I Finally Mailed Our Save the Dates!

I recieved our save the date bookmarks from the printer over a month ago, but since I had neglected to plan for all the additional pieces (the envelopes, labels, stamps) and still had work to do on our guest list...not to mention the DIY gone wrong projects Ohio and I attempted to do (which I havent blogged about yet but will later this week)....I just finally mailed the little buggers out this morning!

I am so excited for our friends and family to start getting them in the mail! Plus, getting these out of the house helped me feel somewhat productive since this cold/flu bug I'm fighting has really sucked the life out of me.

 Here is our bookmark in my bargain find recycled envelopes!

A back view:

And a front view:

And here is the box of envelopes that I dropped in the mail today!

I feel like celebrating this milestone...if only I could get myself out of bed!

Getting Ohio Involved

I’m sick, my dog had to have surgery today and I got a nasty tick bite at an Earth Day event over the weekend. Needless to say, wedding planning is on the wayside. However, this weekend before the demon flu bug and the real life tick bug grabbed hold of me, Ohio and I made a drive down to Berkeley so I could introduce him to the world of Paper-Source.


Paper-Source is the ultimate in paper stores. Its pretty much heaven for a paper obsessed gal like myself. They sell everything from enclosures to cardstock to envelop liners to stamps…pretty much all things paper related. I wanted Ohio to go with me so he could see for himself how overwhelming wedding invites can be and so I could get some honest opinions from him on what he likes and doesn’t like when it comes to wedding invites. I also wanted him to get an idea of how much things cost- because really, until this trip Ohio has been clueless.

Our trip was a complete success. We spent over an hour and a half in the shop talking with different sales people and looking at pretty much everything. They even showed us how to make our own envelope liners and tricks to embossing (who knew it was so easy!??) . Ohio was a bit overwhelmed, but I think it actually got him more excited about things…..

We ended up finding a great color of diagonal pocketfolds that Ohio really liked- at 50% off. So he bought them! Besides the work he had our jeweler do to restore my heirloom engagement ring, this is actually his first wedding purchase. I was very proud of him!

Now that we know the pocketfolds we are using, I can get started designing our actual invites!

Alternatives to Corsages

While trying to keep my wedding costs down and keeping things as eco-friendly as possible, one thing that I keep coming back to is flowers.


I love flowers- but flowers can be expensive and can also be wasteful. Luckily my parents’ backyard has tons of flowers and shrubs planted already. But when you think of a wedding there are so many places flowers are generally used. In bouquets, centerpieces, boutonnieres, corsages. …the list really does go on and on!

I have been looking at alternatives to corsages for the moms and Ohio’s grandmothers. I like the idea of having them wear something that is more of a gift that they can hold onto as a keepsake Here are some of my favorite ideas!

Crochet Silk Flower Corsage by SuzieLeeKnitwear

Leather Rose corsage, BlueGreen by tagodesign

And my favorite idea- giving a vintage or antique brooch to each of them.

I am especially in love with this design- it totally goes with our theme!

Vintage Gold Tone Leaf and Pod Brooch with Seed Pearl and Rhinestone by somelikevintage

Are corsages a part of your wedding plans?

My obsession with paper…continued

I think paper is finding its way into my decorating scheme for the wedding. Here are some of the fabulous paper-related decorations that I have fallen madly in love with.

A dozen old romance novel paper flowers by sparklepants

Recycled Hymnal Paper Garland Strand by KristinaMarie

Recycled paper garland of hearts by bookity

It’s just too overwhelming! I want them all! It is going to take some serious restraint and contemplation to figure out just how to decide which ideas I want to use and how to incorporate them into my wedding design!

The Day After the Wedding

Ohio’s family lives in Ohio (hence his nickname) and he usually only gets to see them once a year- usually at Christmas. Originally we had expected that his family would be able to come out for at least a week for our wedding- but now it turns out that they will be flying in on a Thursday (arriving in the evening) and out early on Monday morning.


This was a huge bummer for me- as I was really hoping our families would have more time to bond. I know this will be one of the rare moments in our lives when his midwest family will be in the same place as my west coast parents and my military-moving-all-over-the-world-brothers.

Because their visit will be so short, we have decided not to leave for our honeymoon until the Monday following our wedding. This will give us the opportunity to spend one extra day together, and also means there is one more day of activities we need to plan and budget for!

Instead of having a post-wedding brunch, we are planning to invite our families on a sightseeing boat cruise at Lake Tahoe, which is just a 40 minute drive from my parent’s house. I would hate for them to come all the way from the mid-west and not see the beauty of Lake Tahoe!

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Are you planning a post-wedding event for your family?

Plates: Veenerware vs. Vintage?

