Recaps, Part 1

A couple things have been contributing to my procrastination regarding posting recaps of the wedding. The first is that I don't know where to start; the second is that I feel like I have no time these days to post. The second still holds true, but I can still jot down my memories here and there when I have time -- after all, my other fear is that I'm going to forget all of these little details! As for the first, well, I'll just start with something random and go from there.

The week of the wedding, my friend and bridesmaid Marjorie flew into town on Wednesday around noon. I had spent the earlier part of the week making sure the apartment was clean and doing other wedding-related projects, I'm sure -- that's probably when I was designing and printing the programs. I picked her up from the airport and we headed straight over to Meghan Hicks's house to drop off my dress for steaming. Meghan did an amazing job with my dress bustle and alterations, and had mentioned that if I had trouble getting my dress steamed, she could do it. Well, after weeks of procrastination followed by making a few last-minute phone calls and realizing that stores charge an arm and a leg for dress steaming, I called up Meghan and asked her if she could still do it. After all, I'd rather support her than some nameless shop. So we dropped off my dress and then went out to lunch.

Actually, my memory is now failing me and I don't remember the details of what we ate and when, and what day we ran which little errand. So there goes my chronological recap. Instead, these are the things Marjorie and I did between Wednesday and Friday, in no particular order:

-Ate at Stevens and Stevens. Yum, yum, yum.

-Picked up a new large plastic bag to put my newly steamed wedding dress in when we picked it up. We stopped at a dry cleaner's and I asked to purchase a single long bag. The owner looked at me funny. Confirmed I only wanted one. And gave it to me -- for free! I tried to offer her payment, but she just shook her head and wished me a good day. Yay for small happy things.

-Pressed all of our table runners (purchased from another bride, and for resale now):

-Finished printing out programs, Flickr cards, our table number signs, and other assorted signs; details and pictures to follow. I bought a brand new color cartridge for our inkjet printer specifically for wedding projects, and am really happy I did. The other thing that got a lot of use was my two paper cutters. It was quite a crafty week!

-Got beautified at Clique for waxing -- I had only recently heard of this place, and I'm mad I didn't find it sooner, because I highly recommend it and would go back, if only I hadn't moved immediately after! And we also got pedicures, because I figured it would be hard to get that done during the wedding weekend itself.

-Made our wedding arch and spray-painted it black. The arch was purchased from Save On Crafts for $15.99, which is about $70 less than every other arch I had found, most of which are meant for permanent placement in gardens. It was flimsy, but it did the job:

We got spray paint, small terra cotta pots, and sand from Wal-Mart. We intended for the feet of the arch to be inserted into the pots of sand (to make it heavy enough to not be blown away), but the person who pitched in in the end to help with last-minute set up used pipe cleaners to attach the arch to the fence behind it, and propped the legs next to the pots, instead of placing them in them. Oh well. It didn't blow away, which is all that mattered.

-And the biggest thing of all, we prepped all the flowers! I ordered wholesale flowers from FiftyFlowers.com, FarmsToGo.com, and Costco.com. Bridesmaid Jamie used her Costco membership to help me out with the Costco ordering, and I had no troubles with the others. The flowers were all delivered on Friday, and as soon as they got there, we got to work prepping them and putting them in water. It was a LOT of work -- more than I had anticipated, and I should have recruited more people to help us out. I'll do a full flowers recap later, with lots of details and pictures.

If Marjorie hadn't come to help me out, I don't know what I would have done. She was so helpful, and only complained a little bit in the face of my DIY craziness, and put up with all of my last-minute stress. A lot of my other friends and family couldn't come early because of things going on with their lives -- my sister graduated from college two days before the wedding, and everyone else has jobs they couldn't take extra time off from, my fiance included, and if it weren't for the fact that Marjorie and I had were in the time between medical school graduation and beginning residency, I would have been totally up a creek.

So what am I going to make with all of these flowers? Here's the list:

One bouquet for me
7 bouquets for the bridesmaids
1 flower girl container of some sort (basket, flower ball, flower wand, etc)
3 corsages of some sort
15 centerpieces
Decorations for our altar/arbor
A cake topper
An arrangement for the entryway/escort card table.

Whew, right?

Nothing will be too fussy; the general idea is that by saving money we can have lots of flowers, and the beauty of the flowers will be in the fact that there are so many of them (1,885, to be exact!). I think it will work out beautifully. I might still farm out the corsages to a florist, but I have time to make that decision. Eric doesn't want boutonnieres, so I don't have to make or buy any, and the guys will wear pocket squares instead. The aisle decorations will be paper lanterns, so no flowers needed there. Anything I'm forgetting?

Now, for the logistics. First, I have to place the order, and I'm going to do that soon, assuming I don't decide to change the color scheme :) They'll be delivered on Thursday and Friday of the wedding week (Sunday wedding, remember), and I'll tend to them and get them into water and let them open until Saturday morning. Saturday will be flower day, and when they're all done we'll bring them over to the reception site to be stored overnight.

To keep the apartment chilly enough to not have the flowers burst open upon arriving, I'll be turning the air conditioning down a few degrees for a few days (ozone layer, please forgive me!). I have to acquire some 5 gallon buckets to hold the flowers in, as well as some floralife to keep the flowers happy, and some oasis foam forms for the arbor arrangement and cake topper. To make it a group project, I got a few pairs of floral shears (I got them in the Target $1 aisle sometime last year, when they were selling lots of gardenening stuff). I've already acquired about 100 assorted small vases from various thrift stores to use on the reception tables, so we'll be putting multiple small vase arrangements on each table to add to the feeling of overabundance. The plan is that any crafty bridesmaids, friends, or relatives who want to help out on Saturday, can, and everyone else can hang out on their own in Louisville or head down to Churchill Downs, where a group will be headed.

