Wedding VIPs

Keegan and I, well more like I, decided to invite some VIPs to our wedding. 

Can't quite read who it is? 

Yep, we're inviting The President and Minnie & Micky Mouse to our wedding. Do I think they'll actually come? Uh no. But it'll be fun to get something like this: 

Source

And this: 

Source

We sent one to Minny & Micky at Walt Disney World and Disneyland to increase our chances of getting a response. 

If you want to invite some VIPs to your wedding, the addresses are: 

The Honorable and Mrs. Barack Obama

The White House, Greetings Office, Room 39

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, District of Columbia 20502 

Mickey & Minnie Mouse

The Magic Kingdom

1675 North Buena Vista Drive

Lake Buena Vista, Florida 32830


Mickey & Minnie Mouse

The Walt Disney Company

500 South Buena Vista Street

Burbank, California 91521

You can also send one to the Pope, but I've head he only responds if you're Catholic. We're not so we didn't bother sending one to him. 

Pope Benedictus XVI

Prefettura della Casa Pontifica

00210 Citta del Vaticano

Italia

Feeding The Crowd

This past weekend, Keegan and I traveled to Missouri to do a number of wedding things as well as see my middle sister graduate and my youngest sister's dance recital (it was an extremely packed Saturday.)

Anyways, the first thing we did Saturday was our food tasting with Hy-Vee in Columbia. I'll admit it, I was nervous for this tasting. Since Hy-Vee is a grocery store, I figured the food wouldn't be the best, especially since we're only paying $8 per person. I figured we would leave the tasting less than thrilled and would have to scramble to find another caterer in the next few weeks.

Boy was I wrong.

Trevor, Hy-Vee's catering coordinator, came out with a bunch of food for us. We had told him that we wanted to try out their pasta bar so he brought out small bowls full of penne with Alfredo and marinara sauce as well as some meatballs. He also brought out a plate of small sandwiches and chicken wings in honey BBQ sauce and spicy wing sauce. I had totally forgotten that I had mentioned that I wanted to try some of their appetizers so I was pleasantly surprised with the addition of the sandwiches and wings. Trevor also brought out pieces of cake in chocolate, white and a chocolate-peanut butter mix.

We all sampled the pasta first while Trevor explained that we can pick two different pastas, two sauces, and one meat topping. The Alfredo sauce was a bit watery, but Trevor explained that it wouldn't be that way for our wedding. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the pasta. I'm somewhat picky about my Alfredo sauces, but Hy-Vee's was great. The marinara sauce was equally good and the meatball was amazing. Possibly the best meatball I've ever tasted.  The only problem was it was large, and hard to cut with plastic silverware, so Trevor said he could provide their appetizer size meatballs for easier consumption.

While Trevor continued to explain our choices, I chowed down on a wing. The sauce wasn't too spicy, but had a nice kick to it. I didn't try the honey BBQ one, but Keegan said he enjoyed both of them. We were thinking about serving the wings with the pasta, they were that good, but we figured that would be an odd combination. Keegan and my mom tried the sandwiches, but we ultimately decided that we are not going to have any appetizers.

Next up was the cake. I'm not a huge fan of buttercream and I knew that Hy-Vee made a whipped cream frosting, so I asked for that with the samples. The cake was moist, sweet but not too sweet, and the whipped cream frosting was perfect. We tried both chocolate and white cake, as well as our own concoction of chocolate and peanut butter. We loved all of them and even had enough cake to take home to my dad and sisters.

Ultimately our tasting went better than I expected. We are extremely happy with Hy-Vee's food and can't wait to serve it at our wedding.

Our guests will feast upon:
~ fettuccine and penne pasta
~ Alfredo and marinara sauce
~ meat balls 
~ Caesar salad
~ garlic breadsticks

Drinks:
~ Keg of Boulevard Wheat beer, made in Kansas City, MO
~ 12 bottles of Les Bourgeois wine (6 white, 6 red.) The winery is about a 45 minute drive from Columbia.  
~ tea, lemonade and bottled water

Sweet Stuff:
~ We're having a mix of the chocolate, white, and chocolate-peanut butter cupcakes with the whipped
   cream frosting.
~ A small cake for us to cut. We originally wanted to do a huge cupcake, but Hy-Vee doesn't have the molds. I let Keegan choose the cake and he wanted white.
~ There may or may not be a groom's cake in the works. Shhh, it's a surprise!
~ There also might be an appearance of family recipe cookies later in the night.
~ S'mores! This was the one thing I knew I wanted since before we got engaged. The pavilion has a couple of grills just outside the door which will be perfect for roasting marshmallows on.

