Budget Breakdown - Invitations

So little did I know about paper. Oh, so little. Card stock weight, letterpress, metallic versus matte. Good God, what a cacophony of primal fear it can bestow upon the innocent of wedding planning brides. Oh, I fell in love with some invitations. Oh, the gorgeousness of them. Stunning. Works of art. For $4000. For 100 invitations and envelopes. That didn't even COUNT the RSVP card. It really stressed me out because when you look at all this crap (and it's JUST paper, people) on-line and in stores, there's this push that you must have the most fabulous of all because it tells your guests what kind of wedding you're going to have. Really? Really? No it doesn't, you do. Who you and your groom are tells everyone they need to know. And if you can't do that then why are you inviting then to your wedding?

Now, I'm lucky that I didn't have to invite my Dad's boss's cousin. Perhaps if you're having that kind of wedding, the invitation means more. For us though, it just wasn't like that. I also thought through all the wedding invites I've ever gotten in my life. I remember one in particular because it was purple. All of them ended up in the trash, even the purple one. I have no idea if they were letterpress or what they even looked like. NO ONE DOES. Not really, not in the end. In my opinion, if you need to save someplace, do it here. It's paper, people.

About the time I was in the invitation process, I found Jessica, The Budget Savvy Bride. She is one talented lady and I almost used her to do my invites. I did a lot of research and I realized that I could DIY my own invites easy enough, just as she did. For me, time was a big issue, so I went the Michael's route and gave some pre-fab invites my own twist. In fact, I was able to get nearly every single bit of paper product from Michael's and it all coordinated. I used lots of coupons and got creative.

Here's my original breakdown and the final numbers. When I filled in my budget, I really didn't have a great idea of what things cost. I also forgot to add in the postage for RSVP cards, which is why that number is double the budget! Now, I have to admit that I am missing a few things on this template because I had a whole different page that I did some budgeting on that linked over. Below is what I paid for all the paper for my invitations, table numbers, glue dots, programs, ribbon, etc. For just the invites, they were $2.13 a piece including postage. Without postage, they were $1.26 each. Not too shabby, right?


What was nice about all of this is that I got to customize everything I did with my own font and wording that I carried throughout the wedding - from menus to table cards to place cards to programs. I'll betcha people who don't read this blog had no idea I got all that stuff at Michael's or that I did it all myself.

If you click on the above mosaic montage of mega-hot detail shots that my oh-so-fabulous photographer took (like you don't know JCP already), you can see all the printing I did myself on my little $150 HP printer. And you know what? I am not a graphic artist. I am not an artist. I am a product developer, but I don't know how to work in Photoshop. I introduced myself to Publisher for my OOT letters. I do know how to work in ACDSee, but that's it. You just have to know what you want and how to go about ripping it off and making it your own. ;) The web has a crap-load of free templates and clip art and patterns and all sort of stuff you can manipulate to make your own. It's awesome. The resources are there, it just takes a little time to find it.

Try not to get caught up in WIC (Wedding Industry Complex, if you're not down with the lingo yet) on this one. Get caught up in your creativity.

Tell me, are you stressing over invites? How did you get creative? How did you save $$$?

Make it Stop!

I think I need a DIY intervention. Now.

Today, the office folks are taking me out to a celebratory wedding lunch! Nice! I thought it would be a great time to casually invite the group to our Pre-Wedding/Rehearsal Gathering. Casually.

That is until I woke up this morning at 4:30 am, unable to sleep. Again. Please note that I took a Benadryl AND a Tylenol PM last night. Ha! I laugh in the face of these so-called sleep inducing drugs.

So, I'm laying there, snuggling up to The Candyman and starting to toss and turn and I know I've got to be disturbing him. No sense in both of us not sleeping, so I got up. I contemplated the gym for about a half a second, then realized that I couldn't quite breath through my nose yet and quickly dismissed that crazy thought.

I'm never really quite ready for Mafia Wars or Scramble on Facebook that early, so I sat at the computer, contemplating what used to be my sewing table, which is now covered in PWC (Piles of Wedding Crap). I was staring aimlessly at the remaining card stock and cute little ivory flowers I have left over and......it happened. Another project. But it was a really small one, I swear! Here, see for yourselves.

