My sister & maid of honor recently sent out invitations to my bridal shower that will take place in mid-July. The details have been “Top Secret” and completely under wraps. She is one of the most creative people I know so even though I absolutely hate surprises, I knew I was in good hands.
And boy, was I right? Last week, I received this cute little invite in the mail & now I am over the moon with excitement! The surprise? A mad hatter tea party themed shower!
We just mailed out our invitations at the 6 week mark and let me tell you, paying postage sucks. We seriously spent $20 more on postage than we did on our invitation and that includes not stamping 50% of our response cards and hand delivering the invites to our college friends who won’t be at their homes.
Wait! The Lilacs didn’t stamp response cards? What a wedding sin!
Confession time. I have always been “in the loop” about when my bridal shower was going to be. Reason? My sister is away during the summer visiting her boyfriend in another province and so she only comes back home once a month (it’s expensive to go back and forth). Long story short: the date for my bridal shower was set by keeping her visits in mind.
So, it’s not going to be a surprise, but my mother has sworn that I won’t know anything else. Not the games, not the food or anything else. Except, we had this conversation earlier this week:
Our RSVP deadline is tomorrow. Since we sent the invites, I think I have heard every excuse and scheme under the sun. It has not been a pretty six weeks. I’m not going to go into detail (this is not supposed to be a ranting blog, I had to remind myself), but I do want to share with you our numbers thus far.
My RSVPs are starting to trickle in… and you know what I hear most often from guests about our invitations? “The writing on the envelope is so elegant!” … “I just knew when I saw the calligraphy that something special was inside”, and even “it was so nice to see our names written in such a pretty handwriting amongst all the bills that arrive daily!” Just goes to show, my $1 per envelope calligraphy investment? Totally worth every penny.
My amazing calligrapher, Kristen, e-mailed me today with her mission. She wants to have the chance to have worked with brides in every state of the USA by the end of 2011. There are 30 states she hasn’t done calligraphy for yet — and so she’s offering to do calligraphy for those brides for free.
Let’s talk about our invitations. Originally, the plan was to DIY them. I searched for inspiration, and then Mr. Magnolia created a design using Photoshop. We were going to order paper and supplies, and print them out at his work since his job had a super deluxe printer.
… but he changed jobs and very quickly, and we didn’t have time to print them. We had the design, but it wasn’t printed. So I started searching for having our design printed. I looked at having them flat printed, but in the process, fell in love with letterpress. I searched and searched for affordable letterpress (a walking contradiction, right?). Right when I was about to give up, I found Leslie from 4houndsPress. She understood my vision. She was in our budget. It was like a dream come true. After a few weeks of exchanging e-mails and making sure everything was a go, Leslie sent me our gorgeous invitations:
It pains me to blur out the details! From 4houndspress
Ah, the famous list. We drew one up shortly after we got engaged, but since then the “list” has not been revisited. Time to take it out – and finalize it! We have a strict venue person limit, so we have to make sure to not go over it. At the same time, it’s important to invite the “right” guests.
Here’s a funny story for you… well, not so funny at the time.
Two days before the wedding my sweetheart joined me in Florida. On the evening of his arrival I was going over final plans with him and casually showed him the program for the ceremony. The stationer I picked, the amazing Michele from Blush Paperie, had done an amazing job (and totally affordable!).
He looked at me with horror on his face, “That’s not the Best Man’s last name.”
Mr. Magnolia convinced me a few months ago that we can, in fact, DIY our invitations. The whole thing. Cutting, measuring, aligning, assembling, *designing*…
I don’t think he realized what he got himself into.
{this cartoon is highly ironic. I don’t know how many times I’ve changed my mind about these invitations}
Our invites are our first DIY project. They are truly… a labor of love, to say the least. Finding ideas, finding images, getting the right paper, getting the right font, getting the right text, designing the whole thing, putting them all together, addressing them all… translating them so that they are in French and English…. well, it’s quite a bit of work. I think it’s more than I had anticipated when we decided to DIY them. When the whole thing is done, I’ll have to post a Pros and Cons list of DIY your invites.
For now, though, I wanted to share this video, which really made me giggle. After all, with the stress of guest lists and DIY invitations, you gotta laugh, otherwise, you’ll go nuts (trust me):
Are you DIY your invites? Have you changed your mind a gazillion times, like me?
