I knew exactly what I wanted for our invitations---and knew it could be done because I was essentially copying my sister's invitations. But after visiting two stationers in the Cleveland area (one in Rocky River and one in Akron) and contemplat...ing taking the online route, my mom and I stumbled upon Invitations by Kate at a bridal show. Some stationers claim "yours will be unique and if you dream it, we can do it," but I'll tell you what, that was not the case with the other two locations. I dreamed it and showed them my sister's invitation and was told it was impossible (i.e., they did not want to go outside their normal channels to locate the 3-sided gate fold were looking for that existed only 5 years ago in the DC-area).
Kate was different, I showed her my sister's invitation and our color scheme and she came back with 3 different options (one of the three was the exact "dream" I had from my sister's). Ironically, we ended up going with her third "out of the box, crazy idea design" (a tea-length invite with envelope on back to hold all the inserts). She was able to locate the perfect shimmery yellow paper (which was challenging) and have the invite page printed as thermography (something the RR store said was definitely impossible).
I was more than pleased with the invitations. We received multiple compliments on the final product---and even had Kathy (Invitations by Kate's actual name) design the table place cards as well.
Kathy captured the "Hawaii in Cleveland in May" theme we had going (bright colors, exotic floral pattern and not too serious of fonts). I wanted to make sure that the invitation was an idea of what the wedding would be like, especially for the people who were not able to attend. And Kathy delivered on all fronts.
I recommend Invitations by Kate to all future brides.