I just whipped up a little invite for those folks not invited to the wedding. I only needed a few of them (our office is small).

I just used a pretty little font, similar to what I've used throughout my other wedding stuff, but this one is more swoopy. Swoopy - look it up.
I stuck a little flower on it with my left over flowers and glue dots.
I printed two per sheet and used my paper-cutter I bought at JoAnn's (on sale, thank you) to cut in half.
I used my Martha Stewart bone folder (Michael's, on sale) to fold in half.

I used my heart hole punch (Michael's, with coupons) and the left-over ribbon (Michael's, with coupons) to close them up the same way I did my fun registration booklets.

I had purchased the "All You Need Is Love" stamp out of the $.99 bin at Michael's, but never used it. Until this morning around 5am.

It's not too bad, right? Or do I need the aforementioned intervention?

{Winner Announced!} Rachel Jasper Design

OK, I wasn't going to post the winner until I could get home tonight and post, but our server went down this a.m. and I found myself strangled to a blinding stop by the IT department. I had neither my email or the Internet (*gasp*) so did a manual random draw of all the winners.

Last night, I wrote down everyone's name who entered and then ticked off how many entries they had. I had that list in my purse this morning (when did I do that?). So what I did was I assigned a person a number and entered that number the number of times a person had an entry. For example, Miss Sarah Elizabeth was #1 and had five entries because she commented, blogged, tweeted, follows moi and now follows Rachel. Five entries, five little number 1's. I did this for 22 different people. I put the numbers on an Excel spreadsheet and printed them out and cut them into tiny strips.


Then I put all the numbers in a bag and gave the bag a good shake. Kind like I wanted to give to Bitchface and Dickhead this morning. *See previous post.*

Then I closed my eyes and picked a strip of paper. I don't have a photo of this because my eyes were closed. Duh. Here's the number I picked:

And here's the name that the number two corresponds with (please disregard the psychotic chicken scratch, also known as my handwriting):

So the winner of the 100 FREE Custom Save the Dates is BRITTNEY!!!!! She's got a blog too! It's Sand Dollars and Sunflowers! Miss Brittney, please email me at thethirtysomethingbride@gmail.com so I can give you the super secret password identifier code to share with Rachel.

But wait, there's more! I got an email last night from Rachel and she's decided to offer another incredible opportunity for all of you who entered, but didn't win.

If you entered the contest, place an order with Rachel by August 31st and she will give you 10 % off any pre-designed invitation set (customized with your colors)! Rachel's pre-designed sets run about $415 for 100 invitations, RSVPs and coordinating envelopes! Contact her now before she books up! racheljasperdesign@gmail.com

Thanks to everyone who commented, follows, tweeted and posted! It was a great contest! Thanks to Rachel too for the incredible contest!

{Give-Away!} Rachel Jasper Designs

I am so jazzed about this give-away! Seriously, this little baby has been in the works since I was overseas! I found Rachel's work featured on our local go-to Ashely's Bride Guide. I have been dying to do an invitation related contest, so I was over the moon when Rachel said she was game! At the time, she was in the middle of some new designs, so I not so patiently awaited their completion!

You might recognize the invite from my finalist inspiration board on Style Me Pretty!

I just love Rachel's style and so wish that I met her prior to my own invitation production. No matter though, because I get to share her loveliness with my fabulous readers! Rachel is offering 100 FREE Save the Dates to one lucky winner! Now, this isn't any ol' Save the Date give away. Rachel will customize the Save the Date to your favorite design! How exciting is that?!?! Go check out her stuff at her Etsy shop, on her blog and on Flickr. You can also become her friend on Facebook. Here are a few of my favorites.....

So, how do you win? Here's how to get multiple entries into this awesome contest!

1. Post a comment here. Tell me your favorite design!
2. Become a follower of my blog or tell me you already are a follower.
3. Become a follower of Rachel's blog and tell me about here.
4. Re-post this contest on your blog and get another entry. Tell me about it here.
5. Tweet this contest on Twitter and get another entry. Tell me about it here.

That's FIVE chances to win per person! Hop to it and win this awesome contest! I'm running the contest from now until midnight on Thursday, 8.13.09. 100 Save the Dates is nothing to sneeze at folks. Enter now!

