Somewhere between booking the venue, the chapel and pulling my head out of my ass, I found a picture of this cake and knew that my colors would be as such:
Ivory, chocolate brown and a touch of sandalwood (OK, it's beige. Beige in Bridal lingo is Sandalwood). By the way, props to this cake designer Collette Foley of Alice's Teacup in NYC. Once I had a color palette, my mind started racing. This is about the same time I discovered Bridal Blogs. Oh, the wonderment and hours of clicking on link to link to link. It's like a never ending game for me. It's why I started this blog, I wanted a home base to click back to and share all my ideas. I am a bride, so it's all about me, right? Kidding.So The Candyman thought the picture of the cake was pretty ("Can we eat that now?") and I was off to the races! I wanted ivory 100 pound card stock with chocolate brown, letter press printing. I wanted fonts and scrolls and map cards and personalized stamps and hand calligraphy! I wanted it all! I also wanted it at the low, low price of $2.00 per invite. G'head. You can laugh. I was an Invitation Virgin.
While I *heart* Style Me Pretty and Snippet and Ink with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns, their constant reminders of the invitations I wasn't going to have was getting me down. I was afraid my new wedding blog addiction was going to be squelched by budget restraints. That's when I found Budget Savvy Bride. About the time I was headed for another wedding planning meltdown, I ran into her blog just as she was finishing up her gorgeous, DIY invitations.
It was just the creative kick-in-the-pants I needed! I'm a freakin' product designer, why can't I DMO (Do My Own) like this talented Twenty-Something? Well, I can and I will, thunk I. Reality check. I just didn't have that kind of time. Also, I work in ACDSee and suck at Adobe and PhotoShop. I believe my self-tutorials in either one of these programs would spawn Meltdown Nombre Quatre. Since Miss Budget Savvy Bride lives here in lovely Middle Tennessee, I shot her a quick email to see if she'd be willing to design my invites! She replied with a quick quote (and friendly banter) and I hit the Internet hard looking at pocket folds and card stocks and postage (oh my!).
Here is the first challenge regarding DIY invites that goes hand in hand with ordering them. I need 60 invitations. Most invitations, paper, envelopes, etc. are ordered in increments of 25. Everything I wanted, I would have to order 75 of since 50 wouldn't cover it, thus increasing my per invite cost drastically. Uber-lame, my friends. I did several cost analyses based on a pocket fold-type invite with RSVP cards/envelopes. I priced printing at Kinkos using Kinkos paper against printing at Kinkos using my own paper. I checked cutting paper at Kinkos versus pre-cut card stock. By the way, did everyone know that Kinkos is now FedEx Office?
Anyway, I checked a lot of stuff that just made my little anal-retentive heart sing with joy. I'll share that little nugget with you tomorrow.
It's late, my little wedding blogger buddies. Part Duex, demain.
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I believe the meltdown count may have been slightly higher than you may be suggesting to your readers. This is a really nice blog by the way.
ReplyDeleteWhen this is over, I think you could start your own business as a budget wedding planner! You are very thorough in your research. And I was at Kinko's on Monday and, while chatting with the clerk, lamented the passing of the Kinko's name. I mean, "Kinko's" is like "Kleenex." Just as Kleenex means "tissue," Kinko's means "copies."
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