RSVP Already!

So our RSVPs are due today and there are at least 12 people who have still not responded, including some family members. Frustrating! Planning a wedding has given me a whole new perspective on weddings...I will never RSVP late again. So much stuff depends on headcount; we feel a bit paralyzed until folks respond.

I was dismayed to find out that some invitations went missing in the mail. I hope the folks who didn't get their invites while other family members did weren't hurt by our apparent lack of inclusion...well, they know now that we sent them, anyway. And the invitations are so awesome that I feel annoyed at the post office for not delivering them. ;-) Here's the top of our lovely invite (I cropped out all the wording, sorry!).


We decided not to do the craters, which we were going to do as blind letterpress, but they look awesome even without them. Didn't Mr. T do a good job? Although two of my friends have commented that he should've made my boobs bigger! Ha!

Even with all the unknown replies, Mr. T and I have worked out a rough seating chart already. We did this when we were at dinner on Saturday. Pretty much any time we're together we're talking about wedding crap. I look forward to the day when we become interesting people again!

RSVPs so far

It's been so exciting to have the RSVPs come in! We opted for folks to RSVP online at our wedsite or via email, so it's instant gratification. So far we have 31 yes-es and 5 nos.

I think you just can't have a wedding without offending someone, try as you may to avoid it. Someone's already complained to the MOH because they didn't receive a plus-one on their invite. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm choosing to focus on the excitement of watching it all come together and I hope that we haven't ruffled too many feathers along the way. I will think twice before commenting on anyone else's wedding choices in the future, now that I know how hard each decision can be!

Lots of folks seem to like Mr. T's invite design, which is gratifying. All that hard work paid off! They look so great, in my opinion. I'm proud of us!

I almost forgot!

I almost forgot, I have two more invitations to send out!

The first is to our handsome president, and the second is to our celebrity governor. They won't attend, obviously (although, wouldn't that rock?!), but they may send congratulatory letters back. And by they, I mean their staff. But still.

I found these instrux for sending to President Obama and his lovely wife:

How to invite United States President to your wedding:

The Honorable Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama
The White House
Greetings Office Rm. 39
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500

Wedding invitations to the President can also be faxed to: (202) 395-1232

Invitation Tip: The White House greetings office handles as many wedding invitation requests as they can. Send your wedding invitation at least six weeks in advance. Be sure to include your old and new mailing address in case the RSVP comes later.

And for the Governator:

The Governor & Mrs. Arnold Schwartzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

I was just thinking we had a lot of invitations left!

Invitations Mailed: Check!!!

We had a wedding whirlwind weekend, and among the things we did were: taking the envelopes to the P.O. to get weighed, buying postage (we picked the king and queen love stamp, above, and we were actually pleasantly surprised by how they looked on the black envelope), hand stamping each envelope with our return address, addressing the remaining invitations (I'd done about half already), affixing postage to each envelope, sealing the envelope with a sticker, setting envelopes out to dry, and, this morning, dropping the finished product off at the post office! Woo-hoo! We still have about 4 addresses to track down, but for my purposes (and sanity), invitations are firmly checked off the to-do list.

The return address stamp was a good idea in theory but bad in practice. It was hard to align, and the silver ink from the ink pad just WOULD NOT DRY. We left those out for 36 hours in 80 degree heat, and they were still smearing when we touched them, and even after we blotted them with paper towels. So, if you are our wedding guest, and you have silver ink all over your envelope, my apologies! If I had it to do over I'd have spent quadruple the amount and gotten an embosser instead of a stamp. Oh, well. In the meantime, there is silver ink all over every surface of our home. I'm mighty glad to be done with those! We've gotten one RSVP already (we hand-delivered a couple of invites this weekend), and I can't wait for the rest to roll in. Exciting!! It's nice to see all our hard work taking shape.

This weekend we also went to Michael's because I decided I didn't trust the glue of the envelopes and I wanted something to seal them with. We ended up using the seals we initially purchased from Martha Stewart Crafts for our favor bags: little grinning skull and crossbones--they are black and white, and they glow in the dark! And then we bought other stickers to go on the favor bags at Michael's. Halloween is in full force there and it was hard to stick to our shopping list. Well, for me anyway. I really wanted the silver sign with the skull on it (with jeweled eyes) that said "Beware of Bling", but Mr. T wouldn't let me. But seriously, how perfect would that have been??

