Wedding ladyceil...I have a few invite questions for you

[emeraldlover1]

I loved your invites and now I have a few questions. When you bought the stock photos did you buy them in your specifc color? Also you had a neutral background so if I was going that route would you suggest staying away from prints that have a background color? I think I know the answer to that.

I''m trying to decide if DIY is worth is when I found someone who will do my invites for around $450. What do you think? Would you do it again?

 

[emeraldlover1]

I can''t believe I spelled your name wrong, so sorry. I knew it as soon as I submitted. ugh...embarassing.

 

[ladyciel]

Haha, no worries! I didn''t notice the misspelling until you pointed it out, actually.

The stock art that I purchased was a mix of color and black and white vector images. The important point is that they were vector files that I could edit in Illustrator. That meant that re-coloring them was a matter of changing the colors of different shapes and lines (in the case of some files I had to use the scissor/knife tools to cut and redefine the boundaries of shapes a bit). Some of them had background colors, but I was able to edit them out. If they had been pixel graphics like what you would use in paintshop, changing the colors would have been a MUCH more difficult and messy issue.

Would I do it again? Yes. Because I''m a control freak and it would have taken me almost as much time to communicate what I had in mind as it took me to do it myself in the end. Ok, that''s an exaggeration, but it made me happy to do them myself, even though it took forever. I worked on the files over the course of months, so I really don''t know how many hours it actually took me start to finish. I already knew how to use illustrator (random desire to learn it a while back led me to get a tutorial book from the library + free access to the program through school), and I had a very clear picture in my head of how I wanted the design. However, if I was less crafty, less computer savy, or less crazy, I would have been more than happy to pay somebody else to do them.

So, that said, I think whether you do them yourself or hire somebody else is a personal decision. First, consider your interest, desire and abilities. As for cost, try to price out what your materials would be to do them yourself. Be sure to get a fair estimate of printing costs - ours weren''t cheap w/ all the inserts/color/cardstock. I definitely saved money doing them myself, but what I saved in money was more than spent in time. I''m a grad student - my time is cheap (or so I''ll assume from what they pay me).