Unleashing my Inner Crafter

Our save-the-date's are in da house and I couldn't be more excited! True to wedding-planning form, upon first glance I was slightly concerned that they were going to be more brown-tinged than purple, but luckily they are the perfect shade!

Now that they have arrived I can begin on my very first wedding-related (okay, very first ever) DIY craft project!

Many brides in wedding-planning land have had a longstanding love affair with all things paper, especially those brides of the DIY variety, but not this chick. And boy, I've been missing out! On the hunt for suitable paper for my DIY invitation liners I stumbled upon the beautiful, diverse, and sometimes textured world of paper! Here are a couple of my favorites:

Paper Source, Gold on White Metallic Floral, $4.95/sheet

Amazon, Hot Off The Press, Inc., Color Me Gold Floral Paper, $1.49/sheet

I had a vision of gold, floral-patterned paper to match our color scheme and compliment our deep purple stationary, while also incorporating our garden theme. I paper-hunted a few local craft stores, but given a steep paper sale, the stores were very picked over, and while I don't mind buying a variety of paper designs, there simply was not enough suitable options left to provide for all 100 of my liners.

Again, taking the advice of DIY brides before me, I was looking for paper that was structured and heavy enough to be bent backwards so as to not accidentally adhere to the envelopes once the adhesive was applied, but before I was ready to secure the liners. I was also looking for paper that wasn't so heavy that it would increase the weight of our mailing piece and increase postage.

Given a very heavy budget crunch at the end of this month, along with the tight deadline we set to get these babies out into the world, the designer paper options above were not realistic at this time (but, boy am I motivated to save up for them when our invites are due out!)

Using weddingbee.com as my always-loyal resource, I learned that wrapping paper was a cost-effective and totally viable option for this craft! However, finding affordable wrapping paper that matched my vision was quite a challenge. Seriously, I had no idea that people could spend literally hundreds on a roll of wrapping paper. Having difficulty finding paper that would be $20 or less (including shipping, which would have to be expedited since I'm a bit of a procrastinator,) and boast the design I was hoping for, I opted for just plain, gold wrapping paper from good 'ol CVS. It was $3.99/roll and I think I may have enough left over to line our RSVP envelopes if I so choose.

I plan to keep a steady eye on paper sales and make frequent visits to local craft stores to begin procuring gold, floral-patterned paper for our invites to really jazz them up, but until then, I'm off to get a paper cutter and some adhesive to get the ball rolling on my very first ever DIY craft project!

Where did you find the paper for your DIY envelope liners? How much did you spend?

Saying 'Yes!' to the Dress

Today it dawned on me that I have my first official, real-life appointment to try on dresses next weekend. I'm sure with most normal brides, this elicits a great sense of excitement, but not me. I'm actually dreading it. 

For the better part of my adult life, hell, for the better part of my entire life, I've battled the bulge. I've never quite been able to exist at a weight where I've been comfortable, but rather, I've gone up and down 30-50lbs every couple of years. This has taken both a physical and emotional toll on me, especially when it has come to dressing my ever-changing body.

To offset the potential trauma of dress shopping, I've spent most of the last year of our engagement joking that I'm going to sport a nice white pantsuit as I trot down the isle.

See, I could walk down the isle in that, right? But as I sit here typing this, I know that the window of time for dress shopping is quickly closing, and that if I want the most options, I need to pick something soon while we still have 6 months before the wedding.

To prep myself for this anxiety-filled excursion, I've been indulging in extra episodes of 'Say Yes to the Dress.' Mostly to get a feel for the style of dress that I'm most drawn to and to learn the lingo a bit. I have to say that watching so many women with different body shapes find dresses that look stunning on them has been very encouraging! So, without further adieu, I present to you my dress inspiration:

What do you think? When I actually allowed myself to browse bridal gowns, I found that I was instantly drawn to these sexy little numbers...and to lace! I'm actually kind of excited to go shopping and am hoping that it's the positive experience I so desperately want it to be.

Was dress shopping everything you thought it would be? Did you choose a style of dress that you thought you would, or did you end up choosing something completely different?

Cheap Elegance

I've spent the last couple of days obsessively tracking the shipment of our save-the-dates. I can't wait to get my little bride hands on 'em! In a last minute turn of events, we opted to not purchase the insanely expensive design templates for our stationary. What is that you say? How could I abandon an idea that I was oh-so-excited about? Well, it's simple. I found something better.

