Invitations DONE! Well.... almost.

Finally! They're done. Well... actually most of them are done. I ran out of $.41 stamps so about 30 of them will have to wait to be finished tomorrow. Halfway through stuffing the envelops, I realized that I forgot to mention the hotel, so I quickly came up with a hotel and things to do around the area insert. Thanks goodness I didn't need too many of them, since only Ryan's extended families are coming from out of town.

I tried to keep with the same colors as the Save the Dates... red, black, cream, and gold.

Hua and Cynthia helped me finalize a design for the invites. I've already decided on a tri-fold design. But I couldn't figure out the color or the design. I knew that I wanted to keep the flower theme going. Ryan's mom had sent me a few designs that she came up with, after playing around a bit, I combined her designs and what we came up with. First, I wanted to have the double happiness design somewhere on the invites...but the design was just too large. In the end, we still embossed the design just like in the STDs and just cut the character out of the square and backed it in gold. This is tacked on to the flap of the invites.


A pile of double happiness squares ready for the next step.


Red tri-fold invite with the square double happiness.


Working on the front design.


Pasting the English insert.

When you open up the invite, the middle will have the English portion, and the left flap will have the Chinese. I found a template for the Chinese online and had my sister-in-law type it out in Word since I couldn't type Chinese on my laptop. Unfortunately, it was done in simplified Chinese...which I think most of the my family reads. However, I can only read a limited amount of Chinese and most of that is in traditional. It also gives it a bit more of a classy feel. The next day, I actually figured out how to type the Chinese on my own computer... Windows comes equipped! The best part was the IME pad! For the characters that I couldn't read, I was able to write out on the pad and it recognized the characters for me! GREAT!



Finalized inside.

Later on, I realized that the RSVP cards needed to have Chinese too! Unfortunately returning response cards to wedding invites isn't a Chinese tradition. I'm hoping that most of my guests will return the cards.

I made two different types of RSVP cards. The one lined is for the guests where their whole family is invited... i.e. relatives. The two lined ones are for Name and their guest. The guest list is already over the limit right now. I know the two lined card is a bit blatant and obvious and maybe a bit rude, but I need it to be obvious. I added the flower stamp on the corner of the cards to make it a bit more fancy.

There were a few other inserts that needed to be added into the invites... direction cards, registry info, and hotel info.





Ryan made the direction cards and they're printed on gold parchment text paper. I was able to cut squares of vertical lined vellum to face the RSVP cards and use the leftover vellum for the RSVP and hotel cards. All papers were bought from paperandmore.com. A great site!

Save the Dates

So this starts my new blog. I'm going to try to document my wedding planning and DIY projects on here. Let's see how well I keep this up.

The wedding is in less than 4 1/2 months... I feel like I should be panicking a bit more. But I just can't seem to work up the energy or interest to actually get down and do things. I ordered my dress and accessories and they've arrived at the store. Next weekend we'll go and check it out. Hopefully I'm still happy with my decision. For the past two weeks, I've been on travel for work which put me a bit behind on the Save-The-Dates. Really it's a bit late to send them out, but I like the idea of them and they're already made. I know it's another money sucker facilitated by the wedding market, Save-the-Date announcements aren't usually done for a traditional Chinese wedding. But then... we're not exactly going with the traditional... American or Chinese.

While I was in Alabama, I drove over to Georgia to visit my future in-laws on the weekends. Ryan's mom came up with the design of the cards. The flower design is from Stampin' Up which we stamped on off-white card stock then embossed in gold.

The design is then trimmed and glued on black. After trimming, it is glued onto red card stock. I still need to include the information and add one more bit of decoration on the inside. The final result is elegant and classy. It's a bit more fancy than most Save-the-Date cards on the market, but overall it looks great and cheaper to make. Not to mention I had a great time making these. Stamping is fun. I can get into this.

Did I mention cheaper? After doing some market research... single sheet announcements are around $1 each... give or take some. We made 150 cards.... which would bring us to $150 + shipping + tax had we ordered it. Since we already had the stamp and other stamping supplies, we only had to purchase the paper, which was less than $30.

While I was in Georgia, we brainstormed a design for the invitations. With my color theme or red, gold, cream, and possibly black we were able to come up with some ideas. It's still a working progress. :) Eventually I'll have pictures up... once they're made and sent out.