Crafting the Invitations -- Assembly

Finally, it was time to assemble everything.

To refresh your memory, here is our invitation suite:

I simply stacked the RSVP card on top of the invitation, and stacked the insert card on top of that. In between the invitation and RSVP card, I slipped our rehearsal dinner invitation.

The RSVP card is a postcard, so I made sure to pre-stamp it:

The front of the card asks our guests to RSVP for both the wedding and the rehearsal dinner, and asks where they're staying and what day they're arriving. That way, I'll be able to make sure I get an out of town bag to everyone. We're having a buffet, so no food choices were necessary.

I used leftover strips of the purple Unryu Thread Paper to create 1/2" wide belly bands to hold everything together. I didn't want to use an actual inner envelope for most of the reasons already discussed in previous posts -- extra money to buy them, extra wasted paper being thrown away, and added weight threatening the 1 oz limit. Instead, I put the inner envelope information on a small piece of cardstock.

The cardstock actually came from these blank greeting cards I found at Archivers while looking for other stuff. They were in the cheap bin, and were a great find! They're embossed in a stripe pattern, so they added a little bit of architectural interest to the layout, rather than just a boring piece of flat cardstock:
I only ended up using a handful of them, too. First I cut each card in between those stripes to create strips 5.5" x ~1". Then I trimmed off the unembossed ends, leaving me with a 5" strip. I cut that strip into either two 2.5" pieces or a 2" and 3" piece, depending on how much I needed to write on each one. I wrote the guests' names on using a purple roller ball pen, and it went on top of the belly band. The belly band was attached with a Zot and the "inner envelope" cardstock was attached to the belly band with another Zot.

The completed assembly:

I'm a little wishy-washy about the size of the belly band. I think, if I were to do it again, I would make them at least 5/8" wide, rather than 1/2" wide. I've seen some examples of really fat belly bands, too, and while that might look nice, I really didn't want to waste too much paper. In the end, I'm satisfied with it.


Into the envelope it goes!
The repositionable sticky tape I had used to attach the liner to the envelope ended up remaining fairly repositionable after a few days, and that made me nervous. So at the last minute, I secured everything down with a permanent Glue Dot, one of the very flat ones, so everything remained nice and smooth.

And then all that's left is to seal and stamp it!
We went with the Chinese New Year stamps. Neither of us is an ox, but it's a small nod to my heritage.

In the end, they weighed 7/8 oz each, perfect for a single first class stamp!