First - and most gorgeous - things first.

Long ago, I posted about our beautiful save-the-dates. Without further hoopla, I present their larger and lovelier siblings - the invitations!

outside of invitation - circle punch highlighting partial graphic

postcard reply card

And... the inside of the invitation! Hard to see detail in this photo, but the slightly brighter circles 

were painstakingly glued on by the phenomenal Stephanie of Stelie Designs. 

Thanks to Photoshop Express for identity protection - I must tell you how proud I am that I figured it out. :-)

I am not too proud to admit that several ideas (the can't wait! can't make it; the song requests) were cribbed from bloggers whose identities I can no longer recall but for whose creativity I am eternally grateful. What goes around, comes around: I hope others will like what they see here  and feel free to steal liberally!

Most importantly, I cannot stress enough how absolutely AMAZING Stephanie has been to work with. She has been so open to all my ideas at every step along the way, and she is so creative, attentive to detail, and genuinely sweet & kind. When I look through my gmail account, I'm slightly embarrassed at the number of emails we exchanged over the past 6 months, but she never seemed bothered at the amount of communication. In fact, I really feel like I made a new friend through this process. :-)

I'm so grateful to Stephanie for 1) being hands ***way*** down my favorite wedding-related person to work with and 2) creating save-the-dates and invitations that are both exactly what I wanted and far better than I could have imagined! She even included several extras along the way, including two beautiful sets of cards (one set personalized "Wendy & Tim") and a lovely pair of earrings that are so "me" from VanDiva. I also sneaked a peek at her Etsy favorites and sent her a VanDiva bracelet as a far-too-small thank you for the phenomenal work she did for us.

Please visit Stephanie's store and blog and support her gem of a business!