In the Mail!

It might be a little early considering the wedding is in October, but the invites have been ready. Sitting. Staring at me. It doesn't help that WeddingChannel.com emailed me and told me they should be mailed already.

My mom thinks they should have been mailed July 1st. I thought August 1st. WeddingChannel.com, July 11th. A myriad of websites that my photographer's wife looked up for me said 6-8 weeks. But here's the big question - 6 to 8 weeks before what? The wedding or the date on the RSVP cards? I never got a clear answer on that.

The Candyman's angry version of hand-canceling the invites.

I am not sure what this particular look is. It scare me a little.

It doesn't matter, The Candyman mentioned mailing them and that was the nail in the coffin! Into the mail they went! We had some fun canceling them. What's funny is I think everyone got them on Monday and we mailed them Saturday afternoon. Let's hear it for the U.S. Postal System!

Anyone know the answer on when to truly mail? Not that I care since I've already sent them, but I would really like to know. I wonder what Miss Manners has to say about it!

A Quickie Question

*YAWN*

Mornin' ladies.

The sleepy Thirty-Something Bride is posting early this morning. I've got to head down to Atlanta today to the Merchandise Mart for a trade show. I'm only there for a night, so still have the weekend for wedding planning activities, of which I believe I'm behind on.

The good news is that the Atlanta Mart has wholesale jewelry and "cash and carry" booths that I plan to visit to hopefully find earrings and hair accessories for The Big Show. Wish me luck.

So the question: when the hell do I send out my invitations? My wedding is October 11, 2009. The RSVP's are due back Spetember 15th (I'm hoping this was a good date to choose). How soon should I send them out? I was thinking August 1. My mom thinks they should have gone out already. Anyone know what I should be doing?

Local Nashville Brides - Don't forget! You can still win tickets to the Bridal Show this Sunday! Scroll down to win!

Invitations? Check.

The invitation are finally done! I am a little worried though. I had one left over invitation. I know all the invites got put into the pocket-folds, so I think this was an extra. I did, however, have three extra response cards and two extra response card stamps left over. This leads me to believe that I forgot to put these in the invitations. I am trying not to beat myself up over it. I hope the person/s who don't have a stamp will float me the 44 cents to tell me they are coming. I hope the people who don't have response cards, but do have an envelope, will tell me. Or, I could have done it all perfectly and these are just "extra." Um, yeah.

I'll mail these a few weeks after I get back from Asia, but I really wanted them completed before I head out. So happy they are done!

Here's the front and back. I know there could be some of you gasping in disbelief that I printed my addresses. Look, the reality is that I'm not going to try to hand-calligraphy these. I'm also not going to pay to have it done. The labels came with the invitations and the printing is pretty and cohesive with the font I'm using on all my printed wedding materials.


I also got to printing the stuff for my wedding favors. I mentioned before that I plan to bake my awesome cookies as favors. I'm going to include the recipe/instructions in the box. I printed on cream colored card stock that I bought at Kinko's for $11.99 for 250 sheets. This will be more than enough, but hopefully I'll use the paper for more fun stuff for the wedding. I haven't nailed that fun stuff down yet.....
Here's a copy of my template:


I grabbed the scrolly thing at the top from Fotosearch, created the template in Word and got to printing. The recipe is printed on one side and the instruction on the other, using the same template. I bought a handy-dandy-mini-paper-trimmer-thingy from Joann's at 40% off, for $11.99. I could have saved an extra 10% off this past weekend, but I didn't want to make the extra trip to save a $1.19.

Photo courtesy Joann's.

This took me a while to get the hang of, but once I did, I plowed through the trimming!

For the "Thank You" medallions that will go on the outside of the favor box, I set up another template like so:
I inserted the artwork I created earlier this month. Go here to read all about it! I printed these out on the same cream colored card stock. When I bought the handy-dandy-paper-trimmer-thingy, I also bought a handy-dandy-paper-puncher-thingy. It was also 40% off, so I paid $7.99. Since I am not a member of the scrap booking community, all these handy-dandy-paper-gizmos are very exciting to me.

Photo courtesy Joann's.

Punching in progress!