I decided to tool around the internet one last time and revisit some old save-the-date haunts that I had long since abandoned. Thank goodness for second chances because I re-stumbled upon a design that I loved and that came in the deep purple color we were looking for! I'm not sure how I missed this the first time, but I'm pretty sure it was because the 'more colors' button was hidden. Well, true or not, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Here they are in all their glory:

Names removed to protect the innocent :-)

So, where did we find these little beauty's? VistaPrint! I've actually used VistaPrint in a past corporate life and really loved them. Their customer service was great and I was always happy with the product. Nowadays, I've seen them recommended on the 'Bee all over the place so I gave them a shot. They're floral, they're deep purple, and they're awesome!

Best part: 50% off sale. Your heard me right, 50% off! AND, envelopes are included, with the option to upgrade to matching envelopes at an additional cost (roughly $0.34/envelope.) Our total, for 100 save-the-dates with 100lb, 100% recycled matte paper, was $58.58 including 7-day shipping! That's only about $0.59/piece! My only piece of advice is to make sure you opt to have no security tint inside of the envelopes (it costs about $1-2.00 to do this.) If you forget to do this (as I did,) VistaPrint will automatically incorporate their own security tint, which looks less-than-elegant for a piece of wedding stationary:

I called them up as soon as I realized I forgot to do this, and they changed my order for free. Phew!

As for now, I'm searching for paper so I can make some DIY envelope liners to add a little sumthin'-sumthin' before we send them out!

Where did you get your save-the-dates? How much did you spend?

Flower Power: Ceremony Edition

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the flowers for our wedding. Mama BB decided that she didn't feel comfortable taking on the gigantic task of DIY-ing our floral designs, so I added a teeny tiny bit of money to our DIY budget with the hopes of acquiring a florist. Since then, the thoughts in my head have been a repeating cycle of: what colors? What flowers? Tall or short? A mix of both? These questions lurked in my mind for some time, but I think I've gotten it nailed down thanks to some flower porn I've been viewing on the internet, and it looks a 'lil somethin' like this:

Swoon!!! My thought was that by incorporating only one type of flower, we could cut down on labor costs, and by having each girl carry only one stem, we could save costs by decreasing the amount of flowers we'd actually have to purchase! Smart, huh? Plus, I think the elegance of carrying one long stem really helps to maintain the modern, clean feel we're going for. I'm most excited to see how the deep purple calla's and their vibrant green stems will pop against my dress!

I am almost salivating over these pictures! Does that make me crazy, or just a bride?

What's your floral vision and what type of flowers are you using to achieve it? Did you work with your florist to maintain a budget?

I've Found It!!!!

My inspiration, that is!

At some point over the weekend it finally clicked with me, that after 13 months of being engaged (and roughly 7 months to go,) this wedding really is going to happen!

I know, shocking, right?! It's also time to get into the nitty-gritty of wedding planning and really put my lack of DIY skills to the test! First up: ordering our save-the-dates! I'm going to confer with Mama BB about which design to choose, but today is the day that I purchase the template!

Reality has hit and I'm super excited to get my hands dirty and begin to work on our DIY projects...I've been waiting for this! I'm going to keep y'all in suspense over which design I ended up choosing and I'll do a final unveil before I send 'em out!

How about you guys? Did you have an "aha!" moment over your wedding when you realized it was really going to happen!?

The Guest Mess

Mulling over my previous blog post brought me to my "Master Wedding" spreadsheet to review our guest list. We don't have a 'B' list like many people suggest, but rather, we pared down our list as much as we thought we could and left it at that. Until yesterday.

Upon viewing our guest list a second time, I realized that we had some friends on there that fall into a bit of a 'limbo' category. They aren't good friends of ours and they aren't acquaintances. Does that even make sense? And, to top it off, a group of these individuals that fall into the 'limbo' category for another reason are family members - a failed business has driven a rift between my father (and my immediate family) and his brother (and his immediate family.) Now are you seeing where this is going? No? You will soon...

One of these friends in the 'limbo' category is getting married a month after us, and my cousin (the son of the brother my father is currently on the outs with) is marrying his fiance in June. Yikes! Clearly, based on my last post, our budget has become a bit of an issue so we're hoping we have slightly fewer guests in attendance that what our budget will allow. Still don't see where I'm going with this? What if I said that due to the nature of these relationships I'm not even sure that we will be invited to either wedding?

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a tit-for-tat person. But, I am strongly considering putting the word out to family and friends to find out if we are, in fact, going to be invited to these weddings. I wouldn't be surprised either way, but I figure I should find this out now before I send out our save-the-dates. I don't want to be a Bridezilla, but FI and I discussed it, and we feel that if we aren't invited to their weddings, we can safely get away with not inviting them (and knocking 9 people off of our invite list!) without hurt feelings.

I'd also want to secure this information without making much of a fuss so it's not completely and utterly obvious that I'm going to base my guest list off of it.

