The invitations arrived [it's real now]

Our beautiful invitations have arrived! Having picked these out nearly a year ago, I am happy to present them (in slightly altered form, sorry):

They are beautiful to me now, but when I picked them up I was a little disappointed with the accent color, a neutral-ish shade of pink that was a little different from how it appeared in the store sample book. Also, it was a bit of a struggle to get these invitations designed in quite the right way (multiple proofs), and this probably added to the underwhelming-ness of seeing them for the first time.

But I got over it fast. The first thing that helped me get over my disappointment was seeing Mr. Oyster'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. Finally 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 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 the company 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 and out of the envelopes.

Oh, and another thing -- did you notice? Several of you mentioned wanting to see our invitation suite, and this is it. We went with our simple-is-best mantra with this wedding and decided to splurge on this one beautiful card (which we got on sale!) and eliminate the things that were less important to us. Even the language on the invitation is super-simplified.

So, no STDs, no response card, no postcard, no maps, no folding things, no menu, no programs. It's all on the website, including our rsvp! We'll see how that goes.

So for now, that's the story of our invites. Nothing left to do with them but send them out (but not until we finalize the guest list... oh, no!).

*Photos by me.