Wedding Invitations

My niece, Stephanie, is getting married in August and I graciously volunteered to design their wedding invites. And Steph and Jon were kind of excited about it (and didn't fake it, either), even though I told them that they were to tell me if they don't like what I come up with.
I didn't want to use clip art at all and wanted to make it a lot more personal by using a rubber stamp. Steph and I were trying to coordinate a time to hook up to go to Stamp-a-doodle or Michael's or somewhere since I didn't have a very good selection (in my eyes) of wedding-worthy stamps. Steph and Jon ended up finding a rubber stamp place in Seattle that they went to and they chose two stamps.
I did the wording of the invitations on the computer at home and printed them out, going through a few dozen fonts to find the perfect one. I was able to order the envelopes through work for a great deal, along with the black paper. All the other paper I had in my own personal collection at home, including the fly sheet stock (the see-through paper, but not tissue paper) which was used on the front of the invite with the two rubber stamped images which were both embossed with black powder.
I also used silver brads at the top, adding an even more elegant look to them.
The parts of the invite were: outside mailing envelope, invitation, directions to the ceremony and directions to the reception, reply card and envelope. I didn't use the traditional extra envelope since Steph wanted to keep the postage down to standard postage. I was able to keep the invite to the larger 5x7 size with the black cover stock backgrounds and metal brads, AND still be under the postage requirements. Also, you can't see it in the photos but we hand embossed a stencil on the outer flap of the envelope. Steph and Liz hand-wrote all of the addresses, too.
I had "the girls" all up to our house on a Saturday in May to put them all together. I had everything cut out, lined up and ready to go. I even managed to have all of the fly sheets embossed (with Teresa's help) by the night before. There were 150 invitations made. And the supplies were well under $100.
Steph wanted to cry when she saw what the finished invitation was going to look like.