I acknowledge that it sounds like a lot, but I'm fully prepared to tackle this project, and to not freak out if for some reason it all goes horribly wrong. You read it here: I hereby promise not to freak out if for some reason the flowers go horribly wrong!

I don't have too much of a plan for the actual designs themselves. For the bridesmaid bouquets, if the bridesmaids want to pick out their own flowers or make their own bouquets, that will be great. For the centerpieces, all the vases will just have a mix of flowers, and same for the arch and escort card table arrangement. The only big question mark left is my own bouquet. Once upon a time, I really loved the idea of a cascading bouquet in all white. Right now, multi-colored hand-tied bouquets are really popular. I like the idea of both. What should I do?


All white, cascading bouquet (source). Granted, it looks a little dated with the ivy, but you get the idea:

Colored, hand-tied (source):

Another colored, probably hand-tied bouquet (source):


All white, cascade (source):

Maybe the fact that all of the cascade bouquet pictures I can find all line look so dated should tell me that I'm leaning toward a really 80s look?

But wait! Here are some viable options:

Colored cascade, smaller scale, with ruscus instead of ivy (source):

Another colored bouquet (it's even purple and green!), sort of a cross between hand-tied and cascade, with amaranthus to give it the cascading look (source):

According to The Knot, I should pick a smaller round bouquet because I'm petite, a smaller round bouquet because my dress profile is slimmer, a smaller cascade because the wedding is in a loft-type space, or a smaller hand-tied bouquet because the ceremony is outdoors. Hmm, that doesn't help me much, other than telling me I should keep my bouquet small (boo; I like big ones!).

Round or cascade, white or colored? Decisions, decisions. Something tells me I'll decide on Saturday, May 23, as I'm about to put it together...

Flowers chosen?

Sorry, I know it's been a long time since I've given you any sort of meaningful attention, Harry Kalas aside. There isn't too much big stuff going on, just lots of little progress every day, chipping away at various things on the to-do list.

Well, here's an update for you. I think I've decided what flowers to order!

I worked at a florist in college, which was by far one of the best jobs I've ever had. Even on the most stressful day (think Valentine's Day), you were super busy boxing and wrapping up dozens of beautiful flowers. How stressful can that really be? I loved seeing the wedding flowers that we put together, and developed a very strong sense of what flowers I preferred. I will admit to one day, 9 years ago (oh my gosh, has it really been that long!?), writing down what I wanted my wedding bouquet to look like. My tastes haven't changed too much in the ensuing years, I have to admit.

One of the best/worst things about working at a florist was the development of the idea that I am capable of doing my own wedding flowers. A double-edged sword, to be sure, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, due to the stress that is sure to come with it. And who knows, after the wedding, I might not recommend it to anyone!

Actually, I'm really excited and looking forward to being able to work on my own flowers, although some of the logistics are going to require attention. Over the last few days, I've been perusing bulk flower websites, and here's what I've decided to order:


I'm aiming for mostly purple (all shades) and green, with a hint of pink. Sort of a wild, loosy goosey look, not too structured. Does this meet the mark?

Here's the flower breakdown:
Lavender roses
Pink/white bicolor roses
White spray roses
Purple lisianthus
Lavender sweet pea
White alstromeria
Purple alstromeria
Bupleurum (green)
Purplush/bluish limonium
Assorted colors of hypericum berries (for the berries in our "vines and berries" motif) (I'm hoping there's not too many red ones in the mix, but more of the green, pink, and peachy ones)
Assorted colors of statice (any color this comes in will be fine, except for maybe the hot pink)
And for greens, I'm using ruscus (evoking the vines in our motif) and lemonleaf.

I don't want too much of a pastel color scheme, but there are more flowers that come in bright pinks than come in bright purples. Hopefully the purple lisianthus will help keep things in the bold spectrum.

What do you think about the sweet pea? It comes in a variety of bold pink colors, but not a true purple, only lavender. Stick with the purple shade and risk being too pastel, or trade it for a darker pink and risk bringing too much pink into the mix? Similarly, trade in the lavender roses for something else (white or pink?) or leave them alone?

I actually have no problems with pink, and love bold pink flowers, but I've seen a few pictures of florals done in all purple and they're really nice looking, too, so I think that's what I'm going to go for. On the other hand, the eggplant bridesmaid dresses might look nice with a punch of pink, don't you think? Or should I stick with the color scheme and go all purple and green? You see where I'm getting stuck...

I traded the ability to pick the exact varieties of some of the flowers (roses and alstro in particular) for the lower price that comes with just ordering "lavender" roses. Hopefully they'll be blue curiosas, but if not, it won't be the end of the world.

Here's an interesting dilemma that occurs when ordering bulk flowers: They only come in bulk sizes! So if you want a huge variety of flowers, you quickly end up adding $3000+ worth of flowers to your online shopping cart and kicking yourself because one of the main points of doing your own flowers was to save money! Or you can find sites that let you buy in smaller quantity, but you end up spending just as much money because the unit price goes up a lot. For example, I originally had lilies, ranunculus, amaranthus, freesia, anemones, and delphinium in the mix, not to mention a bunch of other shades of roses, lisianthus, and alstromeria. But I really don't need 100 of each flower. Well, I'm sure I could decide that I did need them, but our budget can't take it. Instead, if the deliveries arrive and I still wish I had some lily, freesia, or anemones to help balance the color scheme, or I still wish I had some amaranthus just for the luxury, I can head across the street to our local florist or out to Whole Foods to see what I can get on short notice and in small quantities.

So that's the plan for what to order. Have any suggestions for colors/flowers? I welcome them! In a later post, I'll talk about what I'm going to make with all of these flowers.

