Revelio!

A little Harry Potter reference to start you day out right! Our invitations are making their way into homes all across America (yay!) and so it's time they were properly revealed! I want to start though by saying sister Jordan, if you don't want the surprise ruined, skip the rest of this post. But not yet! I have more wonderful news first! I got something special in the mail...

 A big scary box!! That bubble wrap was almost the death of me, but I wrestled it away to reveal two, fairly tiny boxes...

 What could be inside?? Bottles for homemade vanilla extract favors possibly? With matching adorable corks mayhaps? Because that would be awesome...

 Oh my gosh I was totally just guessing! It is bottles for homemade vanilla extract favors with matching adorable corks! Yay!!

Aren't they sweet?? They hold 1.7 fl oz. The vanilla extract you get from the store is one ounce, so I know those bottles look a little on the larger side, but I didn't want to just give our guests one teensy ounce. Were these bottles a touch more expensive than getting plain old amber glass bottles with black screw tops? Yeah, but it's worth it, these bottles with their square, irregular shape and tiny imperfections fit better with our theme and I'm so happy we went with a corked bottle. So Yay!!! They're here!!! I figure one more month of letting the extract stew with beans and I can transplant it into these bottles. Next stop; get some sticky labels for the bottles.

OK, back to business, the reason my sister has to go away is because she is at college and I didn't have her school address so her invitation is sitting in my parents' house :( I'm sorry sister Jordan but you'll get your invitation very very soon. So, I also have to continue starting out by saying that I know you have all seen bits and pieces of the invitations. Probably all of them actually, but not officially. Now that they are sent and I've gotten confirmation by several people that they got theirs and none have come back to us yet, here they are! The AshleyKyle invitations!!

So the first presentation to our guests is their names of course, in my fancy handwriting (after this I also started putting dots in between the numbers of the zip just like in our label) and on the back is our return address that Kyle worked so hard on.

Once the envelope is opened, the burgundy liner is exposed and the informal inner envelope comes neatly out into the world!

Can't pass up this opportunity to give our seal a little extra blog time. This one is not so great because it's a practice one we did when we first got the seal (the edges are very rough), once I had figured out what I was doing, the guests' seals looked much better :)

Once opened and carefully extracted, the invitation presents itself (our practice one held up very well, I hope everyone else's made it just a nicely... those outer envelopes are very sturdy). It says 'Hello lucky, open me up and read about the awesome party you're invited too :D

'But before you do, we have a gift for you! That's right, without you even having to do much, you get a present!' I am so happy we went with the plantable envelopes (I just hope they grow), I am so happy to give our guests a little thank you just for making it through the invitation!

 I'm very pleased with the way I was able to put them together so that you don't have a lot of stuff flapping all over the place, feathers falling off, etc... I was able to glue everything to everything and it stays in place! Sorry, had to pat myself on the back a little there. ANYWHO... take off the vellum over the invitation itself and pull out the inserts and voila!

The invitation wording ended up as follows:

Together with Karen and Gary Mentlik

Ashley Mentlik

and

Kyle James

Invite you to come celebrate with us

As we exchange vows!

info

info

info

Dinner and Rock 'n' Roll to follow

in the Riverdale Manor Ballroom

I couldn't resist a little fun. The hotel info is included, we have blocks of rooms reserved at two hotels right next to each other and these are the hotels that will provide shuttle service to and from the venue! The RSVP comes next:

 

And I couldn't resist filling out one for us :) I asked Kyle and he said he would definitely be there with bells on, I didn't even force him to say that! And of course I will also be there with bells on, so our first response is in... I know it's cheating, but still exciting. In the real invitations, of course, the RSVP envelope is stamped, but I was too lazy to stamp ours, even for authenticity purposes. I couldn't find a stamp at the time.

So there you have it! I'm still a little... 'meh' about the fact that there's not a cute little map or directions insert, but people are coming from so many different places and it just seemed like too much to read. Also, if I got a directions insert in an invitation, I would still google map it. Regardless, we were running out of time for me to keep waffling over whether or not to try and put the map in. In the end, the labels on the map all looked too itty bitty and hard to read and I reasoned that most people that have ceremony and reception in two different places include maps for convenience, but everything's in one place for us... So in the end, I think the invitations are all that we could hope for, and I'm very happy with them.

I want to thank everyone who has given us sweet comments. They were received better than I thought they would be, and my boss even made me blush complimenting them (do not tell him I said that!).

So what do you think? I gotta' say, it wasn't easy per se but I would recommend DIY invitations to anyone who has the time. Would you ever DIY your invites or are you going to leave it to the professionals?