Paper Shout Out

So tonight I was chatting with a friend about all my wedding crafts to date, and we got on the topic of wedding invitations. She had made her own invitations for her wedding, and I was reminded what a hassle she went through to find the right paper products for the job. So for what it's worth, I'd like to use my little piece of the world wide web to commend a couple great paper & craft vendors on a job well done.

I had originally decided to take the easy way out and buy my invitations, and scoured the internet for exactly what I wanted. Nothing was good enough. (Come on! You only get married once.) Not to mention, I wasn't willing to pay over $5 per invite for an invitation that did not live up to my standards. Who would? So began my quest to make the perfect invitation.

The design I came up with was fairly simple, or so I thought. My vision included a tri-fold square invitation which I would need to make out of 6 by 18 inch cardstock. In navy. So again I googled and googled for 18 inch cardstock. And let me tell you, I logged some serious hours into this search. I had almost given up hope and resulted to gluing together two smaller pieces, which for the record gave me nightmares of the glue coming unstuck en route and anxious guests turned horrified after opening up the envelope to see an invitation in pieces. (Sorry, the bride nightmares have seriously kicked in...)

Anyway, my paper prayers were answered one night when I came across a post on The Knot which recommended Anchor Paper & Cards & Pockets. To make a long story short, I ended up using them both with excellent results. Through Anchor, I was able to order all the cardstock I needed cut exactly to the size that I needed for an incredibly reasonable price... $25 for all 90 pieces, including shipping! And they even mailed me the scraps that they ended up with after cutting. Very green of them, those Minnesotans. You have to email them through the website to place your order but I worked with Emily and she was fantastic. Through Cards & Pockets I was able to order all my envelopes for only 10 cents each! As well as some custom colored & patterned accent paper. They have every color you could ever want & offer samples too.

Speaking of samples...I am a sucker for surprises and don't want to take that away from you when you see a square envelope in the perfect shade of navy blue sitting in your mailbox...so here is just a taste of what I'm working on:

So here I sit with my fabulously inexpensive paper and a guest list of 150 people to invite staring me in the face. Wish me luck!