Hy-Vee will also provide the plates, cups, silverware, chafing dishes, napkins and service for up to 2 hours. They would have provided linens for the tables, but we already bought some. They will provide linens for the serving tables. Since we're having a keg, Trevor suggested getting bigger cups than the ones they will be providing specifically for the beer. Now we're on the hunt for "classy" SOLO cups, or something similar. Anyone have any ideas?

So this is what our guests will be eating on our wedding day. I'm beyond excited to see this happen. Our tasting has been in the works since February, so finally meeting Trevor and deciding what we're going to serve was a huge weight off my shoulders. This was the last big piece of the puzzle, and I'm so glad it came together so easily.

One discussion that Keegan and I had last night. Would it be easier for guests to eat pasta and sauce on a plastic plate or bowl? I'm thinking bowl, but Keegan thinks that a plate will suffice. Any opinions? I don't want our guests trying to spear a piece of penne and it shooting off a plate and getting on their nice clothes.
 

Ceremony Change Up

So this past weekend, Keegan and I drove the 8+ hours up to Missouri to see my middle sister graduate from high school and to get some wedding things done.

I'll post later on our caterer and other wedding things we did over the weekend, but right now I want to talk about our ceremony space.

We're having our ceremony at Stephens Park and our reception at the Riechmann Pavilion on the park grounds.

When we first booked the park for our wedding, the park staff had just started a pretty big project revamping some of the grounds including three semi-circular rock spaces.This project was also supposed to include flower gardens and other landscaping.

In January, we looked at the space and decided to have our ceremony in one of the semi-circle rock areas providing they were done in August.

Fast forward to this past weekend, and the areas haven't really changed.

The space nearest to the pavilion has a bench in the middle which we though we'd stand in front of while our guests stand around us, filling the circle. Unfortunately, there is only a gravel path leading up to the space and the landscaping isn't the greatest. 

We by-passed the second space because it was worse than the other two and walked down to the last space which was the farthest down the path. This would be a long trek for me with my dress and heels, but we were considering it.

This space had one path that was full of random, large rocks (a perfect place for me to twist my ankle,) but the other path was paved. The "flower gardens" that we were told about were currently over grown with weeds and other plants. It looked like no one had been around since January. Also, after a few calculations by Keegan, we found out that to fit 150 people in this semi-circle, each people would only have about 2.5 feet of space. I know that our families and guests like each other, but I don't think they're that friendly. 

We pretty much decided right then and there that these rock gardens wouldn't work for our wedding. We didn't want to chance them not getting finished in the next 2.5 months and having to scramble the day of our wedding to find a suitable space.

So, we came up with Plan B, the large lawn directly outside of the pavilion.

Our friends got married in this space (a few feet to the right) almost 3 years ago now, and we remembered it working well.

Originally, when we were still having the ceremony in the rock garden, we were going to have all of our guests stand for our 15ish minute ceremony and have just a few chairs for our flower girls and grandparents to sit in. However, after seeing all the space we have to work with now, we've started re-thinking things.

I've always loved the idea of laying out blankets on the ground and letting our guests sit on them during the ceremony. I love the laid-back feel of it, but when I brought up the idea, Keegan shot it down pretty quickly.

(Please excuse my poor Photoshopping in these next few photos)

Keegan was worried about where we'd find enough blankets to seat everyone. I figure that they don't need to match, so if we ask both of our moms, a few aunts and friends, we could come up with enough. 

Option two was to get hay bales and use them as seats. While driving home last night (don't worry, Keegan was driving,) I did a quick search for hay bales in our area. Many farmers around Columbia are selling hay bales on Craigslist for $2-$5 each. This seemed like the best idea until we really thought of the logistics of using hay bales. First of all, if we fit 3 people per bale, we'd need over 60 bales. Now the cost of 60 bales at $2 each isn't that bad, but we have no way of transporting them. Neither Keegan or I have a truck, and I can't think of any of our friends or family that has one. Even if we did have a few friends with trucks, they'd have to make multiple trips to transport the bales. Second, what do we do with 60 bales of hay after the wedding? We thought of asking our friend who owns a deer farm if he could use them, but that involves transporting them to Jeff City the night of the wedding which I'm sure no one will volunteer for.