Crafting the Invitations -- Budget

The whole invitation recap:
Crafting the Invitations -- Graphics
Crafting the Invitations -- Layout
Crafting the Invitations -- Envelopes
Crafting the Invitations -- Rehearsal Dinner Invitation
Crafting the Invitations -- Assembly

I decided to go DIY with the invitations for two reasons: complete control over every detail and the potential to save some money. I definitely accomplished goal #1. Let's see how I did with goal #2:

Graphic design help from Sue: $20 (Thank goodness for Etsy Alchemy!)
Cardstock, package of 250: $20
Only used 130 sheets, so $10.40
Printing at The Reliable Printing Company: $100 + tax = $106
150 envelopes from ActionEnvelopes: $41.67 including s&h
5 sheets of Unryu Thread Paper from PaperMojo.com: $2.20 each + approx s&h = $13 (I bought some other things in the same shipment so I'm estimating the shipping for just the Unryu paper here)
Pack of striped embossed greeting cards: $1.99 + tax = $2.10
Roll of Zots: ~$3
Package of very flat Glue Dots: ~$3
Only used about 2/3 pack: $1.85
Package of sticko brand repositionable tape: $0.75 (Yup! On clearance for 75% off!)

TOTAL: $198.77 Divided by 100 invitations: $1.98/invitation

Don't forget, that includes the rehearsal dinner invitation, too!

We also used 84 postcard stamps (27-cents each), and 84 first-class stamps (42-cents each), and had to send 9 invitations overseas. I estimate we saved about $27 by using a 42-cent and 27-cent stamp on each invitation/RSVP card, rather than a 59-cent and 42-cent stamp if we had had a heavier invitation and used an RSVP envelope. It's not a ton of money, but $27 counts for something!

I also haven't factored into the equation things like the calligraphy marker I used, because I also used it for the save-the-dates and will be able to use it again in the future. Same goes for the new color ink cartridge I bought; it will be used for printing the programs and escort cards and all sorts of random wedding paper paraphernalia. The various pieces of scrapbook paper I bought as inspiration for the design will definitely get used at some point in time for something, so I'm not going to count those, either, and it was less than $10, anyway.

I could have saved a little more by printing at Kinko's instead of using the local printer (about $22), but I definitely would not have gotten the complete, personalized attention of someone as amazing as Eric. I also could have saved on the per-invitation cost by buying envelopes from a different company, but I would have had to have bought a package of 250, leaving me with 100+ extra envelopes at the end. Sure, I could turn around and try to resell them, but that's an added stress I don't want to deal with at this point. As it is, I still have almost 50 left over I'm not sure what to do with.

So $2/invitation really isn't that bad! It turns out that I met both of my goals by DIY-ing my invitations: complete obsessive control AND saving money!

The downside to all of this? I put in a lot of time and energy to get all of this done. Printing the envelopes, lining them, addressing them, and assembling the invitations alone took a good 15-20 hours over a week and a half. I spent almost two entire weekends just working on this stuff. I watched a lot of DVR-ed TV episodes during that time, including the entire current season of ER. Designing the invitation and rehearsal dinner were also pretty time consuming, although it was spread out over a number of months, so it wasn't too bad. Next year, as an Ob/Gyn intern, I'll be making roughly $11.50/hour before taxes*, so I figure those 20 hours of invitation assembly alone were worth $200+.

Never mind, let's not keep going with those calculations. They're too depressing.

Anyway, what I was saying was that I put a lot of time and energy into these babies, and if I hadn't been totally committed to it and enjoyed doing it, it would totally not have been worth it. But I'm really happy that I created something that was exactly as I envisioned it, and I didn't mind doing it myself this once. After all, I won't be making wedding invitations for myself ever again, and not for anyone else anytime soon. So I won't attempt to calculate what that time could have been worth.

I hope you've enjoyed this little recap of my most time-consuming wedding project to date. Don't worry, there are lots of other projects in the works! I have all of April and May off to do nothing but plan, plan, plan!

*$45,000/year, with 3 weeks of vacation plus 1 week off for either Christmas or New Year's, working 80 hours/week. And let's hope it's only 80 hours/week.

Crafting the Invitations -- Assembly

Finally, it was time to assemble everything.

To refresh your memory, here is our invitation suite:

I simply stacked the RSVP card on top of the invitation, and stacked the insert card on top of that. In between the invitation and RSVP card, I slipped our rehearsal dinner invitation.

The RSVP card is a postcard, so I made sure to pre-stamp it:

The front of the card asks our guests to RSVP for both the wedding and the rehearsal dinner, and asks where they're staying and what day they're arriving. That way, I'll be able to make sure I get an out of town bag to everyone. We're having a buffet, so no food choices were necessary.

I used leftover strips of the purple Unryu Thread Paper to create 1/2" wide belly bands to hold everything together. I didn't want to use an actual inner envelope for most of the reasons already discussed in previous posts -- extra money to buy them, extra wasted paper being thrown away, and added weight threatening the 1 oz limit. Instead, I put the inner envelope information on a small piece of cardstock.

The cardstock actually came from these blank greeting cards I found at Archivers while looking for other stuff. They were in the cheap bin, and were a great find! They're embossed in a stripe pattern, so they added a little bit of architectural interest to the layout, rather than just a boring piece of flat cardstock:
I only ended up using a handful of them, too. First I cut each card in between those stripes to create strips 5.5" x ~1". Then I trimmed off the unembossed ends, leaving me with a 5" strip. I cut that strip into either two 2.5" pieces or a 2" and 3" piece, depending on how much I needed to write on each one. I wrote the guests' names on using a purple roller ball pen, and it went on top of the belly band. The belly band was attached with a Zot and the "inner envelope" cardstock was attached to the belly band with another Zot.

The completed assembly:

I'm a little wishy-washy about the size of the belly band. I think, if I were to do it again, I would make them at least 5/8" wide, rather than 1/2" wide. I've seen some examples of really fat belly bands, too, and while that might look nice, I really didn't want to waste too much paper. In the end, I'm satisfied with it.