The first decision I made when we started wedding planning was not the venue. Or the dress. Or the colors.

It was plates.

Beautiful and unique vintage plates in different colors and sizes.

I decided I wanted to collect plates from the flea market all summer and have a mix match tablescape. I was inspired by pictures I found online like these:

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This would give me plenty of excuses to troll the flea market aisles and indulge in my obsession with tablescapes.
Added bonus: Using real china would satisfy my requirement that our wedding be as eco-friendly as possible, and could potentially be even cheaper than renting china!

To top it all off I had visions of breaking the plates afterwards to make mosaics on my planter boxes.


But then once I started actually planning the other aspects of the wedding I started thinking about the practicality of a) collecting all those plates b)cleaning all those plates before the ceremony c)transporting all those plates d)cleaning all those plates after the reception.

Suddenly as much as I was still in love with the look of the mix matched plates- I was not in love with the work involved with the idea. Especially because we are self-catering and not having any servers, so my family would be stuck cleaning up everything after the event.

Then yesterday I ran across these Veneerware disposable plates and I really fell in love with them.

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Not only are they an ecofriendly (they are fully compostable) and about the same price I would have spent collecting all those plates, but they also fit with our rustic, backyard theme. And they would be so much easier to deal with than real plates.

Now I just don’t know what to do! Which plates do I go with?

Have you had any experience using Veneerware disposables? If so, what did you think?

Snafus

In my excitement about finalizing our save the date bookmarks, I completely forgot about some important details:

Envelopes

Stamps

Labels

Oops! This created a whole new set of questions that needed to be answered. For some weird reason, Ohio could not figure out what the big deal was. Couldn’t I just put them in a normal envelope, print out some labels and stick some stamps on them? Well, I guess I could- but I really didn’t want to. So instead I proceeded to spend a ton of time online and at local paper stores trying to figure out what to do.

Step one I decided would be to figure out the right envelopes. Since our bookmarks are earthy looking- I decided to try and find brown envelopes. Luckily I happened across these awesome recycled brown envelopes on Amazon.

I think these are perfect for our save the date bookmark! And they are just $18 for a box of 500 (Just 3 cents each!). Seeing as we only need to mail out about 80 bookmarks, this means we have a lifetime supply of envelopes leftover.

For our postage stamp, at first I wanted to create our own postage stamp online using the monogram that our Etsy designer created for us. But then I had to put my frugal bride hat back on and I decided that going with the King and Queen of Hearts stamp would be just as cute.

Now came the hard part- the labels. I did not want to use plain white or clear labels. I searched everyone for cute labels. I searched tons of websites, visited several paper and craft stores- and didn’t find anything! Then, just as I was giving up hope and resigning myself to using blah boring labels I ran across these Labels in Curry from Papersource.Com: Perfect! Even better is that they have matching envelope seals.







All in all, deciding on labels, envelopes and stamps has set back sending our save the dates by over a week. I guess this teaches me a lesson to think about all the details of a project at the beginning to avoid wasting so much time at the end!

Did you run into any snafus with your wedding planning or get caught up in little details like envelope labels?

Bookmark this!

When I was growing up, if I got in trouble my parents didn’t have to ground me or send me to my room. Instead they banned me from going to the library that week, or from buying a new Babysitters Club book.

That’s right- I was (and still am) a book nerd. Which makes It all the more fun that our save the dates are bookmarks!

And I LOVE them!!!

I think our graphic designer, Deidamiah did a great job incorporating the vision that Ohio and I had for our save the dates. We asked for a clean and earthy looking bookmark that included an image of a tree. We asked her to use our wedding colors- browns, yellows and blues We supplied her the text and …..

Wedding Stationary Makes Me Happy!

I’ve mentioned before that I love mail-but I don’t think I really explained that I do have a little (ok, a big, out of control) obsession with all things paper. I collect greeting cards like there is no tomorrow. I have a huge stash of cards on hand for pretty much every occasion you can possibly think of- birthdays, weddings, babies, new homes, get well, anniversary.....the list goes on and on.

On top of that I have tons of craft paper, scrapbooking paper….not to mention loads of books and magazines. If something is made of paper, chances are I will be in love with it.


So of course I am not going to let a little thing like a wedding budget stop me from having fabulous wedding stationary!

I’ve had wedding stationary brain for months and seeing as we are now down to less than 6 months till our wedding (Ahh!) time is ticking for us to get our save the dates done and mailed. I’d love to say I did it all myself- but seeing as I’ve been working at least 6 days a week for the past few months, I decided to hire a graphic designer to help us out and to make sure things were done right and on budget.