Does this make me a mean girl? Or petty? Or do you think that what I'm doing is practical?

Guest List Anxiety

Today is the day that our wedding guest list is complete. My FMIL finally e-mailed us the last batch of addresses that we needed and now we can really get into the nitty-gritty of getting our STD's done. I had initially intended to get those out a couple of months ago, but alas, life took over.

From time-to-time I've gone over our guest list in my head. I tend to vacillate between an uncomfortable mix of sadness and anxiety that nobody will attend our wedding, and a shear panic that EVERYBODY will attend. The result of these conflicting emotions culminates in this photo:

At some stage of the wedding-planning game we had created a basic guest list and determined, based off of no scientific calculations whatsoever, that we would base our budget off of 150 people. We reasoned that this "sounded good." We currently are inviting 188 guest to our wedding and as standard wedding etiquette would dictate, if 20% of guests don't attend, we will wind up with 150.4 people. Great, right?

Well...maybe not so much. I found myself surprisingly uncomfortable with the notion that 150 people may show up and realized it was because I'm the worst bride EVER! I found myself actually wishing that fewer people would show up! You heard right, fewer people than what we are budgeting! What sort of bride wishes this kind of thing on her own wedding?!?

I guess I've just come to the realization that our wedding and our wallets will seem full with even 130 guests. I'm sort of happy that I had this epiphany. I think it will go a long way to curbing guest list anxiety...especially if RSVP's begin rolling in with the "regretfully decline" boxes checked!

Are you concerned about the number of people coming to your wedding? Are you (gasp!) hoping for even fewer people to show up so you can save some money?!

Battle of the Bridal Bulge

It wasn't until this morning, as I was out walking the dog, that I realized I could hear birds chirping. I'm guessing they've been out there every morning this winter, but for some reason I didn't pay attention to them until today. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: spring will be here before we know it!

This realization alarmed me for two reasons. 1) our wedding is very quickly approaching and 2) I really need to step up my weight loss efforts.

In sum, I would like to lose about at least 40 total lbs from my highest weight of 161.0 (yikes!) So far, as of this morning (and after a night of Valentine's food-and-drink indulgence) I clocked in at 146.0. I'm happy that I've at least lost something, but for the past 7 or 8 weeks my weight has been pretty stagnant. Mostly, the scale hasn't budged because I've let my eating get out of control during the weekends, but I'm also on restricted activity due to a work injury.

In fact, I was so hell-bent on losing weight that I had put off dress searching until I was in the 130's somewhere...which, truth be told, won't happen now that it's already February and the wedding is in September...I pretty much need to have a dress by our 6-month mark in March.

So, today I've decided to really get my butt in gear, and I've made some rules for myself, which mainly include no drinking/light drinking on weekends and only ordering salads with grilled chicken if we eat out. I can't exercise until I meet with my surgeon in a couple of weeks to find out more about my injury, but hopefully physical therapy will follow quickly so I can at least get some physical activity in. I'll continue to use myfitnesspal to log my calories and weight loss progress. Luckily, I've still got time to make it to my goal weight, but with time flying by, my window of opportunity is shrinking by the minute!

Now that I have a better plan in mind and I've re-focused and re-aligned my weight loss efforts, I plan to stick to them and be more like this:

Are you trying to lose weight for your wedding,if so, how much? Have you put off dress shopping because of it?

Battle of the Registries!

There are few things that could rouse me early in the morning on a Sunday, but today, Registry Day, was one of those days! FI and I were up and at 'em before 6am, practicing our scanner moves in the mirror, just waiting to barge into Crate and Barrel, grab a mimosa and get our registry on! From there, we headed to Macy's to continue the party. While the day was totally fun, we definitely noticed differences between both stores and experienced some highs and lows.

Hands down, Crate and Barrel was the winner of the day. I knew it would be. Heeding the advice of engaged couples before us, we made sure to arrive at 9am sharp to get the day started right! As soon as we walked in we were greeted by platters of strawberries and cheese, chocolate fondu, and my personal favorite, mimosas! We quickly walked to the front desk and were greeted by several employees, each nicer than the next. They individually took us aside to hang up our coats, explain the process and hand us our scanner. We were off! Surprisingly, FI and I made civil decisions regarding all things housewares. We pondered over place settings, platters, serving platters and citrus graters with ease. Amongst our in-store travels we noticed a chef had begun preparing breakfast sandwiches and smoothies. We were in home-goods heaven. When we'd finally eaten our fill, we circled the store a couple times to make sure we didn't miss anything. From there, we found a sales associate who helped us load our registry onto their website for all to access.

