Invitations pt. 2 [It's Real Now] Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The first thing that helped me get over my disappointment was seeing FH's reaction to the invitations. Earlier readers may remember that it was him who turned me on to these invitations in the first place -- he has excellent taste!

When he came home, I showed them to him without comment, to see what he'd say. He didn't say anything for a long time, but he just sort of stared at them, smiling. He said, "We're getting married!" It was very sweet.

These invitations, of course, are not about shades of pink and cursive and script and fonts; they're the first announcement that my fiance and I intend to start a new life together. Seeing him hold the invitations in his hands and really get that for the first time was priceless, and everything else I'd been worrying about suddenly mattered much less.

Another thing that helped was a little design tweak that was inexpensive and only took a few minutes! I decided to round the corners.

Smock can round the corners of your invitations for you, but we didn't select this when we ordered them. When they arrived, I knew it was the "something missing" that I needed to fix. I ventured into Hobby Lobby and found this sturdy-looking "Corner Chomper" and its cute matching case:

 

  

 This is the perfect tool for this sort of thing; it cuts clean, perfectly curved corners, and holds up really well. It's perfect for the super thick card stock of our invitations. 

And now for the results! First, the before: 

 

This tool cuts two types of corners; a quarter inch (it appears that this is the shape Smock uses if you have them round the corners)...

 

...and a half inch, which is the one we're going to use:

 

You can see the corners better in this shot:

 

I have to give major props to the Crop-a-dile. The corners it cuts are absolutely perfect... no flattening of the paper or extra weird notches. It's amazing how different the invitations look now. The softer edges really help our names to stand out, since they're now the only angled things on the invitation. I think the soft corners provide some much-needed balance and definition. Not only that, but with this hard cardstock, they're much easier to get in & out of the envelopes!

So for now, that's the story of our invites. Now it's on to a task I'm dreading: finalizing the guest list!