Invitations: Envelopes May Be Brighter Than They Appear

I ordered our envelopes from EnvelopeMall.com. They sell them in packs of 100 for the lowest prices I've found online. I really like the envelopes we chose.

If you're making your own invites, please please please please get samples before you spend the $18+. They are only $1 apiece, and it is pretty much the only way you can guarantee that you will get the correct colors.

We knew we wanted one of our envelopes to be pink and the other, maroon, but there were a couple of options for each. I ordered samples for the following colors (the following four images are from the EnvelopeMall site):

Stardream Metallic "Mars"

Astrobright "Pulsar Pink"

Carnival "Red"

Eames Furniture "India Pink"

Kids, this is why you order samples:

That color on the far left? Yeahh, that pretty and light "Pulsar Pink" is NEON. It doesn't look that way on the Web site! (The others, from left to right: Red, India Pink, Mars. India Pink is a tad brighter than the picture looks, but it's pretty close.) Mars was the only one that looked exactly the way I thought it would.

If you don't know approximately what size envelope you want, you can order different sample sizes, which is probably a better way than I did it. I looked up the dimensions for envelope sizes and got out my ruler and drew a bunch of envelope-sized boxes on a single piece of paper. Way to be confusing, self.

I ordered 100 of the 4-bar size in India Pink for the RSVP envelopes (NOTE: THIS IS THE SMALLEST ENVELOPE SIZE YOU CAN MAIL THROUGH USPS! Don't try to mail anything smaller than 3.5 inches by 5 inches!) and 200 of the A7 size in Mars for the outer. Since we're putting together about 93 invitations, this gave me a little room for error, and now I have matching envelopes for thank-you cards too, once I design them.

Once you've got the envelope size and color chosen, you can use this handy dandy chart to figure out what dimensions you need to make your invitations so they'll fit in the envelopes. Maybe make them a tad smaller if you're going to have several enclosures. Ours have a couple o' pieces to them, but they fit just fine, even with an envelope liner.

I don't have a good question to put about envelopes, sooo ... talk amongst yourselves. :)