invitations for a cause

Our search for invitations was a lot like a Disney fairy tale, minus the ridic, repetitive songs by Randy Neumann, subjugation of women, and impossibly tiny waist sizes.  We knew what we wanted, and short of singing about while longingly looking into a reflective pool, we were on the hunt to find it.  In this analogy, us=princess, invitations=fairy tale prince.  I'm now slightly offended and disgusted by my own analogy, and will chock it up to a 70 hour work week.   

Originally, I had imagined a beautiful DIY invite project that allowed me to utilize one of these designs from MyGatbsy:

source

I loved the options of colors and the cool price (around 2.50 each). I imagined myself spending a few Saturdays, watching reruns of bad TV, baking cookies and crafting some awesome invites. I kept looking though, just to be sure.

Then I found cool fabric folio invitation like this on the Wedzilla blog:

source

As sweet as the fabric looked, it was not sustainable and Mr. Pencils and I really wanted invitations made with recycled paper. We strongly considered a lot of options from Wedding Paper Divas, as most of their paper is at least 30% recycled. I ordered samples (they go for around $1 each, though some of the more extravagant invites cost $5 each) and within two days I have lots of examples to scrutinize.

We considered this one, called Vine:

We also both liked this one, called Falling Leaves, but I didn't like the thought of paying extra for postage because of the square envelopes:

This one I was sure Mr. Pencils would hate- but he loved it! It's called Marriage Garden, and I still love it:

Wedding Paper Divas offered a lot of selection, a good price, and an entire stationary suite (invites, response cards, enclosure cards, programs and thank you cards) for around $1000. What a deal! We thought if we wanted to save money, we could easily forgo the thank you cards and make programs ourselves.

Then, I was on theknot and I found an article about ecologically thoughtful invitations. I really liked the company Twisted Limb, but they were out of our price range. They had the recycled, handmade look I was going for, though.

Then, I found them.

The women of WomanCraft. These invitations are completely sustainable in every way. First, they are made from recycled paper (mainly from offices around Chicago), can include wildflower seeds so they can be planted and grown after use, and are handmade by female artisans and women who face barriers to employment.

I was sold, as was Mr. Pencils. But we still emailed and asked for some samples, and within a few days, we had 5 beautiful examples of handmade invitations. They even asked for our wedding colors and specifically included swatches of yellow, brown and green paper and coordinating ribbon so we could better visualize what we'd want!

Here are some pictures from their facebook page:

These are the ones we ordered, but in green. With invites, double sided logistics card, reply postcard and embedded wildflower seeds, the invitations cost around 4.50 each. A bit more than we had anticipated for invites, but it seems worth it when you consider everything about them!

The invitations' quality, the sustainability, and the customer service were above and beyond what we could have asked for. I called WomanCraft and we ordered our invitations. I am so excited for our guests to get gorgeous, responsible invitations. Each one includes a classy sticker than explains what WomanCraft is, and explains to guests how they can "grow" their invite after our wedding.

Did you make a wedding decision that made you happier than you thought? Did you give up a DIY aspect in favor of something that just felt "right"?