invitation inserts -update and new question -- long but please read and answer -- I need advice!

OK, I finally got my invitations today! They are classic white with a pearlized border -- nothing too fancy but elegant looking. We are getting married at the RH so we don't have reception cards. So there is the outer envelope, inner envelope, invite and response cards.
Now we need to do direction cards. We also need to give hotel information. I'm not sure what to do.
Can we make them ourselves with directions on one side and the hotel info on the other?
I have a meeting at the RH on Monday. I'm not sure if they are giving us direction cards. If they do, should we use theirs, and just print out hotel info on nice paper?
I'm really not a DIY kinda person, and I don't know much about this stuff. If we do it ourselves, can we just print it out on nice paper or do we need to use cardstock? And where do these inserts go -- behind the response envelope? Does the response card go in the envelope?
Sorry this is so long, I got even more confused while typing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

ETA: I think we are going to use the RH's directions cards, and make our own inserts. We have a lot of information.
1. There is one hotel literally right next door to our RH, but we' heard some bad things about it, so we are not strongly pushing it, but we are putting it out there as a less expensive option. We want to put that info on the card. We don't have a room block there, but without a block, it is cheaper than the other hotel with the block.
2. We want to provide the codes and everything for the hotel we do have a block at.
3. We have a bunch of people from the city that will prob be coming in on the LIRR.
4. We want to ask people to email us if they plan on taking the LIRR so we can see if we should have a shuttle van from the station, or maybe just call a couple of cabs to be waiting for them.
5. Same thing with the hotel, they don't provide a shuttle, but we may want to either get a shuttle van, or just call a few car service cars depending on how many people there are.

Questions:
1. Is this too much info? Is it Ok to ask that they email us if they need transportation from LIRR/Hotel?
2. Is it OK if we just print this on resume paper, and put it as the last thing in the inner envelope?
and finally, this may sound stupid, but:
3. Do you put the response card in the return envelope or just in front of it?

Thank you ladies!

For my invites the RH gave us direction cards and we used those-the hotel also gave us cards with the info on it.

If you really want to you can print them all up yourself with the info for OOT on one side and directions on the other. If not see if your RH will give them to you (which they probably will) and same with your hotel. And just put those in if you are against DIYing them

your hotel should give you cards with the blocking information and directions - i know mine did. i'm just slipping those in the invites because there's a lot of info on them and i don't want to copy it.

as for the direction cards we made our direction and reception cards in illustrator then ordered double sided business cards from vistaprint.com for $9 (for 250). we would have printed them ourselves, but it would have been more expensive with all the ink they took.

if you want to do them yourself, you can just feed some nice paper into your printer. jam paper in the city has packs of 100 sheets of paper in all colors for $10-15 and cardstock for the same price but packs of 50 sheets. the sheets are each 8.5'x11' so they'll fit into your printer.

i'd probably go with vistaprint.com though since they work out to be a lot cheaper - especially if you wait for a sale. yesterday one sided business cards were $4 for 250 and $9 for double sided prints. normally they're $20 for one sided and an extra $12 for double sided. sales are fairly often too so if you miss one wait a few days and there should be another. hth!

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Posted by Espo22

you could do it on the same cardstock as your invites if you want it to match. You can go to a paper store, buy the cardstock and then have them cut for you in the size you need

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That is a good idea, thanks! I don't think we'll be able to match exactly, but we could get pretty close. Do you think its OK or tacky to ask them to email us if they will need transportation from LIRR or the hotel? We just honestly don't want to rent a van if there are only 4 people taking the LIRR, and we can just get a car for them.

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Posted by MsPotterhead

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Posted by Espo22

you could do it on the same cardstock as your invites if you want it to match. You can go to a paper store, buy the cardstock and then have them cut for you in the size you need

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That is a good idea, thanks! I don't think we'll be able to match exactly, but we could get pretty close. Do you think its OK or tacky to ask them to email us if they will need transportation from LIRR or the hotel? We just honestly don't want to rent a van if there are only 4 people taking the LIRR, and we can just get a car for them.

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yeah you can put that info in there.

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Posted by MsPotterhead

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Posted by Espo22

you could do it on the same cardstock as your invites if you want it to match. You can go to a paper store, buy the cardstock and then have them cut for you in the size you need

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That is a good idea, thanks! I don't think we'll be able to match exactly, but we could get pretty close. Do you think its OK or tacky to ask them to email us if they will need transportation from LIRR or the hotel? We just honestly don't want to rent a van if there are only 4 people taking the LIRR, and we can just get a car for them.