In order to find a graphic designer willing to work with our very modest budget, I placed an alchemy request on Etsy.com and found a fantastic designer that is working with us to create our wedding suite (“wedding logo”, save the date & invite) for a fantastic price. Since I deal with print shops quite often for work, I have decided to handle the printing of our wedding stationary on my own which will save us a significant amount of money.

An alchemy request on Etsy.com basically allows you to post what you are looking for someone to make for you. You include as much details as possible, and price you are willing to pay. Within hours, I had dozens of replies from graphic designers. Some designers bid at significantly higher prices than my request indicated, and others much lower.

I spent some time looking at the items listed from each of the designers Etsy shops to get an idea of their esthetic and was quickly able to identify the designers who had styles I really related to. I decided on working with Deidamiah because her invites seemed to have the design elements Ohio and I were looking for and her prices are amazing!

I am so excited for our wedding guests to see what she has designed for us!

Our Wedding Website

A wedding website is a must for us as pretty much everyone attending our wedding is coming from other states and we need to give them a lot of information about the area. Instead of going with one of the online services that cater to weddings, I decided to create a site using GoDaddy.Com's Website Tonight Service.

While I can totally see the benefits of the predesigned wedding websites, I think there are some great perks to building your own site. For one thing, you get to pick your own domain name. Ours is super easy- its just my first name and his first name followed by a dot com.

Because I am fairly familiar with website design, I also like the idea of making the website look and feel exactly how I want it to. The Website Tonight program is great because it gives you a ton of template options, and then you can go in and edit the html until you get it looking perfect.

The selling point for me was that I can see Ohio and I wanting to keep the website going as an ongoing family blog after we are married. So it made sense to create a website and pick a domain name that would work for us in the future.

The one drawback of doing it this way is of course it takes a lot more time. So far I am about halfway though building the site- I think the most time consuming parts are done, my template is finished and most of the content is written. I am hoping to finish by the end of the week so that by the time our save the dates are ready to mail our website is ready for our guests to discover!

I am interested to know about what pages people have included in their wedding websites. So far I have the following:

1. Home Page/Welcome

2. Travel Tips (Accommodations/Transportation/Attractions)

3. About Us

4. Guest Book

Do you have a wedding website? What pages did you include?

Wedding Stationary- DIY?

I started the search for wedding stationary a few months ago and quickly decided that wedding stationary is actually one of the things I am willing to spend money on. I'm sure a lot of people think that is silly, especially given how small our wedding budget is. After all, a lot of people just throw wedding invitations in the garbage! (Gasp!)

But I do have this overwhelming love for getting cards and other items in the mail (except bills- I could totally live without getting those in the mail). I especially love getting wedding invites, baby announcements and Christmas cards in the mail.

So of course when it comes to actually sending out my own invites- I want to send what I would love to receive myself!

Early in the planning process I made visits to some of the paper stores that make fabulous wedding stationary, searched online and went through my stack of wedding invites I've recieved from friends over the years. I spent many hours drooling over amazing wedding invites and save the date cards.....and crinkling my nose at how much said wedding stationary actually costs.

 I then realized that given my experience working with graphic designers and printers from work, I could easily save money and get exactly what I want by managing the creation of our wedding stationary myself!

Now, let me note that I am not the most crafty of brides-to-be. There are so many bride bloggers that inspire me with their craftiness- that they use Gocco machines and Cricuts, design everything in photoshop and have it turn out looking amazing. I wish I had the time or patience to do that!

 I know myself well enough to know that if I tried to do them all on my own, my wedding stationary would end up looking like a first graders art project. So instead of trying to tackle the entire project myself, I am determining which elements I can actually do myself (and with Ohio's help) and what I need someone else to do for me. I am getting excited about the project and can't wait to see how it all turns out!

What part of the wedding stationary process are you doing yourself? How did you decide how much you can take on?

My Craft Fair Finds!

Shortly after Ohio and I got engaged, my mom came to town for a craft festival (my mom LOVES crafts!). While there, browsing the aisles, we ran across one of my favorite vendors, who makes adorable vases and hanging lanterns out of old glass kitchen items (cups, jars, light fixtures). Over the past few years I've picked up lots of things from this vendor and always spend a long time looking at her work.

While I was standing there staring at all her amazing little works of art (trying to decide which ones to buy for myself and how I could justify the purchase) a little light bulb went off in my head.

And then the light bulb got brighter. And brighter- until I almost shouted at my mom- "These would be so cute to use to decorate our wedding!"

Instantly my mom was in agreement. And then, the artist got excited about it too and offered to give me as many as I wanted at fifty percent off!!!!

I was in bride heaven!

Here are 2 of the pieces we picked up:

Now I just need to figure out exactly how I am going to be using these cute pieces and I need to do it quickly so I can order more if necessary!

What are your favorite wedding finds so far?