit sad that I didn't personally glue in each of those envelope liners.  I have no real solution for this problem I have but I wanted to let anyone else who feels like they have to do it all to be a 'good bride' that you are not alone in feeling this way.

Now that is out of the way, on to the pretty, pretty princesses I call my invitations!  Previously, I mentioned that I was working with Kyndal to create our invitation.  After many, many edits here she is in all her glory.  It pains me to blur any of her goodness.

I know my 'secret' identity has been compromised by leaving in our names but I loved that font so much I had to show you just a peek.  I decided to use CatPrint to have all three pieces printed.  I highly recommend contacting them prior to printing and getting a free sample of their paper.  The sample came super fast and made our paper choices so easy.  For the invitation we went with heavy cardstock in luxe cotton.  For the map we used the extra heavy cardstock in matte and finally for the RSVP postcard we went with ultra cardstock (seemed the most durable).  CatPrint had their work cut out for them when dealing with me but did a fantastic job!

Next we had an envelope liner party the night before my bachelorette.  BM Smoked Salmon is an interior designer/architect by trade so was gracious enough to use her exacto knife/measuring skills to cut them all out!  I heart her.  After gluing in the liners we let them dry over night to be stuffed in the morning. 

Here is where the real fun began.  We had a whole little assembly line of hole punching the moo cards and measuring the bakers twine the following morning.  I decided to use sticker paper for the wrap around labels instead of my xylon machine so all the labels had to be cut to size.

Sammie Sister hard a work

We probably spent about 6 hours working on them (with 4 helpers) over the course of the weekend and then I spent another 4-5 hours by myself.  Now that you have the time break down let me give you cost!

Invitations from CatPrint (3 color pages, 2 front and back): $238.40 for 100
Kraft Envelopes (200 envelopes from envelopemall.com): $38.00
Moo Cards (200): $46.73
Divine Twine in Orange: $18.88
Full sheet label paper from Staples: $40.00 (for 100 sheets; I didn't need that many but it was all they had in stock)
Zazzle Custom Stamps: $77.25 (major splurge!)
Postage: $39.60 (luckily our invites only required $0.44)
Custom Design by Kyndal: $65.00

Total spent: $563.86

So we spent about $5.63 per invite including all postage and shipping for materials.  O.M.G.  I can't believe our invites cost that much.  Of course we have tons of extra materials that I can use for other projects like envelopes for my rehearsal dinner invites.  I love, love, love our invites but I guess the take away message is that DIY is not always cheaper. 

Anybody else surprised by how much their DIY ended up costing?

P.S. Don't tell Mr. Cuke Sammie how much it was!  I have to break it to him slowly.