Invitation Lust

I'm in the phase of wedding planning where all my big stuff has been done - all our major vendors have been booked, and things are just truckin' right along.  Everyone says once you hit the 6 month mark, time just flies by, and I'll look back at this time and wonder where it all went. I've been trying to avoid that rush of time by being ahead of the game as much as possible - I know there are things that can not be done until close to one month ahead of time - but if I don't get a bulk of wedding stuff done before school starts back up in September - I'm screwed.

My next big project is designing our invitations. Using a 30-day trial of Adobe's Creative Suite 6 (maybe if I really like I'll break down and buy it using my education discount!), and Miss Eagle's awesome tutorials, my plan is to design the entire invitation suite and have it printed elsewhere. I don't want anything super complicated, so I'm pretty confident I can pull this off.

I've been scouring the internet for the inspiration I can use to create the best invitation suite for the Lyres.

Love the elegance of the cream and gold with the pop of color here!
 Lourdes Wedding Invitation Suite / via LIANA Photography

I love the all script invitation and the slanted typography
Quill Letterpress Invitation Suite / The Aerialist Press

Again, I'm loving the all-script invitations - and the continuity of the calligraphy throughout the entire suite
Letterpress invitation suite / by Anne Elser 

So you can see I'm drawn to a uniform style of script, and monotone colors (with maybe a pop of color in the liner/belly band), also I'm kind of obsessed with letterpress.  I mean, who isn't? It's so gorgeous and just screams elegance. However, letterpress invitations were never really in our budget. Our theory for most of our paper products is spend less, save more. Since of all the invitations we send out, 95% of them are going to end up in the trash eventually.  We'll save ours, obviously, and some of our family will too, but everyone else will most likely chuck it after the wedding is over. 

My hope is if I can design the entire suite, I am very much willing to splurge on the printing (if I can convince Mr. Ly it's worth it!) - and we were able to score a good deal on invitation printing a while back on Groupon, so I'm hoping that will help discount our printing needs!

How do you feel about letterpress invitations? Is the cost worth it? Has anyone saved the invitations to all the weddings you've been invited? (My future sister-in-law does!)