Build it ; and they will come....

This is what you can do with a little bit of fancy paper...

thats right, the wedding invitations!

its a renewable land source material you know.

And what a fantastic way to celebrate Arbor Day*!

"allPopart" can do amazing things with your own photography!

 Anyhow, the most important thing is that these two are going to have a wedding with actual guests, 

because we finally sent the invites out...

canna i hear a YAY!!!???

YAY!

After the bride perused the internet for her perfect invite, 

she found these beauties at an etsy shop called "Ink'd by Kate Designs".

Kate is a wonderful business woman who happens to have 3 adorable children, an intelligent husband, and an excellent eye for design!  These Vintage Peacock invites with matching pearlized envelopes (everyone needs a little pearlizing in their life... seriously...) were exactly what the Bride was looking for, and after her and the Groom chose their wording, it was off to Kate's printing shop they went!

Im pretty sure Kate's printing shop area doesnt look like the way mine did when i was printing off 

our homemade version of  vellum inserts with the bride and grooms website on it ~

or when I was stamping gold ink'ed peacock feathers on 'em

or when i was using this handy little guillotine to slice them...

And I bet she doesnt maim herself doing it like I did!

Some of these things are sharp!

and messy!

But i be okay!

So we are so glad we hired Kate do the most important designing part of the Invitations and RSVP cards, 

not only because she did a beautiful job, but also because she got 'er done a lot quicker then I did, 

and promptly sent them off to us to admire and be very very happy!! 

Thanks Kate ; they are perfect :) 

and were we ever joyful to see these gorgeous things~

These RSVP cards are the most important things ever ; 

more important then remembering to wash your hands thoroughly

before you put your contacts in or go to the bathroom after cutting fresh chili peppers...

 uhmm. 

anyhow,

 ~  Emily Post says RSVP cards are not proper  ~

she says people are supposed to hand write a letter in response to an invitation.

sure.

So I say pffft to Emily because these little cards are a gift to all peoples who are hosting a wedding.

You want your guests to eat, and how do you know how much to tell the caterer to charge you 

if you dont know whose going to show up to eat? We want our guests to be happy and filled up!

Thats why we even put a customized address stamp and our return address on them - they are that IMPORTANT!!! 

So lets hear a PFFFT  to Emily Post's etiquette!

PFFFFT!

So they are so important that I came up with this idea to wrap them up like a little present.

Because everyone loves to open presents!

Just like the inserts, I used gold Vellum - not Valium, but I might have if I had it around after using the little mini guillotine - to make belly bands (not my wording, really), stamping them with gold ink'd peacock feathers, and we then wrapped it around the RSVP & its pearlized envelope - Vellum is a lightweight paper and kept costs down for postage. Using a small thin wrapping paper ribbon, we then added that to the mix... And I got to use the dotto sticky dispenser again, like I did here when we made the envelope liners! I love that thing! Its so much entertainment for under 6 bucks on a saturday night! 

We be sticky!!! lots!

Here I am making sure that my finger gets just as sticky as last time 

so i can rub the white hair off of my favorite t-shirt I am wearing - I become a human lint brush!

 

Here is Dexterdog and Tomez resting up after a hard day's morning of shedding fur. 

Its exhausting work you know, making sure that your old winter coat is coating everything, 

including toothbrushes in closed cabinets...

Thats not only hard work but a master of all tricks, 

I tell ya...so they are tired and sleep most of the day.

But not me, 

No!

~Anyhow, we ordered these really neat stickers off of Zazzle ~ 

this is a closeup of the artist Gustav Klimt's painting, titled "the Kiss" painted in the early 1900's

isnt it romantic?? I love how he is holding her, and I love the slight smile on her face...

When the bride was a teenager, she actually bought a framed picture of this and hung it above her bed.

Way before she met her true love.

*sigh*...while swatting a piece of floating white fur away*

and so here is the final product! A neat little present for the guests to open!

But are we done??? Ohhhhhh noooo, 

no we are not.

Here is the guest list. 

All 5 pages worth. 

and here is the Lindt chocolate that my sister sent me to test before I bought 12 boxes of the stuff.

I ate it all.

Keeping track of 5 pages of guests and their plus ones and family, pets and neighbors etc. 

can be a daunting task.

 So i found out a little secret.

Yes, that and the chocolate.

Whats my little secret?

If you list each guest with a number, and you secretly write in their number in the flap of the RSVP card envelope, you can keep still keep track of who it is when someone responds without a name! 

Pretty swift,  huh?

that and the chocolate!

Lets hear a shout out to numbers and chocolate!

SHOUT OUTS!!!

*munching on the last Lindt truffle, knowing that I ordered 12 boxes for the wedding, well...okay, now theres 11...*

So after that, and that last Lindt truffle *cough*, 

it was time to head back upstairs to our printing shop, which in no way shape or form resembles Kate's.

I found out that the Lexmark Pro series is absolutely useless for our Forestry office, but is absolutely perfect for printing on fancy pearlized ("lets get pearlized...anybody dance to Prince at weddings anymore? hello?") slippery envelopes, since its a topsider. In other words, it prints the top of the envelope without flipping it around inside of it, so your ink doesnt get messed up. This whole trick with these specific envelopes made up for all the years (2) of agonizing slow printing  when we were in a hurry, the missed faxes because it refused to answer them ("what, you're on lunch? youre a machine!") and the constant rebooting (hitting it) because it refused to listen to us when we asked it to make a simple copy... But for these envelopes, it worked like a charm! Why? I dont know! Lets not ask!

Moving on,

 since I am feral and wanted to make Emily Post's etiquette roll in its' grave one more time, 

I must confess

I was committing wedding blasphemy by printing out the addresses 

rather then handwriting them like shes says we are suppose to do.

  sure. 

  

Anyhow, I went to the website Dafont

  and for free, I downloaded  "DelaGarza" 

a calligraphy font that to me, looks incredibly beautiful. 

Even when you are printing out the words " Mickey & Minnie and The Magic Kingdom" (which in of itself sounds like that bad wedding band that could have played at a 1980's reception - in 2001), but darn it if that calligraphy font didnt make it look classy! And check out the stamp!  Yep, Zazzle again!  Since we kept the costs down by printing insert information & belly band on lightweight gold vellum (valium, did someone say valium?), along with Kate's designed cards and pearlized envelopes, and decorating with a thin gold ribbon with sticky stuff, it only cost 65 cents to send out each invitation...

and so we did this over and over again over a hundred times. 

Joyfully.

with chocolate and the promises of a new tomorrow...

YAY!

Can we give a call out for a hug?

I think i need a hug.

((((((HUGS!!))))))

~