While we were there I did talk Mr. T into one frivolous purchase. No, two. They were both Martha Stewart "mad scientist" products. She just has such a nice Halloween aesthetic. One was favor bags, to mix in with the ones we already have. The second was labels for the wine bottles that will go on the tables; they say "Poison" and stuff like that on them. See below; aren't they cute? I promised Mr. T I wouldn't have to go back to Michael's again before the wedding, for the sake of our budget. Ha!

OMG OMG Invitations are Done! OMG!

This morning I needed to drive into work (instead of taking the train like I typically do) because my dance troupe has a gig tonight. As Mr. T and I got ourselves into the car (late as usual), my phone rang, with an unfamiliar number. I was worried that it was our landlord, so I made Mr. T listen to the voicemail as I drove. It was our invitation printer, saying our invites were done and ready to pick up! Well, you can guess that we took a little detour on the way to work and got those suckers in our hot little hands! They look magnificent and I am SO excited about them.

However, I am not excited that apparently these have been done for awhile and just sitting around and no one called us. That pretty much blows any idea of doing custom postage (we needed to wait until we had the invites done to weigh them, so we could find out what the postage would be). I shouldn't be so whiny and bridezilla about it, but the stamps currently available are just so ugly. Mr. T and I are both a little unenthused about using The Simpsons, gold wedding bands (blech!), or the liberty bell on our beautiful black envelopes with silver writing. The Edgar Allen Poe stamp from last year was amazing, but it's now outdated and they haven't released a new one with the new postage rate.

Oh, well, you can't win them all.

It also changes the trajectory of our weekend. We have to finish addressing envelopes and get these suckers in the mail!!! Luckily our return address stamp came in this week too.

Quiet Weekend

Mr. T and I are enjoying the calm before the storm. It's amazing how many items on our to-do list need to be done the month before the wedding, if not the week before.

This weekend I addressed about half our envelopes in my own dubious handwriting, although Mr. T was very complimentary about how they looked. I told him he was biased, but it was still nice to have a cheerleader there.

Mr. T worked on some of our other paper products: icons for the escort cards, and the drink menu for the bar. Those are looking very stylish, and without the pressure of the invitations hanging over our heads, they seemed to flow very quickly!

We should get our invites back from the printer soon, if they really are working as quickly as they thought they would. I haven't heard anything yet, and today's the exact 2-week mark.

I also created a more detailed alcohol budget. We had a general budget, but after we went to BevMo this weekend and priced what the bottles of vodka and tequila are likely to cost, we had a guideline for how much we have left to spend on the wine. That was very helpful, actually. It's unlikely we'll have enough in the budget for Tru Blood soda or Crystal Head vodka, sadly. I'm still holding onto the idea of one bottle of the vodka for display at the bar. A girl can dream, right?





We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked out flatware. Of course the style we liked has no corresponding hostess set. I put a hostess set by the same manufacturer on the registry for now, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that decision. We might have to revisit our choice.

Envelope Addressing Frustration

We got our black envelopes in the mail last week, so I thought I'd get a jump on getting our invites prepped to go by starting to address some of them on Sunday. I'd read a blog post about how to do faux calligraphy, which I thought was genius.

Sigh.

None of the things I thought would be problematic were actually a problem. I was able to easily create an envelope template and align the address properly. The envelopes fed through our home printer perfectly. The black text showed up on the black envelopes so that the type was visible under a good light, and you could trace over it. And yet, when I tried to, my attempts looked AWFUL. We went to the store and got different pens. Still awful. Mr. T tried it. Awful.

Mr. T decided that the problem was probably the pens and ink. Unlike the blogger I referenced, we didn't want to invest in a calligraphy pen...we don't have the time to learn how to use one properly anyway! We bought an assortment of silver pens, but all the attempts looked either messy, or blotchy, or spidery, like an extremely elderly calligrapher had addressed them. I think the ink just didn't want to take to the paper that already had ink on it. Mr. T also thought that as we slowed down to try and trace the address, the ink pooled up, causing the blotchy and messy effect.

So, after hours of trying to make this idea work, I gave in crabbily. Guests will just have to make do with my handwriting! Oh, well.

Invitations to Printer: Check! Plus, other random tasks

I'm so happy to report that we sent the invite files to the printer yesterday and dropped off the black paper this morning before work. Hooray! That is such a weight lifted. We were ecstatic after uploading the files yesterday.

Also, the printer has already sent us a PDF proof of our invite. That was fast! The owner told Mr. T that they were in a lull at the moment, so the printing might only take about 2 weeks. Hooray! That means, if we have some time to spare, that we can consider doing custom postage through Zazzle or a site like that, to coordinate with our invitations. If we use the post office's postage, we're stuck with some not-so-thrilling options, but we'll suck it up if we have to. I just wish they'd updated the Edgar Allen Poe stamps with the new rate...sigh.