Since the favors will be something that is assembled the week of The Big Show, I won't have those photos for a while. I haven't decided the final concept of it anyway. I've got left over flowers from my invitations that can be incorporated somehow. Hmmm....gears cranking.

DON'T FORGET! Go here and register for a $50 Gift Certificate from Moments of Elegance!

Paper and Cake

OK, so if I wasn't 94.27% done with my invitations and hadn't already purchased all my printing stuff as well as chosen my wedding colors, I would totally buy this instead.

The company is called Paper & Cake and of course they have a lovely Etsy shop. They have buy-what-you need templates for all kinds of party supplies and invitations. These are the wedding goodies I like:

You can buy each template for $10, with a 10% discount on 5 or more items.
* Invitation
* Response card
* Save the Date card
* Ceremony Program cover
* Map card
* 8.5 x 11 Letterhead
* Menu
* Favor Bag Topper
* Favor Box
* Place Cards
* Circle tags
* Table numbers

They also have fun bachelorette party supplies for $5!

Check out their blog and become a follower. Why? Here's why:

"We do love our followers.... so here is a special offer, just for you.

How does "buy 3 $5 sets, get the fourth free" sound? Just purchase your three sets in our Etsy shop, and write in the message area which set you would like us to throw in for free.

This offer does not ever expire... that is how much we love you!"

Stamp Love

OK, so I was doing my very best not to get caught up in cute stamps. I could go to Zazzle.com and pay more for all kinds of cute stamps. But I refuse. I swear, I will not get caught up in stamps, of all things. In order to avoid any further contemplation of said stamps, I went to buy mine. I needed them to start stamping the RSVP cards anyway. Off to the post office I went to see the new wedding stamps, in both the 44 cent and 61 cent styles.


OK, these are GAY (I know, I know, we're not supposed to use GAY for LAME anymore, but seriously? These are just so bad.). These are uber-cheese-wedding-bells nonsense. Why don't I just wrap my invites in pink tulle, shove my MOH in a poufy pink moire taffeta tea-length gown and have some operatic version of Ave Maria sung as I walk down the aisle? Ew. Don't these just smack of early 1980's Falcon Crest? They do to me. The only other 61 cent stamp has Africa-American author Richard Wright on it. Not that I didn't enjoy his "Native Son" novel, but I don't necessarily want him on my wedding invites. Now over at 100 Layer Cake they had an awesome post about vintage stamps, how to find them and coordinate with your invites. Way cool. However, my invites don't have that "look" and I just don't have the time or energy to hunt down a bunch of stamps that add up to 61 cents. Or 44 cents for that matter. What's a Thirty-Something Bride to do?

I didn't buy the stamps and left empty-handed. I went back to Zazzle. I thought about it, but couldn't justify the cost. I just couldn't. So after work I went back to the post office and asked to see all the available 44 cent and 61 cent stamps. Out of nowhere, the dude pulled out these:

How cute are these? I love these. I love these enough to get over the lame 61 cent wedding cake stamp. Love. Love. Love. So, I bought these for the RSVP cards and the lame wedding cake stamps for the invites. Thing is, the cake actually looks good with my chocolate brown invite color. So, not so bad, right?

So what this means is that I'm chugging through my invites. I need to be done before I leave to go overseas in June (don't worry, I plan to blog while I'm gone!). I'm about three-quarters through assembling the invitation to the pocketfold. I stopped and started stuffing some RSVP cards and sealing them shut, just to mix things up a bit (watch out, I'm going nutty!). Here's where I'm at:
I bought these sticky labels and printed our initials on them. The BRIDES invites I bought had seals that matched the little scroll design on the invites, but I didn't like them. I got these at Michael's and used a 25% off my total order coupon I got out of a bridal magazine.

Here's the RSVP card about to get tucked into the pocket fold. There's been discussion over wording in a few other blogs I read daily and this is what I put, just in case anyone is curious:

The favor or your reply is requested by
September 15, 2009

M______________

____Happily Accepts
____Regretfully Declines

This is what they look like ready to be sealed.