 

We thought for a split second about compromising and putting quilts on hay bales, but that just mixes the problems of each idea together. What would we do with 60+ quilts and hay bales after the wedding?

Another option would be to rent chairs for everyone. A rental place close to our ceremony space sells white folding chairs which would work. They don't have their prices online so I'm not sure how expensive this would be, but I'm sure it's not cheap. I'm sure there would also be a delivery fee or we'd have to figure out how to transport the chairs.

Our last option? Just have people stand like we originally thought we would. We're only have a 15ish minute ceremony so people can stand that long, right? While it's not "traditional" and we'd have to figure out how to designate an aisle for us to walk down, but besides that, this would be the cheapest and easiest option.

So unless I have an epiphany, those are our options. Anyone have any opinions? Do you think our guests could stand for 15 minutes? Is it rude not to offer some sort of seating?

Movin' To Mississippi...A Year Later

It's official, we've been in Mississippi one whole year. It's amazing to me that only a year (and two days) ago I graduated college. I don't feel old enough to have graduated college. 

On May 15 2011, I graduated from the University of Missouri - Columbia with a bachelor's degree in fine art as well as two minors in textile and apparel management and art history. 

My dad surprised me by on the stage during my graduation and handing me my diploma (he's is a professor in a different part of the university, but was allowed to stand at my graduation) 

 

The next day, (May 16,) Keegan and I packed up my stuff in our U-haul and drove to Rolla, MO where he went to school so that we could pack up his stuff and leave the next day for our 10 hours drive to Mississippi.  

Yes, I had naked busts. I used them for art projects.

We said our tearful goodbyes to my family and roommate and drove to Rolla to pack up Keegan's stuff and try to get some sleep for the next day. 

When we got to Rolla, we finished packing up the U-haul with Keegan's things and tried to get a few hours sleep on the floor. 

Keegan's little shed house was depressingly empty

We got up at 4 a.m. to start our 10 hours journey. Keegan's car was on a trailer on the back of the U-haul which meant we couldn't park anywhere for food. We ate at a lot of drive-thrus that day. (This picture was taken at a McDonalds near the Missouri/Arkansas border when we stopped for breakfast.)

We drove through a lot of mist in the Ozark Mountains 

And flooded ditches in Arkansas. (Funny story, they don't really name their creeks and rivers in Arkansas like most states do. They number their ditches. If you break down, you have to tell the tow-truck, "I'm by ditch 37...")

The Mississippi River was extremely flooded. It was literally 5 feet below the highway

We made our way through Tennessee 

and eventually got to Mississippi and our apartment. 

We started to unpack

and eventually our empty apartment turned into...

a mess. 

Eventually we got the mess cleaned up and started our lives in Mississippi. 

I'm not going to lie, it took us a while to get used to living in Mississippi. The culture down here is different (I will never get used to people calling me Ma'am,) and there is still a race problem, even though people don't want to admit it. 

Over the course of a year, so many changes have happened to our small family. 

In October, we got engaged! 

But unfortunately a few weeks later, my grandma on my mom's side passed away. 

As somewhat of a blessing in disguise, my mom and I went up to Canada for her funeral. I hadn't been up to see my extended family in about 7 years and re-met a lot of people.

In November Keegan bought himself his dream car

Keegan and I settled down and spent Thanksgiving with one of our good friends' family in rural Mississippi.

In December, Keegan turned 24 and we started the process of buying our first house.

My middle sister turned 18 and we had the joy of spending both Christmas and New Years with my family. We also spent a few days with Keegan's family which was my first time meeting his extended family. 

2012 brought on the joys and annoyances of wedding planning. While in Missouri for the holidays, we bought my wedding dress and officially settled on a venue for the wedding.  

January 28, we officially became homeowners. 

On February 4, we moved into our new house. 

And here we are now, 78 days away from our wedding with our own home and Keegan's dream car. I can't believe how much has changed in the span of just a year. 

Why did we pick up our entire lives and move to small-town Mississippi you ask? Well I can blame it all on Keegan. He is a metallurgical engineer and can only work in a few places throughout the States. Mills are normally in small towns that are made up mostly of the people who work at the mill. They're in such random areas because they produce a lot of nose and smells that a normal city wouldn't appreciate. I knew that being with Keegan meant living in a remote place (the "best" area is in Northern Mississippi, about 45 minutes from Memphis,) but I don't mind. I kind of like living in the county. Going to the city (Tuscaloosa or Tupelo) is a special all-day thing that allows us to get away from our small town.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't turned "country" on you. I would kill to have a mall, Target and Starbucks closer than an hour away, but I'm somewhat adapting to small town life. We've met some awesome people down here and even though they're all older than us (I'm the youngest around by 10-20 years,) I enjoy hanging out with adults. It's strange to me, because I don't see myself as a adult yet, but I seem to mesh with these people well. 