This weekend we also accomplished a few other wedding tasks:

• We made our registries live on our wedsite. We haven't added flatware yet, but we can do that later.
• We tried two more rehearsal dinner options. This is turning out to be much more challenging than finding the wedding venue! To summarize, the Vietnamese place closest to our venue sucks, so we're looking at opening our search to restaurants without private rooms.
• We purchased a custom return address stamp from Etsy.
• We booked our hotel room for our wedding night, plus our photographer's hotel room for two nights.
• We ordered our cupcake stand (cardboard, to be painted and adorned by us).
• We purchased gifts for my bridesmaid and MOH as well as our officiant.
• I purchased a wedding band for Mr. T from an online jeweler...luckily we can return it to the company if he hates it.
• We purchased envelopes for our invitations, with extras for thank you notes. We also decided that lining the envelopes wasn't worth the hassle, so that's another thing off my list.
• We put some thought into our first dance and decided what we're going to do (but I'm not telling!)
• I scheduled my first dress fitting for this Friday! This is when I try on the muslin version. After that they order the fabric and get to work!
  

Phew! Only another 120 things to go!

Double-Digits

93 days left! I think I just started to hyperventilate a bit. Holy crap.

I'm still alive, obviously. I went to Hawaii to teach and perform and also vacation for a bit, and am now back in the chilly Bay Area, still groggy from the time change, and unable to wear any of the nice summer clothing I bought that actually fits me!

I did completely blow off the diet for a week, and haven't weighed myself yet, so who knows how I did in that regard. I'm afraid to know!

In news of wedding things achieved, Mr. T bought his suit. Luckily for us, he liked the suit they had in stock at Sak's, so he's going to have that one altered to fit him a little better, and only the vest will need to be custom.

We are almost done with the invitations and will probably get them off to the printer in the next few days. What a relief. We are probably not going to do any blind letterpress after all, but I'm not disappointed. Once I got to have black paper, true happiness was achieved. ;-)

We still need to settle the matter of the rehearsal dinner venue fairly soon. So much to do, so much to do!

Invitation Update

The printer says we can do black paper! Yay! and I've found some that won't break the bank, so we're still under budget. I'm learning all about paper--pounds versus gsm, and how cover stock is different. I think this might actually help me with my day job!

Now that we know we can do black paper with silver type, Mr. T's gotten re-inspired about the invites (again) and has gone in a new direction--we're no longer just doing a type design. This weekend he was working on a monogram for us with little success and a lot of cursing. It's funny, we've both come full circle with what we wanted for invites at the very beginning of our engagement: I wanted black paper, and he wanted a silhouette of us against a moon, with our two cats and a big tree. Last night he went home and worked some more on the invite with that in mind and I have to say, it's looking really good! I felt very positive about us achieving this one. Phew!

We still want to do some blind letterpressing as part of the design, and that may prove tricky, but we'll deal with that when we come to it...

Invitation Frustration

So, the clock is ticking, and we have no invitations.

Mr. T and I have finally conceded defeat regarding our previous invitation idea. It's too difficult for us to do on our own, and too expensive for us to contract out, and on top of that, the letterpress printer seemed dubious that we could even do print it the way we'd like to, so we're back to the drawing board (tick, tock, tick tock!).

There's an amazing letterpress blog, Beast Pieces, that Mr. T and I have been stalking, so we went there for inspiration (well, and I went to about 300 other sites too, but I figure you don't want to see all the rejects here!).

Here's our new plan:
1. Black paper. This makes me very happy as I have wanted black paper all along. I love the idea of it.
2. Silver ink. Apparently white ink doesn't letterpress on black paper well, but metallics do. Again, awesome.
3. Blind debossing. Mr. T feels confident that he can create a nice border and pattern for the edges of the paper, and we'll have our text centered in the middle. Simple, elegant, and still unique.

I've sent off some questions to the printer about this new plan and am hopeful that they'll say it's all good...next step will be to research paper stock (our printer doesn't carry black, of course!). Mr. T feels a lot better and less stressed about this plan, and therefore, so do I.

Here are some inspiration pix from Beast Pieces:

Love the blind-debossed pattern:


Another example of blind debossing:


More blind debossing. I ADORE this card!



Cross your fingers for us!!