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I think it's really nice that you're providing transportation for them. Have them email you the info. Maybe you can arrange for a car to pick them up if they don't live too far from each other. I really don't like the idea of taking the LIRR when you're all dressed up for a wedding.

as far as the direction card, hotel info.. I feel like there are too many inserts if you do them separately. So this is what I did. I printed everything on one peice of paper (matches my invite paper) folded it twice and tucked it behind the response card. It includes Directions by car and subway, Accomodations, Points of Interest and an area map.


HTH

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Posted by lucamon

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Posted by MsPotterhead

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Posted by Espo22

you could do it on the same cardstock as your invites if you want it to match. You can go to a paper store, buy the cardstock and then have them cut for you in the size you need

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That is a good idea, thanks! I don't think we'll be able to match exactly, but we could get pretty close. Do you think its OK or tacky to ask them to email us if they will need transportation from LIRR or the hotel? We just honestly don't want to rent a van if there are only 4 people taking the LIRR, and we can just get a car for them.

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I think it's really nice that you're providing transportation for them. Have them email you the info. Maybe you can arrange for a car to pick them up if they don't live too far from each other. I really don't like the idea of taking the LIRR when you're all dressed up for a wedding.

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Oh man, now I feel bad! I never meant to get them a car from NYC to Suffolk County! I meant a car from the LIRR to the RH!
I agree, I wouldn't want to take the LIRR dressed up. If I were a guest at my wedding without a car, I'd prob take the LIRR & stay at the hotel and get dressed there. I do think there are some people that I'm not that close with that may want to just take the LIRR to and from the wedding. I thought I'd provide a shuttle, or just a car between the RH and LIRR.

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Posted by lucamon

as far as the direction card, hotel info.. I feel like there are too many inserts if you do them separately. So this is what I did. I printed everything on one peice of paper (matches my invite paper) folded it twice and tucked it behind the response card. It includes Directions by car and subway, Accomodations, Points of Interest and an area map.


HTH

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That does help, and it looks great!!!
Thanks!

I don't mean it like that. You are too nice, I wouldn't even offer any transporation. I can't afford it.
YOu can also have them contact each other, maybe be they can all go in for a town car rental.

Thank you! I really feel like I'm losing my mind right now trying to figure all this out!
I thought that it was expected to provide transportation, so we will do something depending on how many from the hotel want it.
That's why I want people to email me, because I don't want to spend an insane amount of money if people aren't going to use the shuttle anyway!
If its a handful of people, its cheaper to rent an actual Limo for 10 people than an 11 person van -- we just need one trip from the hotel to RH, and back.
I was just on the phone with my best friend, who is also a BM, and she said she wasn't using the shuttle, she's driving to and from the hotel.
Maybe I am over thinking this!

We had a similar problem. we had invite, response/envelope and no reception card because we are getting married at our hall.

Our hall had really nice direction cards (small, on cardstock, nice map on the back) and they are only slightly darker than our ivory invites so we are using those. However, our hotel had awful ugly fill-in sheets that were huge, so we made our own cards with directions on one side, and info about blocked rooms on the other. I was hesitant about them looking bad and was considering having our invite company print them, but my mom did a layout on the computer (4 to a page) and I used matching font to our invite, and she printed them on matching cardstock to our invite (ivory linen) and then cut them. I haven't seen them yet but she says they match perfectly so we'll just go with that

As for transportation, you arent expected to provide it. We are providing round-trip shuttles from the OOT hotel to our hall because our hotel is providing it. We noted that on the hotel card.

Edit: I attached a copy of the info we posted on our wedding website as an example. Our direction card has this on one side (in all black, smaller obviously, and the fonts are a bit different)

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Posted by bluegreen08

We had a similar problem. we had invite, response/envelope and no reception card because we are getting married at our hall.

Our hall had really nice direction cards (small, on cardstock, nice map on the back) and they are only slightly darker than our ivory invites so we are using those. However, our hotel had awful ugly fill-in sheets that were huge, so we made our own cards with directions on one side, and info about blocked rooms on the other. I was hesitant about them looking bad and was considering having our invite company print them, but my mom did a layout on the computer (4 to a page) and I used matching font to our invite, and she printed them on matching cardstock to our invite (ivory linen) and then cut them. I haven't seen them yet but she says they match perfectly so we'll just go with that

As for transportation, you arent expected to provide it. We are providing round-trip shuttles from the OOT hotel to our hall because our hotel is providing it. We noted that on the hotel card.