Into the envelope it goes!
The repositionable sticky tape I had used to attach the liner to the envelope ended up remaining fairly repositionable after a few days, and that made me nervous. So at the last minute, I secured everything down with a permanent Glue Dot, one of the very flat ones, so everything remained nice and smooth.

And then all that's left is to seal and stamp it!
We went with the Chinese New Year stamps. Neither of us is an ox, but it's a small nod to my heritage.

In the end, they weighed 7/8 oz each, perfect for a single first class stamp!

Crafting the Invitations -- Rehearsal Dinner Invitation

I know I've alluded to this a bunch of times but never got around to actually talking about it directly. For our rehearsal dinner, we're going to a Louisville Bats game! We knew from the start that we wanted a rehearsal dinner we could invite everyone to, since 90% of our guests are from out of town. That pretty much crossed fancy sit-down dinners off the list. I was excited by the possibility of having a big BBQ picnic at Cherokee Park, but then we came up with an even better idea -- going to a baseball game!

Everything worked out perfectly; the Bats (the triple-A affiliates of the Cincinnati Reds) are at home on our wedding weekend, and their Saturday night game starts at 6:15. We'll have a catered meal on the patio deck in right field, and then watch the game. Casual, laid-back, and a great group activity. Plus, since it's a minor league team, it's not too harsh on the wallet, either.

I wanted to make the rehearsal dinner invitation a little bit more laid-back and fun, to match the event. I thought about using catchy/witty wording, but nothing really came to me. I turned to the Weddingbee boards and asked for help, and an awesome girl named Melissa sent me the baseball ticket invitation her sister used for her engagement party:


Using that as inspiration, I turned to Google to look for pictures of other baseball tickets. I eventually came up with this:

Once I found THAT, it was just a few clicks and some minor frustration to produce this:
I'm still pretty impressed with myself over this one. It took a lot of photoshopping (using Paint.net) and layout trials and errors (using Open Office Draw), but it finally came together. The picture is from our engagement shoot in fall 2007. They're 7x3" and I laid them out three to a page and had Eric from The Reliable Printing Company print them out on the same cardstock we used for the invitation suite.

Even if you wanted a step-by-step for making something like this, I couldn't show it to you, because I just did everything a little bit at a time, with very few saves in between, until I had the final product. Conceptually it's not that hard, though: I made a single background of the ticket outline, bar code, and yellow banner, along with our faded engagement shot. Then I imported that into Draw and added the text for the seating assignment, Slugger Field address, the "MVP Holly and Eric" bit, the date/time info and the instructions at the bottom. The banner was a little bit frustrating to make, but I just played around with word art in various programs until I found something that wasn't too offensive.

I'm really happy with how this invitation came out, and I'm really looking forward to our rehearsal dinner! The only thing I'm kind of sad about is that I won't get to wear as fancy of a dress to the game as I might have to a sit-down dinner. And I have an awesome dress hanging in my closet I have never had the chance to wear. Oh well. I've also got plenty of more casual dresses that will look great, too.

Crafting the Invitations -- Envelopes

Once the invitations were all printed, it was time to get the envelopes ready. I ordered samples from EnvelopesExpress.com, ActionEnvelope.com, and checked out every other envelope website I could find via Google. I also looked at the envelopes stocked at Arvey, my local awesome paper supply store. One of the frustrating things was that a lot of places only sold envelopes in large quantities, like hundreds, and I only needed about 125. In the end, we went with ActionEnvelope's 70-lb Bright White A8 envelopes, sold in packs of 50. They also have an 80-lb envelope, which feels nicer when compared to the 70-lb one, but I really wanted to stay within the 1-oz mark for weight, so I went with the lighter one. In the end, you can't tell.

The envelopes were the most expensive per-envelope that I looked at, but we ended up using them because they were the closest brightness to the cardstock we were using and they were the only ones I could buy in a pack of 150, rather than 200. If I had gone with a pack of 200, I guess I could have tried to resell them, but I feel better not having to rely on that. Sometimes it's worth it to spend a little more if it means you'll have less waste in the end.

I laid out our return address to print on the back flap (in the same purple color, of course), bought a new color ink cartridge for my very old HP Deskjet 810C (I got it in 1999!), and started printing. I had to play around with things a little bit, but it turned out if I printed them in batches of no more than 6, the printer stayed happy. So one afternoon I fed envelopes through the printer while catching up on my Google Reader reading.


The printer had a brain fart and only printed this much on one of the envelopes. Poor thing, I hope it lasts another two months through the rest of my wedding printing projects...

Running the envelopes through the printer made them all a little wrinkly, but I figured no one would notice by the time they got delivered and had all other sorts of marks and blemishes from the postal service:
Wrinkly, crinkly.

And here's the final product:


Next up was addressing and lining. I read a trick somewhere, at some point during the last almost two years of planning, that it's easier to address the envelopes first, and line them second. This allows you to use a wonderful tracing trick for guide lines. What you do is you take a piece of cardstock and draw straight lines across it. Place it inside the envelope, lines facing out, and you have guide lines to help you write straight!

Now, at what intervals should I make the guides? This is just one example of why I'm so happy I've saved every wedding invitation (and accompanying paper paraphernalia) I've ever received. I was able to pull out all the outer envelopes and do a little bit of measuring, and it turns out that 1/2" increments are pretty standard and look good:
Left to right: Bridesmaid Karen's invitation (2004), bridesmaid Paula's invitation (2007), bridesmaid Jamie's invitation (2008), longtime friend and penpal from the 3rd grade Becky's invitation (2007). Other invitations I've amassed over the last five years not shown.

Seriously, I'm so glad I save all of these, because I was constantly able to go back and look at what other people's invitations looked like, to make sure I wasn't doing anything weird.