Invitation Inspiration

On Friday night I printed out samples of a bunch of free fonts I'd downloaded off the interweb, mostly from Dafont.com. There was a great Edward Gorey one in there that I loved...we might use that font for the insert, but not for the wedding invitation itself.

For the invite, I had also printed out a bunch of posters from this one site; they were all hand-inked and hand-lettered (no computers involved! Crazy!). Mr. T loved them as much as I did and started drawing an invitation loosely based on the posters. Gotta love that art school education! Here are some of our inspirations:







Amazing, right? I can't wait for our invitations to be done. This was a nice antidote to the practicality of the Knot checklist blues; I needed something to push me back into being excited, rather than overwhelmed!

I talked to our invitation printer today and they put a little bit of a damper on my high spirits...it seems these are going to be tricky to letterpress (when they started saying technical mumbo-jumbo like "double-bump" I tuned out a little. Mr. T can deal with that). Not impossible, but tricky. We're stubborn, though, so we're going to see it through! I have faith in our stubborness. :-)

And for fun, I'll add a Hello Lucky! Halloween card that we also really like:


Our goal with these designs is to increase the wedding/love related imagery and decrease the creepy/gore/devil related imagery, in order to hopefully find a nice Hallowedding balance that won't cause our relatives to call in an exorcist. That would put a damper on the ceremony. Or, it would be really, really funny, but still, it's probably best avoided.

145 Days to Go and OMG, We Have So Much To Do

I finally joined The Knot because they had some articles on Halloween weddings I wanted to read. The articles weren't really worth it, it turns out.

I had to put in our wedding date as part of my registration and I got an automatically generated checklist. These are the things we haven't done, and many of them are overdue according to The Knot:

• Make sure to insure your engagement ring. [We do need to do this. We also need renter's insurance. Sigh.]
• Decide on and meet with your officiant to discuss ceremony structure. [We've emailed some stuff, but no real discussions yet.]
• Brides: Start shopping for bridesmaid dresses. [Actually, the MOH and I are going to visit the other bridesmaid in LA this weekend for girl fun and dress shopping! I can't wait, it's going to be such a fun little trip.]
• Register for your wedding gifts, and don't forget to include some choices appropriate for your upcoming bridal shower as well. [GAH. No progress. We decided to register at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, but aside from agreeing that we need new knives, we don't know what to register for.]
• Brides: Decide on the bridesmaid dresses. [See above...maybe we'll get that done this weekend, or maybe the girls will just be left to their own devices. My only stipulation is that the dresses be black, and not too short!]
• Book a baker [done], choose your wedding [cup]cake[s] design[s] [to be done], and send a deposit [done].
• Start planning the rehearsal dinner. [No luck on this front. I've researched a few places, but we've only tried one, with disappointing results. We need to get back on this. I would love a more informal dinner, like Mexican food with margaritas, but there's not much near our wedding venue/hotel. Sigh.]
• Start working on your invitation wording and design. [I am happy to report we started doing this last weekend, even though Mr. T had a cold. That's info for a separate post, though.]
• Finalize your invitation wording. [TBD]
• Finalize menu and service details with caterer. [We still need to pick a vegetarian main dish and a passed appetizer. We're not doing that until October, though, so The Knot will need to scream at us until then.]
• Order your invitations and announcements (don't forget plenty of extra envelopes). [Again, TBD. Invites will take 2-4 weeks to print after a proof is approved, so we're thinking we'll send them to the printer mid-July or so. I'm torn on the envelopes...it's tempting to just have the printer do the return addresses for us, but another part of me would love to do either black envelopes with orange lining or vice-versa. And that means ordering envelopes and doing custom liners. Hm.]
• Start thinking about flower arrangement styles you like, and figure out what flowers will be in season on your wedding day. [Well, I guess I have thought about it. But I'm not entirely sure about the seasonal thing.]
• Decide on a floral scheme, choose flowers. [Not really done. Except I'd like Fall colors, and primarily reds, burgundies, and a bit of orange.]
• Reserve tables, chairs, and/or other rental equipment you'll need (unless caterer or site is taking care of it). [Mostly this is done, but we have some stereo equipment stuff to sort out.]
• Grooms: Start looking to buy or rent tux, suit, or other formal attire. [We did start...we just didn't see much! And other plans have prevented us from going shopping again. Can you hear me hyperventilating yet? This list is a mile long!]
• Book rehearsal-dinner site. [Um, no. See above.]
• Book hotel room for your wedding night. [We haven't done this yet. I think Mr. T would like us to stay at a high-end hotel near our wedding venue, whereas I would just like it to be easy, so I want us to stay at the venue (although The Claremont is sounding mighty tempting). So we're still discussing.]
• Compile packages for out-of-town guests with hotel reservation (done) and city information, and mail them out. [Our "wedsite" gives hotel info, but no city info. I'm undecided about mailing out packets, but I suppose I could put something together...in all my free time.]
• Grooms: Decide on your groomsmen's attire. [I doubt if Mr. T has put much thought into this. He only has one groomsman, so it's a little easier. I think he'd like his brother to wear a suit, but who knows what color suit, or what color shirt, or tie!]
• Book your honeymoon flights (if not using frequent flyer miles) and make all your other travel reservations. [I'm putting this one in Mr. T's lap...the mini-moon, that is. When we take a real honeymoon trip I'll be recovered enough to help plan it. For the mini-moon I'd like relaxation, good food, and a massage or two. And some nice scenery.]
• Brides: Choose your bridesmaids' accessories (shoes, gloves, etc.) and either purchase or pass along purchasing information. [Well, my girls can pick their own shoes, and they don't need gloves!]
• Grooms: Give all of the groomsmen the information they need to buy and/or reserve their attire. [Nothing done here; see above.]
• Pick out or design a ketubah or other marriage contract required by your religion. [We don't have to worry about this one. Check!]