It still blows my mind that we've gotten engaged, own our own home and are getting married in 78 days. If you had told me that this is how my life would look last year while we were driving to Mississippi, I would have laughed at you. 

I'm so thankful to have Keegan in my life as well as a supportive family who gets so excited any time we come home. It was amazingly hard for me to move down here away from my family, but it has really taught me a lot about myself and my relationship with Keegan. We're closer than we've ever been before and I love it. I can't wait to see what the next year brings!

I...Just Don't Understand

I'm not going to lie, I've been cheating on my regular blogs (see my blog list on the right) with wedding blogs recently. Not that I haven't been catching up on all of my favorites, I just haven't actively been searching for new ones to read because I've dived head first into wedding blog land.

My biggest mistress? WeddingBee. I found WeddingBee a few months ago and have been hooked since. I love the fact that you can follow a bride from the beginning of her engagement all the way to her wedding day and recaps.

After reading through a few ladies' blogs, however, I just don't understand how so many of them pay so much for food. I've seen ranges of $20-$40 per person! Granted, they're serving 3 course meals with salads and appetizers, but I still don't understand how they can shell out that money for a guest list of 200 people!

Many of them are going with well-known restaurants or caterers that specify in weddings and large events, so I kind of understand the cost. Also, many of them are from larger cities (NYC, Dallas, L.A.) where the cost of everything is greater, not just wedding food.

I guess I'm just sticker shocked at the price these ladies are willing to pay for food since our guests will be getting meals that are $8 per person (not including cake and alcohol.) Yep, you read that right. $8 per person.

How are we doing this? We're going with a grocery store, Hy-Vee to be specific. At first I was totally against going with a grocery store for our wedding, it just seemed like... not special enough? However, we had scoped out a few other possibilities and they were all mind-blowingly expensive (in my opinion) for not a whole lot of food.

What do our guests get for $8? Well, we had a few options, believe it or not. Originally, when looking at other places, we only had enough money to offer our guests appetizers. I hated that idea because I felt like so many of our guests were coming form out of city, state, or country that the least we could do was feed them dinner.

We started our search with Hy-Vee at the appetizer level. For $8 per person, we could offer our guests a selection of 4 appetizers. After scrolling down their list of dinners, we realized that we could actually serve our guests a full dinner for the same price! We had the options of a deli bar, salad bar, taco bar, potato bar, soup, salad and sandwich bar, a pasta bar, or a pizza buffet all for $8 per person. After some discussion, we decided that the pasta bar would be the best for our guests.

The pasta bar gets us a choice of lasagna or two pastas (fettucine, spaghetti or penne,) a choice of two sauces (marinara, Alfredo or meat sauce,) a choice of one toppings (meatballs, chicken or vegetable,) as well as a garden or Caesar salad and breadsticks or garlic bread. Sounds like a pretty awesome dinner if I do say so myself!

We're having our tasting on Saturday for our main food, cupcakes, and decisions on alcohol and other drinks. Of course there are a few more fees (such as $200 for set up and service for the buffet,) but overall, this was the cheapest food we could find that didn't sound like it came out of a hole in the wall. I just hope that it tastes as well as it fits into our budget. 

DIY Wedding: Flower Girl Baskets

Back in January, when we were in Columbia visiting for Christmas, my mom, Keegan, and I ran into Hobby Lobby to see what we could find for the wedding.

We found 2 flower girl baskets that were originally $32 each for $8. They weren't perfect, but I figured I could add some personal touches to make them work.

These are what they originally looked like. I wasn't a fan of the fabric around the edges with the random stitching, so I took it off. It was only hot glued on so it came off pretty easily.

Next, I messed around with adding the green ribbon that has been throughout many of our projects, and we came up with this:

Yes, that is a Diablo III box in the background. It was delivered to our house today and we love it! /nerd

There is a problem with one side of one of the baskets. Before I put on the thin green ribbon bow on the side, I had a thick green bow. I just wasn't liking how it looked, so I took it off. However, the hot glue I used is stuck there. Think anyone will notice? I'm sure our flower girls won't and I'll just have our photographer take pictures of the basket without random spots of glue on it.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with them. I think that they fit the "feeling" or "theme" of our wedding a lot better, and they were super cheap!