Here they are all sealed up. I'll show you the front once I get there. The pile on the left is money thank you notes that I got in my same design on clearance at Michael's for $2.00. I've printed all the names for people that need to be handed cashola on the day off The Big Show. I'm actually stuffing cash in these every week. I randomly ask The Candyman for all his cash and go fill the envelopes. It's kind of like setting your clocks ahead 10 minutes so you won't be late for work. Every little bit helps, right? Or maybe I'm just a freak. Either way, I've got enough stashed so far to pay the officiant and part of the ceremony musician fees.

Today I worked on designing some fun reception stuff. I've noticed that my blogs can be hella long, so will wait until tomorrow for this. I hope everyone in the wedding blogosphere is happy. All I know is that the American Idol finale is on tonight and that makes me happy. My vote is for Kris. Or Adam.

3Bees Paperie - Save the Date Contest!

I just came across this gorgeous letterpress invitation company called 3 Bees Paperie. They are offering 50 FREE Save the Date cards to one lucky winner. All you have to do is name their new bridal suite collection! Go here to see the collection that needs the name. Go here to enter the contest! Deadline is June 30th!

I've got updates coming later today about the Big Weekend! SO exciting and SO much fun!

La Invitation, Part Trois

One little expense that I failed to mentioned is my new HP Photosmart C5580 All-in-One Printer. I had an old HP that I had purchased ink for recently at a $75 price tag. When I went to Office Max to get more ink to print the invites (the printer just seemed to suck up ink like nobody's business), I saw that the dough I was shelling out for ink was nearly the price of a new, very cool printer. So I bought it. Now, many of you would add the cost of the printer into your budget. I will not. I needed the damn thing and if I had needed ink to print anything else (I did) I still would have made the same decision to buy a new printer. It's bad-ass. It can print on CD's, a cool favor idea.

To print I had several practice runs as I tested different fonts, sizes, colors, etc. The final call was made to use the Brock Script (size 16) and the Adobe Caslon Pro (size 10) using a brown ink (RGB 96,42,0).

I printed each invite one by one, not stacking them in the feeder. This was time consuming, but I got a perfect print every time. I also printed the response envelopes with our address even though all sources told me the printer could not do it. Yes, it could. I printed the response cards too so they are all ready to assemble.

Printing in Progress

Pocketfold Envelope

Response card and response envelope slid into pocket.

Invitation set in pocketfold and response set inserted into pocket.

Over the next few days, I took all my goodies with me to the post office and weighed all the pieces to figure out the postage. The rate will be $.61 each after May 11th when the rates go up (you can buy Forever stamps now for RSVP cards, but they really are ugly). The post-office guy noticed the ribbon in my stack-o-invite stuff and told me that if I tied a bow around my invite that the lump in the envelope would cost me another $.20 per invite! WHAT?!? Oh, so lame. I'm not big into bows anyway, so I started thinking of other options.

I went back to Michaels (armed with coupons a-plenty) and started seriously browsing their aisles for ideas. I have joined (proudly, I might add) the ranks of crafty lunch-time Michaels dwellers, but I digress. Instead of tying a bow around the invite, I have decided to lay the ribbon flat with a small area of cross over I'll secure with a glue dot. I'm using the BRIDES Collection floral confetti and some removable glue dots to cover the seam (or I could put the seam in the back) and center the flower in the middle of the ribbon. I mentioned in my last post that I bought envelope seals. The kit came with them, but I didn't really dig them. The seals I bought have a printing template from Gartner Studios that I will put our initials on - sort of like it was sealed with an embosser, but DIY style. I'm spending a little extra cash, but adding a more personal feel to it.

Need I say more?

Floral Confetti

Loosely assembled!

The general idea.

I'm going to print these with our initials and seal the pocket fold.

I also bought 4 spools of 3mm ivory ribbon ($.50 ea, 25% off all!) to replace the brown ribbon on the ceremony programs. I just wasn't loving the brown on brown and it was a cheap fix.

Four-tiered ceremony programs.

Replacement Ribbon

The other goodies I bought but haven't done anything with yet (it's just not time!).

Printable table cards. I might also invest in more and use them as menus. Not sure yet. The menus might be another fun and different project.

You can never have too many!

Printable place cards.

So really the only part left to do is assemble and I'm a little afraid to start. I don't know why either! I feel it might be too early (they'll go out at the end of August), but since I'll be overseas the entire month of June, it might not be. Hm. Once I get further along, I'll post more about that process.