Things I loved: Everything. The food was great. The drinks were great. It wasn't crowded. And the salespeople were so lovely. Nobody gave us any sales pitches or hard sells and we were left to peruse the store at leisure. There was a representative from some knife company there as well and she was the same...no pressure sell, which I really appreciated. We even received a cute little vase as a party favor upon departure! I couldn't recommend attending a registry party at Crate & Barrel enough!

Things I didn't love: Um...hmm...we parked on the wrong side of the mall and had to walk a bit far to get to the store? Does that count? Okay, in reality, nobody ever explained any benefits (discounts, etc.) that we would be entitled to by registering. I easily looked this up on line, but in all fairness I'll mention it here.

Macy's was a bit of a different experience. By this time we were really tired and getting hungry again. We arrived in the housewares department and found the bridal registry section where an attendant was able to immediately assist us in setting up our registry. We sat and chatted for a few moments while she collected our basic information. After that was out of the way, she explained the benefits of having a registry with Macy's and gave an at-length explanation of how opening a Macy's charge card could save us even more money. She didn't push it on us, which I appreciated. We received our scanner and we were off! Our first stop was luggage. We knew we desperately needed to register for luggage as the last time we showed up at the airport for a family trip we were carrying our belongings in plastic grocery bags. No joke. From there we registered for towels and bed linens and then rounded out the registry with appliances like stand mixers and blenders.

Things I loved: They have an actual sit-down area where you can speak one-on-one with a consultant about the benefits we are entitled to and the gifts we are eligible to receive. We were never bothered by any sales associates during the process.

Things I didn't love: No food, no drink. We kept having scanner problems. Items were difficult to scan because you had to search for bar-codes. No sales associates ever came around to make sure the process was going smoothly.

Overall, the day was really great, but the big difference came in providing the food and drink at Crate, along with the fact that the entire store appears to be designed with the registering couples in mind. Barcodes and product information was readily available. At Macy's, it seemed as if registering couples were a bit of an afterthought and it was quite difficult to find the actual product you wanted amongst all of the boxes and then find the barcode to scan. Registering for towels meant you actually had to unfold the item you wanted to be able to scan it. We had to do this multiple times and it was frustrating. Plus, their scanner wasn't as user friendly.

We're pleased that we were able to register for some really great things as well as keep price-points varied to appeal to all of our guests. 

How was your registry experience? Where did you register?

Mama Drama

I love my mom, of course. But, this wedding seems to have brought out her, um, shall we say, unpleasant side?

To be honest, I hadn't expected her to be that gong-ho about planning a wedding to begin with. My parents divorced about 5 years before the engagement and her entire outlook on marriage was bleak. She had begun to hate the entire institution of it and what it stood for. She simply didn't see the point in it. So, when I got engaged, I really didn't expect her to be involved in the planning. I was wrong.

Within a few weeks of being engaged, my mother had gone to many local libraries to check-out books on etiquette, floral arrangements and calligraphy. She began to craft an opinion, or idea, of what the wedding should look like, what it HAS to look like. The problem was, her wedding fantasy looks something like this:

 

I was appreciative of her desire to be involved, of course, but after our first blow-out fight over whether we should have cupcakes or cake, I knew this process may be difficult. I remember the day like it was yesterday. I casually mentioned how cute it might be to offer cupcakes instead of a cake, "and cost effective too!" I had boasted. It was like somebody had hit a light switch. "Well Melissa, if your going to throw tradition out the window why don't you just not have a wedding at all? Why don't you just go get married at the local beach under a gazebo?!?!" She was really mad. Like, absolutely irate at the mere suggestion that we serve cake in a more bite-sized formation. I couldn't believe it.

From there it's been a never-ending cycle of decision-making, a blow-out over said decision, a week without speaking, and then a make-up phone call. Planning resumes after the last part and the cycle continues again.

I'm not trying to shirk blame, but it's not me causing the problems - it's my mother! I'll admit that at times I am quick to dismiss her ideas, laughing at her dated perception of a modern wedding, I'll even admit that I'm just as stubborn as she. However, her ability to work herself into a frenzy over the underlying tone in a purple dress, or over sending out save-the-dates without a photo simply astonishes me. She truly is making the wedding-planning process miserable. And I HATE myself for thinking that. In fact, it's driving a wedge into an already-fragile relationship.

My question is this: what do I do? Has anyone ever been in this situation? If so, how did you resolve it?

This process is supposed to bring us together, not tear us apart.

DDIY - Don't Do It Yourself

Crafty, I am not. In fact, I think that is an understatement. I can barely draw a stick figure, like, seriously.

