Invitation Creation, Part 4: The Finished Invites and Cost Breakdown

After my last three posts on the making of the Cola invites, it's time to finally show off the finished product (along with what I imagine our guest's commentary will be)!

"Ohhh, what a pretty envelope! What could be inside?"

"Oh goodie, it's from Mr. and Miss Cola!"

"Wow, this envelope is lined, what a fun surprise!"

"Let's get this out of the envelope so we can see what's inside."

"I just love ribbon belly bands!"

"Yay, the RSVP card and envelope are on the back, I'll be sure to send this back right away!"

"What a nice touch to find another flower on the pocketfold after removing the belly band."

"And yet another flower inside the pocketfold flap, wow, I just love all the small touches!"

"It's so beautiful when the pocketfold is opened, The Colas must really have put a lot of time into making these!"

"What a cool, laser cut design, I've never seen that before!"

"I must have a closer look at the amazing texture of wood grain paper, laser cut text and flowers!"

"What informative, helpful inserts."

"This is such a beautiful invitation suite, I think I'll frame it....right after I promptly fill out the RSVP card correctly and put it in the mail!"

Yeah, yeah, I know none of our guests will pay this close of attention to our invitations, or appreciate them as much as my fake commentary, but if they like them even half as much as I imagine, I'll be happy!

Now for a look at what these cost us. I already had a lot of the supplies we used, like the x-acto knife, printer and ink, corner and flower punches, etc, so won't be counting those in my total cost. I'm also only counting the cost of each sheet of paper used, since I definitely will use the leftovers elsewhere (click the spreadsheet for a larger view).
I should also note that this total doesn't include the outer postage stamps (I'm getting them this week), or tax. But I'd still say that $406 is a pretty good price, compared to what they'd cost to buy, and especially considering that at my mom's count, there are 25 individual pieces that went into these invites (I'm pretty sure her count didn't include the outer stamps either). But it is certainly a good thing that I am considering the time Mr. Cola, my family and I spent working on these as free, or this price would be quite a bit higher. All in all, I estimate these probably took about 150 total hours to complete, including the 30 hours of laser cutting just the wood grain paper portion. And now you know why my recent blog posts have been light on the DIY--these took up a lot of my attention!

For anyone who is wondering, I got my green paper from here, cream paper from here, wood grain paper here, my purple paper and envelopes here, and the ribbon I used was from Michaels. And if you are really interested in doing your own laser cutting, and don't know someone with access to a machine, you might want to try Googling public workshops in your area. In the Bay Area we have a place called TechShop that will let you rent time on their machines.

Well, that concludes my posts on our wedding invitations that are going out this week. Next I'll finally show you all the pocketfolds that could have been, with the additional laser cutting I wanted, but that would have been to time consuming.

Were you relieved to send your invitations out? I'm not looking forward to the upcoming stress of missing RSVPs, but I'm sure glad mine are done!

Wishing, And Hoping, And Dreaming....

During the wedding planning process you are bombarded with an overload of visual stimuli. Hundreds of inspiration boards, ideas, and recap photos are out there just waiting for you to feast your eyes on. Some call the many, many beautiful pictures "wedding porn," and that's a pretty good term for it! I could (and have, and do!) spend hours looking at all the many ideas out there for inspiration, but I'm beginning to think I may need to stop.

I keep finding new things to add to our wedding plans! There are a lot of them that I think are really cute, but either are too expensive, too hard to do, or something that I really appreciate, but can live without. And then there are a few, two things in particular, that I can't stop thinking about.

#1 is the Photobooth.

{Source for both}

I've seen this featured in so many weddings that I've seen online, since it's the latest "trend." And although I don't like to jump on the bandwagon, I have a feeling that unless somebody attends like 5+ weddings a year, chances are they've never seen one at a wedding. Everyone looks so happy and seems to be having so much fun in all the photobooth wedding pics I've seen. And I know Mr. Cola and I had fun at the one wedding we've been to that had a photobooth. I think it would be a huge hit with all our friends, and we could even get some fun props during after Halloween sales for some silly photo opps.

The problem though is the cost. Do we really have a spare $1000 to spend on this? That's where I'm torn. It's a pretty big chunk of cash for a few hours of entertainment...but then again we would have a million awesome pictures from it (the guests all get a print out there, and you get to keep a CD of everything at the end of the night). Plus you have the option of having a projector showing what's going on in the booth displayed on a wall for everyone to see, which makes it even more fun and enticing. Sigh, what's a girl to do?

My #2 obsession is an ice cream/gelato cart.


{Source 1, Source 2}

Wouldn't that be a neat addition to the cupcakes for dessert, to have a scoop of yummy gelato? The cart could be set up in the inside dining room near the photobooth and people could get their photos taken and then eat some gelato afterward. For $400 we can get 120 2-scoop servings, cups, spoons, napkins, 2 hrs with 1 person serving, with tax and 14% gratuity charge included in the price. But my main fear is that it would take away from the specialness of our cupcakes and awesome 6 foot cupcake stand (more on that later). But on the other hand, it could be a really cool addition too, since we're not having the traditional cake for dessert.

Having both of these add-ons would be so awesome. But are they worth the price, I'm not sure. I think if I had to choose one, it would be the photobooth, however that's over twice the cost of the gelato cart. But I think the pay-off would be better and people would enjoy it more than the extra dessert....although both would be the best!

I'm going to have to think (and drool!) over these ideas a bit more before I make any decisions. If there's anywhere I can find in the budget to include one or both of these, it would be either in savings on my dress (if I get the pretty cheap one I found online from a distributor instead of one I might find in a boutique), or maybe we could skip the $260 snorkel trip on our honeymoon, or heck, if I'm really looking for/grasping at straws for justification on these added costs, I suppose I could go without any new shoes or clothes for myself this coming fall/winter/spring....

Have you found any non-budgeted for, but super awesome additions you want for your wedding? And which would you pick if you were me, the photobooth, the gelato cart, both, or neither?