Here's my guide card:

Using the guide card, I was easily able to address all my envelopes using my handy dandy purple calligraphy marker. I know I've talked about my handwriting before, but I can't resist showing it off just a little bit more...


Once all the envelopes were addressed, I lined them. I used Unryu Thread Paper in aubergine from PaperMojo.com. It's a gorgeous deep purple color, and has a very organic look to it.

First, I cut all the sheets to the right size:

Next, I lined the envelopes. Since my envelopes have square flaps, it was really easy to cut the liners, because I just made them all rectangular. No cutting rounded/pointed flaps out! I adhered the liners with repositionable sticky tape. I initially was going to use Glue Dots or Zots, but I found a roll of sticko brand refill tape at Archiver's for 75% off! It was a little annoying to work with an open roll of very sticky tape, but it was worth it. I wanted to use repositionable tape so that I could move the liners in case I made any mistakes, and I'm glad I did, because there were a few mistakes. At that point, with the envelopes already addressed, I really didn't want to have to start completely over if I screwed up the liner.

Put the tape down, position the liner:


Peel the tape backing up, attach the liner:


And voila!


Beautiful purple-lined envelopes, ready for stuffing!

Crafting the Invitations -- Layout

While I was waiting for my graphics to be professionalized (yes, I just made up a word), I laid out my invitation using Open Office Draw (another free program, kind of like Power Point, but with a few other features that make it more friendly for print layout).

One principle I had when starting to design my invitation suite was to waste as little paper as possible, and, envisioning that I might be the one using a paper cutter, to try to limit the number of cuts needed. Therefore, I tried to lay out all three pieces of the suite on a single piece of 8.5x11" paper.

Now, if you're going to design your invitations, you need to know ahead of time what the various standard sizes are. You can cut paper to any size you want, but unless you also want to spend time making custom envelopes, it's better to stick with sizes that are widely available.

About a year ago, when I first got into my invitation planning craze, I looked up all the various sizes, and here's what I found (table by me, in case you want to borrow it):

I did some paper-and-pencil layouts on regular paper, and came up with a few different ideas:
1. Make an A8 invitation, a 4 1/4 x 6" RSVP card, and a 2 1/2 x 4 1/4" insert. Put in an A8 inner envelope and use an A9 outer envelope.
2. Make an A9 invitation, a 4 1/4 x 6" RSVP card, and a 2 1/2 x 4 1/4" insert. Wrap in vellum to create a pseduo inner envelope or make a belly band to hold the suite together, and use an A9 envelope.

I initially was staying away from the A10 size because I couldn't find too many online retailers who carried A10 envelopes. However, A7 and A8 are very easy to find, and there's a decent selection of A9s out there, too.

I ended up combining the two ideas, and made an A8 invitation, an RSVP card that was 5 3/8 x 4 1/2", and an insert card that was 5 3/8 x 3 5/8". When I laid this out in landscape format, it left a strip 11" wide by 5/8" tall. Figuring I might be able to use that strip of scrap for something or other, in the spirit of not wasting paper, I colored it purple. Here is the final layout:



Here you can see the cutting guide lines (in the final version, I didn't print those lines). The size of the invitation is measured from the very left edge of the page, but I made sure to keep all the graphics within the printable area (on the professional printers, 1/4" margins are fine). You can also see that the purple strip runs the full width of the page, but the RSVP card and insert card stop 1/4" from the edge. I decided to make all of the invitation pieces the same width, 5 3/8", and that left a 1/4" edge on the right side of the page to be cut off.

You might realize that the purple strip, in the end, wouldn't bleed to the edge, but would instead have a 1/4" inch margin inserted by the printer. I realized this, too, and wasn't worried about it. It's scrap, and if I could use it, that's great, but I wasn't going to stress about it, either.

Another key place I went to do research was the post office website, www.usps.com. This page tells you all about the requirements for first-class mail, and this was important to me for two reasons:
1. I wanted the invitation to cost just a single first class stamp to mail, because I'm frugal. Rectangular-shaped and less than 1 oz in weight are the keys for this to work (squares automatically cost more postage, no matter how small they are!).
2. I wanted the RSVP card to be a postcard, because a reply envelope would require extra paper that would add to overall weight and threaten my 1 oz limit, would cost more to buy, would add to unnecessary paper wastage when it was thrown away, and would require a 42-cent stamp to return to us, rather than a 27-cent postcard stamp. It was a combination of being green and frugal.

So I made sure our RSVP card fell within regulation postcard sizes (3.5 x 5" to 4.25 x 6") right off the bat. I didn't have any specific requirements for the insert card, but making it the same width as the other two, but slightly shorter, made them look nice when stacked.

Eric and I hashed out the invitation wording together, and I got our fonts free from dafont.com. They're the same ones we used on our save the dates, Renaissance and ParmaPetit. The insert card references our wedding website for key information, and the RSVP card is a double RSVP, for both the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. We included the rehearsal dinner invitation in the same mailing, and I'll detail that for you in another post.

Now I have to say one final word about the layout and printing. In my mind, I thought this layout was great, and maximized my paper use. In the end, that all went down the drain. When I took the final file (once I had the final graphics files from Sue) to Eric at The Reliable Printing Company, he, because he's really really good at what he does, was able to notice some minor flaws in my layout. What they were, I'm not really sure, and whether they would really have caused a problem, I'll never know.

What he ended up doing, though, was altering the layout into three different files: one for the invitation, one for the RSVP card, and one for the insert card. He laid out two invitations per page and printed 50 of them (for 100 invitations), then laid out 4 RSVP cards and 4 insert cards per page and printed 25 each of them for a total of 100 invitation sets. This made it easier for his cutting man to cut, I think. The purple strip ended up being totally wasted as a result, but I harkened back to Rule #1 of DIY, "Let go of your OCD and accept what you cannot control. Your sanity is worth more than you think," and let the issue go. We ended up using the same number of pieces of paper as we would have with my original layout, and I really don't know what I would have done with that scrap, anyway. Plus, they do recycle at their shop, so it's not like it went to total waste.

