Remind me for the "next" wedding not to do my own invitations. Sure, when I was 13, I was creating amazing graphic designs using Lucida Calligraphy font and clip art from Corel Print and Photo House
(I think we had this 1997 version from HP). Sure, my colleague advised against having our wedding planner do the invitations because she believed I certainly had the skills to design them myself. Sure, I wanted to maintain some control over the project: include my own designs and not pay the $800 that Minted.com was asking for a complete invitation suite that didn't quite match my vision anyway.
But dang, it is a lot of work.
Since my last post about the wedding process (Say Yes to The Dress!) turned into a rather long story about how I avoided a wedding gown fiasco (and because I don't want my blog to sound like one big rant about the stress of wedding planning), I'll try to keep this one short and sweet.
The good: Stickers! There's something almost therapeutic to me about the monotony of peeling and placing a stamp or label to an envelope one after another. Which is definitely a good thing given the stamp, sticker, and address labels I had to stick onto every RSVP card, and the double stamps (for extra weight) and return address labels I had to stick onto the outside of every invitation envelope. While it took a while to get all the labels printed at Office Max/Office Depot due to one poor girl working the print/copy station alone, they turned out looking perfect, and the stamps were an easy enough acquire from the post office. Check off one task.
Also good: having Minted.com do our RSVP cards, so I could have them match our Save the Date cards, but again avoid spending a whole $800 there.
The bad: I almost had a bridal meltdown after picking up my printouts from FedEx (formerly Kinkos) where I'd ordered the part of the invite that would be glued to card stock. It all looked perfect at first glance, but something seemed a little off. It wasn't until after I left that I realized the printouts were way too small compared to the PDF file I had painstakingly constructed and given them. I won't call my crying on the phone to my mom a "bridezilla" moment since I was more worried about what to do than actually mad. But luckily we were able to return to FedEx together within an hour. The man who had taken care of our order realized what had gone wrong with the first printing and re-printed and cut the invites literally within a few minutes. Crisis averted!
Also not so great: Minor backaches from leaning forward to glue parchment paper to card stock with a 3/16 inch glue dot in each corner. And the fact that glue dots are expensive--but still, so worth it in terms of adhesive.
Luckily there weren't any "ugly" aspects of invitation assembly, other than how gross I looked with a little cold acquired from dear fiance. This put a slight delay on the invitation assembly since I didn't want to spread germs, and I was also thoroughly exhausted.
The only other hiccup in the process was running out of gold ribbon. It is quite a treasure hunt to find golden satin ribbon that is 3/8 inch wide. So half of my invites will be tied with satin antique gold and the other half will be tied with wired bright gold. In the end, I have a feeling this minor discrepancy won't make a difference to the guests, so I'm going to roll with it.
The result: Well, no one ever says hard work doesn't pay off. Despite the ups and downs throughout the process, I'm so completely pleased with how my formal invitations turned out! Now I just have to lick some envelopes (95 envelopes....) and mail them off!
But dang, it is a lot of work.
Since my last post about the wedding process (Say Yes to The Dress!) turned into a rather long story about how I avoided a wedding gown fiasco (and because I don't want my blog to sound like one big rant about the stress of wedding planning), I'll try to keep this one short and sweet.
The good: Stickers! There's something almost therapeutic to me about the monotony of peeling and placing a stamp or label to an envelope one after another. Which is definitely a good thing given the stamp, sticker, and address labels I had to stick onto every RSVP card, and the double stamps (for extra weight) and return address labels I had to stick onto the outside of every invitation envelope. While it took a while to get all the labels printed at Office Max/Office Depot due to one poor girl working the print/copy station alone, they turned out looking perfect, and the stamps were an easy enough acquire from the post office. Check off one task.
Also good: having Minted.com do our RSVP cards, so I could have them match our Save the Date cards, but again avoid spending a whole $800 there.
The bad: I almost had a bridal meltdown after picking up my printouts from FedEx (formerly Kinkos) where I'd ordered the part of the invite that would be glued to card stock. It all looked perfect at first glance, but something seemed a little off. It wasn't until after I left that I realized the printouts were way too small compared to the PDF file I had painstakingly constructed and given them. I won't call my crying on the phone to my mom a "bridezilla" moment since I was more worried about what to do than actually mad. But luckily we were able to return to FedEx together within an hour. The man who had taken care of our order realized what had gone wrong with the first printing and re-printed and cut the invites literally within a few minutes. Crisis averted!
Also not so great: Minor backaches from leaning forward to glue parchment paper to card stock with a 3/16 inch glue dot in each corner. And the fact that glue dots are expensive--but still, so worth it in terms of adhesive.
Luckily there weren't any "ugly" aspects of invitation assembly, other than how gross I looked with a little cold acquired from dear fiance. This put a slight delay on the invitation assembly since I didn't want to spread germs, and I was also thoroughly exhausted.
The only other hiccup in the process was running out of gold ribbon. It is quite a treasure hunt to find golden satin ribbon that is 3/8 inch wide. So half of my invites will be tied with satin antique gold and the other half will be tied with wired bright gold. In the end, I have a feeling this minor discrepancy won't make a difference to the guests, so I'm going to roll with it.
The result: Well, no one ever says hard work doesn't pay off. Despite the ups and downs throughout the process, I'm so completely pleased with how my formal invitations turned out! Now I just have to lick some envelopes (95 envelopes....) and mail them off!
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