Operation Lookin' Sexy Update

So, I've totally failed on keeping and tabs on my operation lookin' sexy. I fell off the wagon for about two months and have just recently started giving it more of my time and attention in this last month and a half. I created a profile on SparkPeople and have been tracking my calorie intake as well as my work outs. I've been doing my Jillian Michael's 30 days Shred DVD at least three times a week in the mornings before work.

I *think* I'm seeing progress. My pants are looser (thank goodness for belts,) I can hook my bra a notch tighter, and a volunteer from work came up and asked me last Friday if I've lost weight. Even Keegan has told me I'm skinner without being prompted (not that he needs me to prompt him to tell me I look good, but you know what I mean.)

The only problem? The scale isn't telling me that my new routine is working. I'm confused as to if I've actually lost weight. I'll weigh myself in the mornings and the scale will tell me that I've lost 3 pounds. If I weigh myself at night, it looks like I haven't lost any weight. I know that my weight will be lower in the mornings after 8 hours of not eating and my weight will be higher at night after consuming three meals, but it's kind of disappointing to not see the scale move after a month of hard work.

I know that the general school of thought is to go off of how your clothes feel, and mine are certainly feeling looser, but I'd still like to see the numbers drop. Anyone have any ideas as to why it seems like I'm loosing inches but not overall weight? Ultimately I just want to be healthier than I currently am, but it would be a confidence booster to see the numbers drop. Should I just continue what I'm doing and eventually my body will catch up?

I have my first dress fitting on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes. Wish me luck! 

Trying to Remember

The wedding industry tell brides things they have to have. I get constant emails telling me that I have to have flowers, a big poofy dress, and a limo to drive my wedding party around. If I don't, my wedding isn't really a wedding.

So far, I've warded off the "have to's" pretty well. No church, flower, limo or big dresses here.

Unfortunately, there is one part of the wedding industry that I feel I need to have.

A wedding videographer.

When I first started planning my wedding, I saw that people were paying upwards of $2000 for a video of their wedding. I scoffed at throwing money away for a video that we'll probably never watch again and figured the pictures that our amazing photographer would capture would be enough.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the videos that have come out recently. They're much more cinematic and artistic instead of looking like Aunt Lora filmed the whole thing. I just couldn't justify spending $2000 or more on a video while keeping our budget.

I kept seeing wedding videos around (including probably the most famous video,) and the thought started creeping into my head that maybe, possibly, it would be nice to have. I ran the idea by Keegan and he flat out refused. He said he didn't like being on camera and the fact that his parents have a wedding video but never watched it solidified the fact that it was a waste of money.

I dropped the idea, but kept it in the back of my mind. As time passed, I realized that I just didn't want a wedding video, I kind of needed one. Not need in the sense that "I need because I want," but the fact that I'm 22 years old and I'm losing my memory.

I first noticed that I'm having trouble retaining memories about a year ago. Keegan and I went on a vacation together in the summer of 2009 to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Looking back, I can't remember any of it. I know that we went hiking to see the waterfalls. I know that we spent time in a cabin. I know that we went and toured the local artist village. However, when I try to bring those images to my memory, I can't. I don't remember what anything looks like except the few pictures I have.

Another instance is the Flogging Molly concert Keegan and I went to in January 2011. I know that we, and her family, surrounded an 11 year old girl, shielding her from the title wave of drunk, dancing idiots, but I can't remember the band playing. I have no idea what songs they played, what any of them looked like up close (we were right up against the stage) or what the venue looked like. The only reason I remember the story about the little girl is because I've told the story over and over. I have no idea what she looks like, though.

I thought that my memory loss was due to the fact that I was on more medications than I have fingers. However, since getting off the medications, my memory hasn't improved. I still can't remember our vacation or the Flogging Molly Concert, but I'm also still having trouble retaining new memories.

My biggest fear is that in a year or two, I won't remember my wedding day. I want to remember my what my dad says as he marries us, I want to remember the vows that Keegan says to me. I want to remember the interacts I have with my friends and family. Pictures can only bring back so much and I'm afraid they won't be enough.

