Weddingbee boards

I'm nowhere in invitation land.  Buried under too many invitation books.  Inviting 75-80 people.  Won't DIY, but won't spend $500 for 50 invites either.  I don't much care for the invitations with flat print and design, but one card shop in town showed me some Crane & Co designs that actually have a pretty, textured, colored-ink border and he can send those out to be printed; pretty reasonable.  Here's the question:  can I use a border with colors (like royal blue and gold, or black and gold on ivory stock) that have NO relationship to the colors at the wedding/reception itself (it's June -- basically white on white with some creams, champagnes anyhow, with BMs in black) and i'm worried the black and gold-bordered invites will be too wintry somehow.

And,

I thought I would print a simple but elegant -- if there is such a thing -- rsvp online thing on the bottom of one corner of the invite to save some $$ (despite what etiquette says, even my 85 year-old Great Aunt e-mails now).  BUT what are these on line sites for wedding rsvps?  I thought you use one of your e-mail addresses.  Yikes! Help! How does this work?

You're amazing ladies! But are most of you saying it's pretty much okay to have a website address on the invitation? And is there a reason to use wedding website instead of your personal e-mail, other than to keep track for you?  Though I do like this idea of being able to include other info, like a map or something.... how could I take a look at what this all looks like? Sorry for all the questions, but I can see myself up against a ridiculous deadline with all this... getting tight as it is I s'pose, especially when I just read somewhere that one of the bees is trying to choose her invites for their wedding in 2011 !!!

I wouldn't have the website on the invitation itself, but would create an insert (like @greenleaf suggested) to include with your invite.  If you keep your professional invitation pretty simple, it should be easy and quick to make matching inserts yourself. 

@hopewell - don't be so sure people won't notice if the colors don't match!  My colors are pink, forest green and ivory.  On our save the dates I ran out of the green ribbon I was using and used blue ribbon on about 7 of over 100 cards, thinking it was just a save the date and the blue looked pretty (we used a postcard from the town we are marrying in so the blue matched the mountains) and no one would ever think twice about it.

No one has asked me directly, but unfortunately the blue ribboned stds went to friends of my mom who know about our colors and they all asked her why the ribbon was blue.  Doh!  I couldn't believe it...I don't care and actually thought it was funny.  There is always someone who will call you out. 

@joebeth - don't let my story deter you though!  Do it your way!

Hi all! Ladyox -- your Blue Ribbon story rocks! Okay Hopewell, I'm glad Peggy whats-her-name says it's a-okay to put an e-mail address on the invitation... and I won't use a web address, but a new e-mail address so we won't have a jillion e-mails right before the wedding.  good suggestion.  But Hopewell, what did you mean when you said to give guests some other way to reply? How, where... unless I include some enclosure, which i hadn't wanted to do... like what MissCremebrulee suggests, an ivory watercolor paper insert... but before I consider that, is there a way to give guests another way to reply if I only include an e-mail address on the invite? As for ivory watercolor paper, duh, what is that exactly?

And I will check out the gatsby website, after Kitchen Nightmares.  One more question about colors -- so now I'm leaning towards the light royal blue/gold bordered crane & co one, but is the black and gold really bad for a June wedding -- with my BMs wearing black (this last wasn't my idea but one of my BMs who insisted they be in betsey johnson little black things or something).  Thanks ladies!

Hopewell -- Great suggestions! I just hope no one will think we're being cheap if we don't include an rsvp card (which maybe we are-hehe).

Now putting our street address on to, underneath the e-mail -- I like it, but brings me to a question I thought of asking you ladies this morning -- are you all having your return address printed on the back of your wedding envelopes or not??

You know Hopewell -- I have a feeling I'd be excited over my invitations, if I found something I really liked, something I thought was a little original (and vaguely in budget)! If you'd be willing, I'd love to see yours....

Last night, I loved some of the ones on Minted.com -- but they were in the range of $1,000 for 100 before envelopes, stamps, etc.! As for Gatsby, not so much.  Finestationery.com had a couple for me... I dunno whether it was late or what -- but I started leaning towards these simple, but very heavy paper, ecru (largish) pain Vera Wang with beautiful font... and for 50 with envelopes, I bet I could keep this in the $300 or less range.  I know some of you gals are DIYs and doing really pretty ones for well under that but.... ?

@JoeBeth12:  I totally hear you on not wanting to spend a ton of money on invites, Rsvp cards, etc.  I'm in the same boat.

I would really echo one of the other bees about checking out weddingpaperdivas.com.  You can still get letterpress invites or ones with texture in the paper (which is what the watercolour paper will have...it's heavy paper and has random texture) and I've found that it's SO much cheaper.  

I REALLY wanted letterpress invites, but they were out of the price range.  I'm paying $135 USD for 65 invites on 30% recycled paper (including envelopes) from weddingpaperdivas.com.  There is texture in the paper, which sort of makes up for not having the wording letterpressed.  We've had a great experience with their tech support and I'm looking forward to ordering the invites this weekend.

We're not doing Rsvp cards either; just our wedding website and our phone number, for those who can't figure out how to send an email (we have a couple on our list).

@Hopewell: I'm worried about that too.  It's difficult to spend so much time and money thinking (over-thinking?) about all this stuff that often ends up in the recycling bin.  lol