We printed the invitations on Hammermill Color Copy Cover, 100 lb (271 g/m2), 100 brightness, at Eric-the-printer's recommendation. I bought a package of 8.5x11" paper at Arvey for $20, and Eric knocked $20 off my printing charge for providing my own cardstock, so I am left with 150 pieces of cardstock for free, essentially. Good deal!

We went with digital color printing, as opposed to anything fancy like thermography or letterpress for two reasons: time and money. While I would love to get letterpressed invitations, it's just not in our budget, and probably one of the less justifiable things we could spend money on with regards to the wedding. I'd much rather put money into food, drinks, and good music, rather than the paper everyone is going to throw out, to be honest.

So there you have it! The layout and printing of the invitations.

Crafting the Invitations -- Graphics

So I sent the invitations Wednesday morning, and on Thursday afternoon I had heard from the first people in the Louisville area that they had received them, and on Friday afternoon I got back the first RSVP card (it was a yes)! Quick work, USPS! I know my bridesmaids in Baltimore and Pittsburgh have gotten them, too, so I guess I can start the recap for you.


I told you about how I took this piece of scrapbook paper and sent it off to someone to turn into digital images:

Here's what happened after that.

First, I received this image from the designer who let me down, which I really liked:
By playing around in Paint.net (Free program! Similar to Photoshop, but a little dumbed down, as opposed to Inkscape, another free program I initially tried to use that was as complex as Photoshop), I was able to make a couple related images:




















Notice that I also changed the colors around a bit; I wanted a brighter green, and more of an eggplant purple rather than a bluish purple.

Trying to find the right color was quite a project in itself, but through some Googling, I found this great site, Colour Lovers. OTHER people find pretty colors, upload them, and tell you the RGB numbers needed to recreate them! I was able to find a bunch of colors in the range I was looking for, and make a whole bunch of samples in those colors to test print:

The one I settled on was the second one on the top row. That became my new theme eggplant color.

*Disclaimer: In the end, the purple color didn't come out exactly right, but since the images were sent off to Sue, my awesome graphic designer, before I printed them, there are a couple sources of possible error. The most obvious one is that RGB colors are meant for computer viewing, while CMYK colors are meant for print. Sue knew that I had ghetto-checked my RGB color in print, but something still might have happened on her end of things. It's also possible that my printer's printer read the color differently. Who knows. In the end, the purple on the berries on the final printed product is a little more in the bluish range rather than the reddish, but Rule #1 of DIY is "Let go of your OCD and accept what you cannot control. Your sanity is worth more than you think."

In any case, I sent my three re-colored images off to Sue to make them nice and smooth and hi-resolution and suitable for printing.

Invitations are in the mail!

And the woman behind the counter even promised to hand cancel them, even though she told me, in her opinion, they looked better if they went through the machine. She said she'd do them throughout the day, so I guess we'll see what people end up getting.

I'm so happy to have these out of my hair! As soon as I get word that people have started receiving them, I'll give you the whole recap.

A rhetorical question

What is the utility of having 7 -- SEVEN!!! -- bridesmaids when none of them live anywhere near you, thereby making it impossible for you to command them to help you stuff invitations into envelopes?

Heck, I'd even accept the help of groomsmen. Or a groom.

The envelopes all have return addresses printed on them.
They have all been lined.
Their destination addresses have all been calligraphed.

Now, it's just the tedious process of assembling the contents, making sure the right RSVP cards go in the right envelopes, and glue dotting everything together.

I did 25 in 2.5 hours tonight. Not good. Roughly 75 more to go.

Helpers would be good. Not that, you know, that's why I asked those seven girls to be my bridesmaids or anything.

Also, the interest in stuffing envelopes wanes when you have just found out that you're moving to Philadelphia in less than three months and all of a sudden need to figure out how to buy a house. I would much rather be sorting through mortgage loan offers and perusing sale ads on Craigslist.

The one good thing about invitation assembly? I've been watching all the ER episodes I've been DVR-ing all season, and I'm very close to being caught up. I don't even want to think about how many hours that means this project has been taking me.

Invitations are done!

When I first started reading crafty, DIY-oriented wedding blogs 19 months ago, the thing that stood out the most to me was brides who designed and/or made their own wedding invitations. What a great way to infuse some of your own personality into the wedding, and besides, I figured that DIY would probably be cheaper than buying pre-made.

I quickly formed an idea of what I wanted, that would fit into our design theme, and kept my eyes out for inspiration. It came in the form of a piece of scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby:


Whimsical, quirky, but still pretty. Perfect! Now, how to take one of those vines from a piece of scrapbook paper to a digital file I could manipulate? (This is a photo I took of the piece of paper.)

I figured I could probably scan it into the computer, but I don't have a scanner. Since I was doing all of this brainstorming months ago, I set this project on the back burner and focused on other things. At some point, I could always use the scanner at my parents' house, although I wasn't really sure when I would be able to do that. However, this past August, I ran across a classified ad on Weddingbee from someone offering to do invitation graphic design for very reasonable prices. Perfect! I emailed Laura, got some info, and sent her off a package in the mail with some of the scrapbook paper, a piece of fabric from bridesmaid dress shopping (so she knew what the right purple color was), and instructions detailing my vision. We had steady email contact over the next three months, save for one moment when I had to send her an email asking for an update, because I hadn't heard from her in some time. She responded immediately, said she had sent me my proofs two weeks earlier, but re-attached them. I know I had never received an earlier email (I even checked my spam), but I had the proofs, and they were great, and it was no big deal. I gave her my feedback and was eagerly awaiting the final design. That was mid-November.

