Tuesday, April 20, 2010

DYI (aka DIY) is only for the truly creative genius or the wealthy

So, (for some reason i seem to start any discussion of the wedding with Adam with "so", kinda like a warning--details needed!) because Adam is moving along with half our worldly possession to Anchorage in mid-May, I got a little neurotic about wedding planning as I really don't want to do most of this myself.  As it turns out, Adam is more opinionated about wedding stuff than he liked to pretend at the start. Anyways, by the time we told most of the universe about the engagement just about everything was already done. I'm going to string it out for a few months here talking about general details :)

I also made a critical error early on. it was back during the Fast--we went to a paper store here in Seattle to look and get ideas. Unfortunately, the paper store is located across the street from Krispy Kreme. While i was busily mulling over strategic ways to get but not eat doughnuts (thus defeating the purpose of fasting), Adam started mixing and matching the envelopments---very pretty things with smooth surfaces. By the time he put together the dream invitation--it was about $7/invite. I felt pretty bummed i couldn't afford to do something that awesome and grumpily steerred us off to find the save the date paper rueing having come in there in the first place. When we got home, we promptly ordered simple but nice invites online---i bid farewell to my letterpress illusions--and that was that.

I had a dream of being a do-it-yourself kinda bride. And i'm making a mostly good stab at it (in large part by forcing others to do pieces of it for me)...but being as how craftiness costs lots of money, i've had to be "practical crafty." We decided to make save the dates because for most of my friends, this involves a plane trip--and i wanted them to have time to plan. Adam decided he wanted the save the dates to be oval. sounds fun enough....but he decided he wanted to draw them himself. 2 hours and more football shaped drawings than we knew what to do with later, we decided using the computer was probably okay. After a couple of days of tweaking the design around, there were ovals galore--in squares--that needed to be cut out. Adam cut out a wobbly oval and that was the end of that. Who knew you could practically get blisters from cutting things out!! I realize this probably has something to do with the smallness of my hands compared to normal people, but still.

4 comments:

  1. hahaha i can totally relate to the wanting of nice invites! however, our reasoning against it was - people don't KEEP invites. they may sit on the fridge for a bit - but they will be thrown away. so why spend so much money on something going in the garbage? :) i'm sure whatever you come up with will be just as great as what you had imagined them being.

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  2. did you mean DIY?

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  3. yet another reason why i'm not allowed to do it.

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  4. oh, this made me sad. I'm an Envelopments dealer and the average layered invitation with 2 enclosures is around $4.10. I do full custom designs as low as $2!

    If you think you can't get what you want, keep looking. There is probably another way. I once took a bride's pocket invite which was priced at about $7 and was able to take it down to just a little over $5 just by switching around how the papers were used. The stock is the biggest cost factor in invitations.

    Finally, and I'm kind of passionate about this, I realize: your invitation sets the tone in your guests mind about this event. Only you know all the other details. SPECIFICALLY if guests need to decide to travel to your wedding, you want them to be as excited about it as you are! If you really want them to share it with you, make sure they feel honored to be invited and fully informed about how you are going to throw this party!

    Good luck!

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