So I found this set of 48 Martha Stewart Wedding Invitations at Marshalls on clearance for $3, I was looking for graduation announcements at the time, and they didn't look too weddingy so I decided for $3 to try them.  After all one of the important things Dr.C taught me was the art of bootstrapping...

Here's the "wedding look"

Graduation-fide
 

The whole suite laid out.

I created the design in photoshop. The drawings of Belmont were created with by tweaking the Akvis drawing plugin.

I used the reply card to include a little blurb about my time at Belmont and a line and pen of the Belmont Mansion.

Since only my and Andrew's family were able to attend I opted to send my announcements after graduation so I could include a photo from graduation. I used a sticker on the back to let people know who the photo was with.

The paper was pretty thin so I used cardstock in Belmont colors to beef the response card, since I wanted to use the belly band I couldn't back the main announcement.The envelopes they came with were very nice which was awesome, nice envelopes are pricey. The DIY wasn't so bad since I was only making 30. I printed these on the Samsung CLP-310 Color Laser I got as a graduation present from my parents, which worked pretty well.  So how did my announcements compare to Josten's $2 a piece ones... well I saved a $1.79 each and spent under $10!! (Not including postage of course.)

Item	Cost	/quan	Cost per
Invitation Suite	$3.00	48	$0.0625
Card Stock	$3.99	48	$0.083125
Printing	0	0	0
Photos (2 per 4x6)	$2.60	40	$.065
Totals	$9.59		$0.210625

(Notes: Not including toner expense since I'm on the starters still, postage isn't apart of the savings so I left it out, can you tell I'm an business person?!)

So take another look at those super clearance wedding invites and use them as invitations, it's a huge step up from an e-vite!

A sorority sister knowing I love graphic design asked me to create a digital invite to send to our eighty plus sisters to attend her upcoming wedding ceremony. Since this invite is just for the girls I decided to go crazy with her Tiffany theme. I used this as an opportunity to toy with some new photoshop techniques which resulted in this. The bride and I are just thrilled with the end result.

Click to see the detail.

Alpha Gams will giggle at the details of this invite. But for for those non Alpha Gamma Delta's out there here's the scoop.  Skiouros is our squirrel mascot, who's marrying Chip of Chip n' Dale, the date is our founding day, and the location is our first chapter in Syracuse. The crest embossed on the bottom is our Fraternity crest designed by Emily Helen Butterfield.

I've been a member of Alpha Gamma Delta my entire college experience at Belmont and it has been the most rewarding experience. To celebrate the four years I've spent with the wonderful women of my pledge class I decided to send us off in style with a senior sleepover.

Using a Google Spreadsheet form I collected what days worked best for the most people.

Making each date option a question and offering these options:

• Perfect =D
• Works but isn't the greatest =/
• Can't be there =(

With that we finally settled on a date that worked, the evening of the last day of finals. (Punchbowl has their own date decider I later discovered, so for the easy way use that.)

Then came time to create the invitation.

Facebook offers such limited ways to make an invitation pretty, and with only a small number of people being invited I wanted something a little more personal.

There are tons of options out there. (Pingg, Punchbowl, evite, to name a few)

I'd used Pingg before and wasn't crazy about how much was paid nor the customization options. So I opted to try punchbowl. Overall I'm really happy with punchbowl, they don't make their unpaid version useless, basically you have a few less fonts and designs to choose from, but not so much you can't make something you like.

The Invitation I picked and altered in their web creator.

Easy to use, lots of options

Then you have tons of add-on tools, like a paypal fund guests can contribute to, this potluck list which I used to determine most people wanted to just have me buy and then spilt the cost of, maps, travel suggestions, loads and loads of extra features you control which was awesome.

Punchbowl has loads of options for importing the emails of your guests, and tons of controls to help you get a good count, you can manualy RSVP for a person and even link couples together. The best part though is you can see who looked at the invitation and who didn't and resend the invite to just the people who didn't look at it.

Punchbowl even helps you with your ettiquette, so you can be Emily Post the easy way.

Stay tuned more to come in this HK party series.