Over the weekend I confessed my worry to Keegan and he said that we could look into getting a wedding videographer. I searched Google for "wedding videographers in Columbia and Kansas City," but all of the ones that popped up were big companies that wanted more money than we can afford. I turned to Craigslist to see if there was a student advertising their services. I also asked my friend, Chelsea, who started Tiny Attic Productions to see if she'd be interested. I found a few companies on Craigslist who are more in my price range, but are still charging anywhere from $800-$1500 for their services.

I know that an option would be to ask a friend or family member to video our wedding, but I don't want to put my friends and family to work on a day that they should be hanging out and relaxing with us.

I haven't heard back from Chelsea or the people from Craigslist yet, so I guess we'll see what happens. If one of the companies off Craigslist responds to us, we'll have to do some major cutting in other areas to fit them into our budget. No more out of town bags for our guests, no more candy buffet or other fun personal details. I hate that it has come down to getting a videographer or providing things for our guests. So many of our guests are coming from out of city or state (or in my family, country,) so I want to give them the best experience to thank them for supporting us. However, in my heart, I know that our guests won't care if they got an out of town bag, but a potential wedding video will stay with us forever. Or at least until we lose the DVD.

Weeeee!

I just got off the phone with my dress shop. My wedding dress is in! I made a tentative appointment for 3 on Saturday for my fist fitting.

The only problem? My sister, Bri, graduates at 4....half an hour away from where my dress is.

Unfortunately I may just have to skip the first half of Bri's graduation. I would have my fitting earlier, but Keegan and I have our taste testing with Hy-vee at 10. Rusty, the guy we've been emailing back and forth with said that the food tasting would take 30-minutes to an hour, and the cake testing would take about an hour. So total, 1.5-2 hours of food tasting. This means that the earliest I could get to a fitting would be about noon or noon-thirty after the 30 minute drive from Columbia to Jeff City. I was worried about them not having any appointments late enough, but the only appointment they had is almost too late.

Oh well, I won't be back in Missouri until June 23 for Keegan's cousin's wedding and even then, we'll be in Kansas City, not Columbia, so this seems to be the best, if not only, time to get my fitting in.

As well as visiting my dress and doing our taste testing, I want to go back to our venue and take as many pictures as possible. We've been having problems visualizing our space because when we went to see it last (in January,) it was in the middle of an overhaul. We're still not sure if we're going to get married in a stone semi-circle or on the grass. Believe me, the stone semi-circle is more appealing than it sounds.

I also want to run into Kay Jewelers to see how long it would be to get my rings soldered together. I'm hoping that they could do it in the few days we'll be in Columbia before the wedding. If not, I guess we'll just wait until we get back from our "honeymoon" to get it done. I also want to talk to them about getting my rings engraved.

As well as all of the above, I want to go dress shopping for my mom, go to Hobby Lobby/Michaels, get Keegan's hair cut, go to Kohls to see if they have the white dress I want to wear at the rehearsal dinner, talk to my parents about the rehearsal dinner, go makeup shopping with my mom, and go to Target to see if they have $1 flip flops.

Think I could cram any more into the 36 hours we'll be in Missouri?

Wedding Invitation Cost Breakdown

When I first started looking into wedding invitations, I was surprised at how expensive they were.  Brides everywhere were saying that $3-5 per invitation was a good price. We were looking at sending over 100 invitations and couldn't see spending $500! I decided that I would make my own invitation suite and started doing some research.

One of the first places I found for paper and envelopes was Action Envelope. They had comparable prices to other paper places so I decided to order my paper from them.

Back in October, I placed an order with Action Envelope for 5 of they envelopes in different colors. They were $1 each and with my order I got a $5 credit on my next order.

I got one A9 sized envelope in each of these 5 colors:

"Linen"

"Avocado"

"Grocery Bag"

"Chocolate"

"Racing Green"

We had already picked out our color scheme, so we wanted to see what the different greens looked like as well as figuring out if we wanted a white-ish envelope or something colored. 

We ended up loving the "racing green" color so we decided to use it as the main color for our invitations. The "avocado," "chocolate," and "mandarin" color would be used as accent colors. We chose the "linen" paper and envelope because it had such a great texture and added that something special to the invitations. 

We ordered our paper in December. We ordered 250 sheets of "natural linen" paper for $18.95, 250 sheets of the "racing green" paper for $42.95, 50 sheets of paper in "avocado" for $10.95, 50 sheets in "chocolate" for $15.95 and 50 sheets of paper in "mandarin" for $15.95.