Over the next two months, I sent multiple emails to see how things were going and never got a response. I finally resorted to Googling the girl to see if I could find some other contact info, and was able to call her in early January. After that, there was a series of emails that involved me giving her feedback, her promising me new proofs, and then falling off the face of the earth again. Finally, I got sick of it. My deadline to send invitations was quickly approaching, and I still had nothing! I laid out my own invitation suite using Paint.net and OpenOffice Draw, and everything was great except for the low-res graphics I had pulled from my proofs. Low-res won't cut it for the final invitations, but I didn't know how to turn low-res into the nice high-res I would need for printing. By this time, it was late February.

So I turned to Etsy, the place for all things crafty and creative, and placed my first Alchemy bid. It was accepted by about a billion people within a matter of hours, and I found someone I thought would be good to work with. Then followed some back-and-forth conversations between me and Sue, my Etsy graphic designer, and some trips back and forth to Kinkos to print out every new image (my old inkjet is first of all out of colored ink, and second of all very old and not of good enough quality), but within a week I had my final product. After I knew I had what I wanted, I sent Laura an email firing her, and I haven't heard anything back.

Next, I needed a printer. If you know anything about wedding invitation printing, you know that one of the crazes is for letterpress, a totally luxurious printing style in which plates of your design are created and inked, and then pressed into the paper, creating indentations. It's lovely, and I would love to have it, but I also know that most people throw invitations in the trash, so there is no reason to waste all of that money on something so ephemeral. How much money? We're talking at least $3/invitation, and it quickly goes up from there.

Another popular option in wedding invitations is thermography, in which a special powder is placed on the paper, then heated and melted and sucked upward, creating a raised effect. If you order "wedding invitations" from those big books found at most stationery stores, this is usually what you get. It's less expensive than letterpress by far, but still not justifiable in my book.

Kinkos, though, wasn't my favorite option, because they don't always take the time to look after the details that I wanted. So I turned to my new favorite paper supply store, Arvey, and asked their staff if they could recommend a printer. And they could! Last Friday I drove to all three of their recommended printers (I have Fridays off this month; how great is that?) and found a great one. A locally owned business, run by a great guy, and willing to work with me on price if I used my own cardstock. Since I need cardstock for other wedding projects, I didn't mind buying it in bulk to use some for the invitations, especially since it saved me money!

Yesterday after work I stopped at The Reliable Printing Company to drop off my cardstock (having already emailed my files to Eric, the owner), and he dropped everything and printed everything for me right then and there. It took about an hour to go through all the files, make sure they were laid out correctly, printed correctly, and cut correctly, but it was great to be able to be at his side the whole time, making sure that everything was still the way I wanted it to be. Their attention to detail was amazing! It wasn't even until I left, completed invitations in hand, that I realized he had stayed open an extra 45 minutes helping me. What service!

Meanwhile, I had placed internet orders for envelopes (months ago I had ordered some samples, so I knew exactly what I wanted) and paper to line the envelopes with, and lo and behold, everything arrived by today! So now I have everything I need to put together the invitations, and I am happily going to be working on that over the next few days. When Eric comes to visit next weekend, our goal is to get the invitations fully completed, envelopes stamped and addressed, and ready to mail.

So what does the final product look like? How did my original inspiration get translated into a wedding invitation that I love? You'll just have to wait, because I'm not going to share until after they're sent out -- another week and a half, at least!

Vendors I love:
SuBeeDesigns on Etsy, Sue Brown on the Internet
Arvey Paper and Office Products, for a huge paper selection.
Eric Hobaugh, CEO of The Reliable Printing Company, for excellent, personal printing services (including letterpress!)
ActionEnvelope.com, for envelopes
PaperMojo.com, for a great paper selection (I'm using their papers as envelope liners), and how can I resist a store with the same name as one of our kitties?

Making the Veil, Part 2

When we left off, I had torn apart a perfectly nice veil and refinished the edge with silver thread. Next to do was to add the silver appliques I found, which really wasn't very difficult.

First, I laid the veil on my parents' marble dining table and placed the appliques around the edge until I found an arrangement I liked:


Next, I simply glued the appliques to the tulle according to the directions on the bottle. I made sure to put a piece of parchment paper between the tulle and the table to catch any glue that would leak through. I weighted the appliques down with heavy books and left the whole thing alone for an hour.

Then it was time for the sparkle. I added some of the self-adhesive rhinestones semi-randomly across the tulle. I put a little cluster of rhinestones between each applique to add some sparkle at the edges, and sprinkled a few throughout the body of the veil as well. It was sort of trial-and-error; I'd add a bunch of them, put the veil on, and make my sister stop what she was doing to give me her opinion. Then I'd make adjustments and ask my brother. Then I'd make some more adjustments and ask my mom. That's the beauty of doing projects at home for the holidays -- you have lots of opinions you can gather. The rhinestones weren't super sticky, so I could remove them with a pair of tweezers easily if I needed to.

And here's the final product (Eric, if you don't want to see it, don't look any further!):


And zoomed in a little:

The veil is a little wrinkly, and clearly my hair and clothes leave something to be desired, but hopefully you get the picture. There's enough going on at the edges that it's clearly not a plain veil, the design of the appliques complements the floral/vine embroidery on my dress, and the silver edge and rhinestones give it enough sparkle, but not too much. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and really proud of the fact that I did it myself!

Here's the money breakdown:
Veil: $17.98
Appliques: $20 for 16 of them, including shipping. I bought that many because I didn't know how many I would want to use, but I still have 9 left.
Silver thread: about $5, with a coupon
Fabric glue: a couple bucks
Self-adhesive rhinestones: a couple bucks

So all in all, it probably cost about $47 to make the veil, but I still have tons of thread, appliques, fabric glue, and rhinestones left. I'm glad I did it this way, though, because it's still much cheaper than buying a new veil, and I made it exactly the way I wanted it!

