Seeking Feedback on These Beach Wedding Invitations

[sarita]

We are trying to plan our cruise/beach wedding for early next year, January most likely. We want to give our also poor grad student friends advance notice and time to save for the occassion so I want to get the invitations started soon. It is going to be a small wedding, maybe 25 at the most so I can go with a "nicer" invite but at the same time I was trying to keep the budget lower in this area (I was aiming for around $100, and in a not-too-campy cheapo design - is this crazy??). Then I saw this starfish invite and fell in love. I know $300 is not a lot for a traditional wedding but for a small one like we are having it seems a bit overboard. Fiance is not to keen on spending that much, either! Also, we may have to pay extra because the invitations we will send to his side of the family will be in Spanish.

Anyway, I just have a few designs here I have narrowed down. Just wanted to get some opinions, thanks.

If anyone else has pretty beach invite ideas - I am looking for feminine/natural and relatively informal but not super campy cheap ones that look like they came from your home card printer program (this is mostly what I got in the initial searches

) - please feel free to share.

1) This is the starfish that makes me swoon. I am not some crazy about the wavy white card though. I have to say this is my favorite so far, but not the price! http://www.passionpaper.com/watercolor_starfish.html They have another shell one (if you click on portfolio, it's the one after this one) that is pretty too but this one makes me melt.

2) I have not emailed for a price quote on this one yet. It seems simple but the rough-edged paper is a touch I like. Up close it may not look so nice though, the pic is not very good. http://www.invitingcreations.com/wedding.htm

3) This fits best with the cruise theme but I am not so keen on printing them ourselves. I'd rather just pay more and have the pro do it which she offers here but for quite a bit more. http://204.2.109.72/printableweddinginvitations/printableinvitationsfour.html

4)These are pricy too at ($8 per invite I think) but they come with everything you see and are really special/different. Very reasonable for what you get. http://www.beyondtheinvite.com/beach4.html

5)I had this bookmarked orginally because I liked the pale blue with the starfish and the price. I am not crazy about the rectangular shape and the particular starfish but it's a low-budget option. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5991662847&category=47113

6) I found this later from the same seller and like it better. I like the square shape but wish it had the color of the other one. (I can maybe inquire about this). Also, the benefit of this place is that I could order 20 invites in English since they are sold in 10 and the other 10 in Spanish and most likely avoid extra fees this way. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5979838107&category=47113

 

[sarita]

Sorry for the dissertation there. Also wanted to add I came across this site too. Their stuff is beautiful but just a tad out of my price range....

http://www.handmade-invitations.com/invites_beach.htm

 

[aljdewey]

Gotta say.....I love the passionpaper one too! Very nice!

 

[SoonIHope]

I like number 6 best I think, followed by number 1 and number 7....all look great though!!

 

[lovelylulu]

i like #1 too, but agree the wavy white line is not my favorite. is it possible to get a different backing paper?

 

[Caribou]

I like #1, #3, and #6.

 

[PaulaW]

I really love the starfish invites and considered them for my wedding as well. If I may play devil''s advocate for a second though, one of the reasons I decided against them was fear of them breaking during mailing. I couldn''t come up with an attractive, cost effective way to pad them and mail them in a way that they wouldn''t break or be crushed. Hopefully you''ll have better luck in figuring that out!

 

[selflove]

I think you should trust your feeling about the real starfish not holding up during mailing. Imagine your guests opening them and pieces of freeze-dried starfish left inside the envelope! Not to mention the sand that''s on one of those last two.

That said, I really like #2, 5 and 6 in terms of look and design, if they were to be done without the real starfish.

 

[sarita]

Thanks guys.

I am really drawn to #1... I like them all but when I saw that one it kind of went "wham!". The way the starfish is colored looks to me like looking at it through the water with the irridescent beads of color. But if I went that route I''d have to pay for the inner envelopes and any other extras I''d want; I haven''t added that up yet but hopefully it wouldn''t go over the $300 min. for the smaller # I''d need. I''m thinking the message in a bottle one is neater and for $60 bucks less I can get all the fixins'' and have a memorable invite there. If I decide to go budget, I think #6 is my best/favorite option but I have to say I wasn''t even considering the starfish breaking in the mail. Hmm!

 

[royalasschergirl]

We struggled to find what we wanted for a price we could afford, and THANK GOD i found Laura from Art Cards Etc. www.artcardsetc.com because she made the most GOREGOUS hand made invitations i could have imagined -- everyone thinks they were $25/piece but they were only $4.50/piece all inclusive with the inclusion cards and everything. They were on a linen card stock, the star fish on the front is hand made, the waves hand cut, and she did mine in custom colors. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, laura was reliable, friendly, and very creative and accomodating!!

good luck! Here is how ours looked -- when i first called her she had only the navy, but she did our custom colors in the teal with the white starfish, and then we wrote the copy on the inside, I lOVE THEM!!!

http://www.artcardsetc.com/bridal_invitations2.html

http://www.artcardsetc.com/seaside_turq_open.jpg

 

[sarita]

royalasschergirl,

Thank you for sharing. I have to admit I was not picturing a long rectangular invite like that (am kinda partial to the square ones) but it is actually a very nice look. I really like how everything is tucked and lined neatly inside. I am gonna go check out some of her other stuff now... thanks!

ETA: Ok, so I looked over my links/pics again and the bottle ones were kinda calling to me. I just stumbled on that particular site though and I figured there were many more bottle invites out there so I went to check some more out.

And I found THIS: http://www.hansonellis.com/1glassesmessageinabottleweddinginvitations.asp?cjsku=7
Crazy ridiculous price per invite which holds 350 characters of text. Not too shabby. I like the ones at beyond the invite a little better (pretty colors) but a $5 difference per invite is nothing to sneeze at. One consideration though is postage, especially the ones going overseas.