Total with the $5 credit from ordering the sample envelopes taken off and $11.27 in shipping, our paper cost us $155.87. 

Later, we had to order another 250 sheets of the linen paper because we ran out. The paper was $19.95 plus $9.24 in shipping to equal $29.19. 

Ordering the extra linen paper took our total up to $185.06 for the paper (including shipping charges.)

Each invitation took 2.5 sheets of the linen paper for the main information sheets, ~1/4 of a linen sheet for the RSVP card, 1 sheet of the racing green paper for the back, approximately 1/5 of a sheet of racing green paper for the pocket,  ~1/4 of the avocado paper for the back of the RSVP card, and ~1/5 of the avocado paper for the band. I'm not counting the punched-out clovers and leaves in the cost because they were all punched out from scraps left over from cutting out the main parts of the invitations and other projects.

Linen Paper:
$18.95 + $19.95 = $38.90 (total amount paid for linen paper)
$38.90/400 (number of sheets) = 9.7 cents per page
9.7 cents x 2.75 sheets (amount used per invitation) = 26.70 cents of linen used per invitation

Racing Green Paper:
$42.95/250 (number of sheets) = 17.18 cents per page
17.18 cents x 1.2 (amount used per invitation) = 20.6 cents of racing green used per invitation

Avocado Paper:
$10.95/50 (number of sheets) = 21.9 cents per page
21.9 cents x .45 (amount used per invitation) = 9.8 cents of avocado used per invitation

Cost of paper per invitation: 57.1 cents (26.70 + 20.6 + 9.8)

Each envelope also got an A9 envelope and an A1 envelope for the RSVP. The outside envelopes were $44.95 for 150 and the envelopes for the RSVP cards were $32.85 for 150 (not including shipping.)

Outside Envelope: $44.95/150 = 29.9 cents

RSVP Envelop: $32.85/150 = 21.9 cents

Cost of envelopes per invitation:  51.8 cents (29.9 + 21.9)

Running total: $1.09 per invitation 


Other Expenses:

We bought 3 packs of "glue dots" to put together the invitations at ~$2.65/pack = $7.95

After the "glue dots" ran out, we used double stick tape at $5.95 for a 2 pack x 2 = $11.90

The punches we used to make the clover and leaf shapes were ~$20

I bought a paper cutter at $25 plus 2 packs of blades for another $12 which totals $37

We made 112 invitations so to get the price of each "other expense," I'm going to divide the cost by 112. 

Glue Dots: $7.95/112 = 7.09 cents
Double Stick Tape: $11.90/112 = 10.6 cents
Punches: 17.8 cents
Paper Cutter & Blades: 33 cents

Total for "others" = 68.49 cents

Running total: $1.09 (paper) + 68.49 cents ("others") =  $1.77 per invitation

Postage
We put a single 65 cent stamp on the outside envelope to send our invitations to everyone in the U.S. We also put a 45 cent stamp on the RSVP card for people to send back to us. For our guests in the U.S. we spent $1.10 in postage per invitation. 

For our out of country guests (my family in Canada, ) we put two 65 cent stamps on the outside envelope, but no 45 cent stamp on the RSVP card because we figured they'd have to put Canadian postage on something sent in Canada. For our out of country guests we spent $1.30 in postage.

Total cost per invitation
U.S. guests: $2.87 ($1.77 for paper and "others" plus $1.10 postage)
Canada guests: $3.07 ($1.77 for paper and "others" plus $1.30 in postage)
(total does not include shipping charges or gas used to drive to craft stores) 

I'm actually extremely proud of this. I couldn't find a pre-made or ordered invitation for this cheap. We did pay out the wazoo for postage (because I stupidly went over the 1 ounce mark for 45 cent stamps) but overall, I'm extremely proud of the way they turned out and the cost. Even though it took me what seemed like forever to get them done, I would do it all over again in a heart beat. 

Invitation Reveal

Now that the invitations have gone all the way out to Arizona, I figure it's ok for me to show the rest of the world without ruining anyone's surprise.

Unfortunately I had to blur out some of the person information in the last two pictures for the sake of privacy. 

I loved the linen paper. It had such an amazing texture which I feel really added a lot to the invitations.

I'm so happy with the way they turned out. I feel like they've very person, give our guests all the information they could possibly need and were cheaper than anything I found pre-made or made when ordered. I've gotten good responses from our guests so far!