Making the Veil

Sorry, loyal followers (the few of you there are), for my extended absence. My winter break was busy with holiday and family stuff, and while it was also busy with wedding stuff, my hard drive also died, leaving me computer-less for two weeks. I guess that was a good thing, because I didn't have the lure of the Internet to prevent me from doing wedding stuff, so I promise you won't mind too much that I was gone for so long :)

I got to Maryland with a veil and an unbustled wedding dress, and I got back to Kentucky with a better veil and a partially bustled wedding dress. Here's how I made a perfectly good veil perfect!

Last April I bought this veil off of eBay:

It's a David's Bridal single-tier, fingertip length, unadorned, corded, pencil edge veil, brand new. It seemed like the seller somehow had an entire lot of DB veils to sell off, but I don't ask questions. It was $18, instead of the retail price of $79. And actually, I just found this same picture on the DB site, and it is listed as having pearls, but my veil definitely didn't have pearls, so maybe it's not authentic, but whatever. Everything in that first sentence is still definitely true other than the "David's Bridal" part. I should note that my can-do insane personality is sure I could make a veil from scratch -- it's just tulle and a plastic comb, after all -- but the sane part of my brain figured it would be easier to just find a cheap veil that someone else already took the trouble of cutting out correctly and attaching to a comb. You should delegate when you can.

When I first got the veil, I tried it on and was pleased. It's funny how putting on a veil just makes you feel bridelike, isn't it?

Please ignore the incredibly bad photography displayed here, as well as the incredibly bad modeling ;)

But I always knew I was going to make adjustments to this veil. You see, when I tried on my dress at the bridal salon, I tried on a veil that complemented it beautifully, but I would never, ever pay $100+ for a piece of embellished tulle. Here's the detail on the veil I liked:

It had a silver finished edge and beautiful embroidery and crystals in a floral/vine pattern around the edge.

Over the next few months, I assembled the rest of my tools:


Embroidered silver appliques in an acceptable design, from eBay.













Silver thread, from JoAnn Fabrics. I spent a good 30 minutes collecting all the spools of silver thread in the store, then comparing them to figure out which color silver was the one I wanted. I had no idea "silver" came in so many colors! Plus, it was really expensive -- that spool was almost $10! I've never bought fancy thread before, so I didn't expect that price -- in my mind, all thread should cost less than $2. Good thing I had a coupon.






Self-adhesive gemstones from my local Archiver's. This particular package had a variety of sizes, which was good for my experimentation.















A bottle of Liquid Stitch, also from JoAnn Fabrics. There are a lot of fabric glues at JoAnn's, and I asked around but couldn't get any advice as to one being better than another. Finally, the woman at the register suggested that if I might be clumsy like her, this one might be better than the other one I had narrowed it down to, because the other came in a tube, and this one was in a bottle. It was a good enough reason for me, so I went with it. The appliques were the iron-on variety, but I suspected, and confirmed with the JoAnn's experts, that ironing on tulle would melt the tulle, so I glued the appliques on instead.


While I was at JoAnn's I also picked up 1/8 of a yard of tulle to experiment with -- I didn't want to ruin my veil by accident!



First things first: Getting rid of the corded edge. The tulle was sewn to the cord very simply, and I easily detached it using a seam ripper.
(Notice the purple edge on the top of the photo? Our camera LCD seems to be going out, so a patch of funny colors shows up at the edge of all of our photos now. I hope someone buys us the new camera we registered for!)

Next, I made a bobbin of the silver thread, rigged up the whole machine, and tried out a couple techniques. I wanted to make a very thin border of silver thread at the edge of the veil, so first I tried sewing in a straight line. It worked, but didn't look good -- the line of silver thread was so thin that I realized I would have to go over it at least three times, and that didn't seem fun. Next I tried setting the sewing machine to a zigzag pattern. That ended up working really well -- as the machine made the zigzag pattern, it ended up rolling the edge of the veil under, so I ended up with a finished, rolled edge.

Here's the sewing machine in action:
You can see the silver finished edge of the veil in the background, and the way the machine is rolling the raw edge of the veil as it goes. I didn't expect for this to happen, but it was really good that it did. After one go-round with the sewing machine, I was initially impressed with the way the veil turned out, but when I put it on my head, my sister and I decided the silver edge wasn't really that noticeable. So back I went, sewing the edge one more time. The foot of the sewing machine had trouble sewing all the way to the comb the veil was attached to, so I was left with a bare, raw edge for about an inch on either side, and when I was done with the sewing machine, I finished those parts by hand.

And here's the result:

Nice, right? It has a subtle sparkle and looks a little more delicate than the corded edge. All of that took just a few hours one evening a couple days before Christmas, as my sister and I watched TV. Quite relaxing, actually!

Next up: Adding the appliques.

You deserve a present

Because you've been patient.

I warn you, though: this is dress-related. So if you don't want to see a teeny, tiny piece of the dress, don't look any farther.

I'll also say, though, that after you look at this teeny, tiny piece, it won't actually ruin any of the surprise of the dress for you, so if you're unsure, you can definitely look.

This may or may not apply to Eric. Eric, you can make up your own mind.

But I figured that since my "my dress has arrived!" post was picture-less, you deserved a picture.

For your patience.







A little bit of the hem lace/beading detail and the ruffle, which I've decided to keep. The shininess is the plastic bag the dress still resides in.

I took it bridesmaid dress shopping yesterday with two of my girls, for the ridiculous excuse of putting it on in the store to see what we would look like standing next to each other (really just an excuse to put it on again), and I'm bringing it home for Christmas to show my mom and so my sister and I can fiddle with sewing a bustle. I'm sure that will be an adventure, so expect a future post about that, for sure!