Our Experience
As soon as I started reading bridal magazines, I began requesting mail order invitation catalogs. So, by the time we needed to think about invitations, I had all the mail order catalogs available and had thoroughly contemplated wording. I had seen a few samples of invitations that used handmade paper, with flower petals pressed into the paper. I'd also seen invitations that were wrapped in all sorts of paper -- and I liked the idea of a plain white invitation wrapped in handmade paper.

We considered other options, but I kept returning to the idea of an invitation wrapped in hand-made paper. Then we stumbled upon a store in Manhattan called Kate's Paperie, which stocks hundreds of handmade papers, as well as beautiful ribbons. Of course, all this comes for a price -- but I realized that if we assembled the invitations ourselves, it would be much less expensive than buying the already-wrapped invites. So we bought the paper at Kate's and, after a harrowing process finding ribbon, eventually tracked down some beautiful complementary ribbon, also at Kate's. Meanwhile, I ordered some plain white invitations (surprisingly difficult to find from the mail order companies, particularly since I wanted just a card rather than a folded invitation) from a mail order company -- and we were on our way.

We had a very unusual enclosure system. Since we had a lot of questions for the guests who would be coming (what did they want for dinner, would they be staying at the Inn, did they need babysitting services, etc.) but only one question for guests who wouldn't be coming, we just sent the invitations out with a basic yes or no response card. (We also had a line on the response card telling people they could visit our website and fill out our online response card.) Then, once we started to get responses, I sent another mailing (on nice Crane ivory cotton business stock, printed on the laser printer in a nice font and stamped with a beautiful gold stamp) to people who were coming -- this included a letter asking them about meals, the Inn, etc.; a brochure from the Inn (which had directions and a map); and a self-addressed stamped envelope for return of the questionnaire. This worked very well, and I kept track of all our responses, to both the first mailing and the second, in our Access database.