Edit: I attached a copy of the info we posted on our wedding website as an example. Our direction card has this on one side (in all black, smaller obviously, and the fonts are a bit different)

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Thank you! It looks great. We sent something like that our with our save the dates. I guess we will have to provide transportation to and from the hotel because we mentioned it, but maybe we won't from the LIRR. I guess people could just take a cab if they are taking LIRR? I just thought it was expected because honestly, nobody lives on Long Island except for some family. Most of our friends are in Brooklyn, NYC, or a few in NJ.

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Posted by MsPotterhead

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Posted by bluegreen08

We had a similar problem. we had invite, response/envelope and no reception card because we are getting married at our hall.

Our hall had really nice direction cards (small, on cardstock, nice map on the back) and they are only slightly darker than our ivory invites so we are using those. However, our hotel had awful ugly fill-in sheets that were huge, so we made our own cards with directions on one side, and info about blocked rooms on the other. I was hesitant about them looking bad and was considering having our invite company print them, but my mom did a layout on the computer (4 to a page) and I used matching font to our invite, and she printed them on matching cardstock to our invite (ivory linen) and then cut them. I haven't seen them yet but she says they match perfectly so we'll just go with that

As for transportation, you arent expected to provide it. We are providing round-trip shuttles from the OOT hotel to our hall because our hotel is providing it. We noted that on the hotel card.

Edit: I attached a copy of the info we posted on our wedding website as an example. Our direction card has this on one side (in all black, smaller obviously, and the fonts are a bit different)

---

Thank you! It looks great. We sent something like that our with our save the dates. I guess we will have to provide transportation to and from the hotel because we mentioned it, but maybe we won't from the LIRR. I guess people could just take a cab if they are taking LIRR? I just thought it was expected because honestly, nobody lives on Long Island except for some family. Most of our friends are in Brooklyn, NYC, or a few in NJ.

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We sent the same thing with our STDs too, and it's on our wedding website, so I didn't want to include it againw ith our invites since we didnt have matching cards printed but I was told you really need to... so... we are. We are not providing transportation from the LIRR... that is nuts and not expected. We sent out an OOT guide and it included the #s for a few local cab companies. Your local-OOTers might even be driving in.

We are having a lot of out of state OOTers and some are renting a van, and others will use cabs.

I'd say just put hotel info and transportation to/from the wedding (if you are doing that).

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Posted by bluegreen08

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Posted by MsPotterhead

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Posted by bluegreen08

We had a similar problem. we had invite, response/envelope and no reception card because we are getting married at our hall.

Our hall had really nice direction cards (small, on cardstock, nice map on the back) and they are only slightly darker than our ivory invites so we are using those. However, our hotel had awful ugly fill-in sheets that were huge, so we made our own cards with directions on one side, and info about blocked rooms on the other. I was hesitant about them looking bad and was considering having our invite company print them, but my mom did a layout on the computer (4 to a page) and I used matching font to our invite, and she printed them on matching cardstock to our invite (ivory linen) and then cut them. I haven't seen them yet but she says they match perfectly so we'll just go with that

As for transportation, you arent expected to provide it. We are providing round-trip shuttles from the OOT hotel to our hall because our hotel is providing it. We noted that on the hotel card.

Edit: I attached a copy of the info we posted on our wedding website as an example. Our direction card has this on one side (in all black, smaller obviously, and the fonts are a bit different)

---

Thank you! It looks great. We sent something like that our with our save the dates. I guess we will have to provide transportation to and from the hotel because we mentioned it, but maybe we won't from the LIRR. I guess people could just take a cab if they are taking LIRR? I just thought it was expected because honestly, nobody lives on Long Island except for some family. Most of our friends are in Brooklyn, NYC, or a few in NJ.

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We sent the same thing with our STDs too, and it's on our wedding website, so I didn't want to include it againw ith our invites since we didnt have matching cards printed but I was told you really need to... so... we are. We are not providing transportation from the LIRR... that is nuts and not expected. We sent out an OOT guide and it included the #s for a few local cab companies. Your local-OOTers might even be driving in.

We are having a lot of out of state OOTers and some are renting a van, and others will use cabs.

I'd say just put hotel info and transportation to/from the wedding (if you are doing that).

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Thank you!
I never take the LIRR, are there usually cabs waiting when people get off?
FH think we should provide something, but now I'm starting to think its crazy. I need to get off the computer and go outside!
I'm stressing out about all this because we have to figure out what to do now because we need to make it up and send it with the invites in the next couple of weeks. Thank you for your advice!!! I can't wait to show FH that you think providing transportation from LIRR is nuts and note expected!