Personal Photo

See what I mean? I really drew that...not when I was five but actually today. At the ripe, old age of 28. I'm hoping now you can begin to see my dilemma over DIY invites.The reality of the work that needs to go into these puppies has hit, and I think I've found a plan to preserve my sanity!

You see, the world of graphic design alludes me. Hell, Microsoft Word alludes me. While I was (and still am) fine with the idea of cutting, rounding corners, and assembling my invites and other stationary ,I was not aware of the massive obstacle in my way: the design process.

The fact that I even managed to download Inkscape was pretty incredible on its own. Following a wonderful tutorial from WeddingBee, found here,  I was able to download it and open it up and....well, that was it. I just stared blankly at the screen as anxiety swelled up inside of me. Then, in an even more productive endeavor, I began to panic. About the wedding. About money. About acquiring the perfect vector image. It was in this moment that I knew I had been defeated before I even began.

A graphic designer, I am not. BUT, searching Etsy? Yeah, I could do that. And so I did. I poured through pages and pages of sellers offering PIY (print-it-yourself) invitation templates. Bonus points went to the shops that offered templates for matching stationary (save-the-date, program, menu, placecard, etc.) I stumbled upon a few good options, and then I completely fell over when I saw their prices. $50 for an invitation template?! $25 for a save-the-date template?! I was feeling more defeated by the moment.

I found three shops that offered exactly what I was looking for. They provided matching stationary, customized color, and all I needed to do was pull up the template and print. I can do that. The problem is that the costs range from $95-$171. At this point I'm leaning towards the cost-effective option, but for full disclosure, here they are from cheapest to most expensive:

From H&G Paperie

From e.m.papers

From TwoYellowShoes

Please note, the respective prices, $96, $129, and $171, are for the templates ONLY. And they would include the save-the-date, invite with rsvp and reception card, menu, program and placecard.

So, what do you think? Have invitation templates given you sticker shock? Which design would you choose?

My plan now is to price out cardstock and envelope options. I then plan to price out the costs of printing through VistaPrint and Staples. Our original goal was to buy all of our stationary through Wedding Paper Divas, so I plan to stop by there to re-add-up the costs. I need to make sure that DIY invites will save me enough money to be worth the time and aggravation, despite the cost I will pay for the templates.

How much did you spend on DIY invites? And more importantly, how much do you think you saved on your wedding stationary?

Style Me Pretty.

This weekend, myself, Momma BB and 4 of my girls went to David's Bridal on the hunt for a bridesmaid dress. From ample research on the David's website, I came armed with 11 dresses that I was interested in (and that my BM's had approved.)

We began by checking in and eventually our consultant came over to ask what we were looking for. I wanted tea-length dresses in the color "Lapis." We started by trying on my favorite dress:

Ultimately, this one is "the one!" It met all the criteria: tea-length, deep purple, and reasonably priced.

The price of the dress was very important to me. It really doesn't make sense to make the girls pay $200+ on a dress that they very likely won't wear again. They tried on some dresses at the $99 price-point to no avail. Ultimately, this $140 beauty of a dress won them over with it's comfort and pockets! I still felt a bit bad about the price as I had made it my personal goal to try and find dresses less than $100...

Imagine my surprise when I stumble onto Weddingbee today and see this post from Ms. Hawk. Um, to echo her sentiment, "Eeerrr, WHAT?!" These puppies retail at $69.00 and they aren't that bad! Who knew that Target was doing this?! They only have a few styles available at this time, but I think it's a great and cost-effective alternative to the typical bridal salon.

Where did you get your bridesmaid dresses and how much did you spend? Does anyone have guilt over the amount of money you had the girls spend on the dresses?

Vendor Selection: Photography, DJ and Ceremony Music!

Most people pour themselves into hours of research and comparison when searching for wedding vendors. All that work is usually after they have decided what it is they even want. And even then it takes days and hours of interviews and meetings until the perfect vendor is selected. Us? Nope. We opted not to reinvent the wheel.

We truly lucked-out when it came to our photographer and DJ: we used friendors. A "friendor" is a friend that does the desired activity at a steep discount because they know you and love you. While they are both friends-of-friends, I like to pretend they love us just the same because we certainly love their deeply discount prices!

The only vendor we've had to really search for has been our Harpist. While we're cutting many costs, we've opted to keep the things that we think will make the biggest impact for the least cost: ceremony music and up-lighting. To find out harpist, I simply googled! From there, I picked whomever had the highest ratings and most reviews. I visited their websites and heard some samples and viola, I aimed my search. From there, I inquired about pricing. Incidentally, the person with the best reviews was also one of the lowest prices. We met with her and the rest is history!

How did you search for your vendors? What did you base your search criteria on?