Note that this checklist is not everything we have to do...it's just everything we should be doing during this timeframe...next month, there will be even more items looming over us! It's feeling a little insurmountable at the moment. One thing at a time, right?

OMW Week 16, WW Week 6, and Weekend Progress

Another 2 pounds lost! That makes 7.5 total so far. I was thankful not to be chastised by the WW tracker again this time.

I would've gotten to the gym earlier today, but we discovered that ants had found the cat food overnight. So we built a moat out of a cookie tin (thanks to Heather and Erik for the idea). The cats were super freaked out by it, especially Dobby, but hopefully they get used to it. I hate ants. Anyway, I didn't do my full workout today, but I only had to cut a few things.

Regardless, it was a good workout this morning. Warm weather makes for loose muscles! Friday's workout was really good too. mmmmwarmth. The older I get, the more cat-like I become. The cats and I basked in the weather this weekend. Ahhh.

This weekend was relaxed but we also got some wedding stuff done. First, we walked all around the UC Berkeley campus looking for likely wedding photo sites. This was inspired by Offbeat Bride's recent ad for Lilia Photography. I looked at Lilia's site, and found these lovelies:




Not only is UCB my alma mater and a nostalgic location for me, OMG dinosaur bones!! Or a casting of them, at least. How cool would that be for a Hallowedding photo shoot? Mr. T likes the idea too, so Saturday we went in search of fossils! It took some tramping around...apparently I never had a reason to be in the life sciences building when I went to school there? We eventually found it. Unfortunately the campus was having some sort of open house that day and it was packed. We can only hope Halloween is a little calmer. The campus is lovely and would provide a number of good locations, not the least of which would be the top of Sather Tower (seen in the first picture).

Feeling virtuous not only about getting wedding stuff done but also all that walking, I persuaded Mr. T to take me out to dinner at one of our candidates for the rehearsal dinner, a seafood restaurant in Berkeley (and no, not Spenger's). Sadly, although the restaurant was beautiful and my margarita kicked ass (had to use some extra WW points on that one!), my halibut was dry and overcooked. And for a seafood restaurant, that was just sad. Mr. T liked his crab cakes, but the halibut was a deal-breaker for me. As my day-of-coordinator might say...they had one job. And they blew it. Disappointing.

Sunday I worked on doing data entry into our spreadsheet; I entered in all the addresses I have and tried to track down some of the ones I don't. We still haven't sent out save the date emails but I feel closer to doing that now that I have a list of email addresses (with some gaps).

I had been waivering on whether to invite my mother's whole side of the family, because we're not super close, but I felt that politeness dictated it since I took a trip out to visit all of them (mostly my grandma, but we ended up seeing everyone) last Fall. I decided to just go ahead and add them to the list and stop stressing out about it, which means adding more money for food and cupcakes, etc., etc., but it's not all that much more, and plus now we have time to save up for it (since we were almost done saving money for the wedding anyway). So, if they come, we're covered, and if they don't, we have some extra, and I'm relieved to have just decided.

We are almost at the 6-month mark, and need to really tackle some of the bigger things like registering, invitation design, Mr. T's suit, etc.!! I'm feeling anxious about it.

This weekend we're attending Mr. T's cousin's wedding. His cousin's fiancee has trusted me to create the wedding bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres! That's a lot of trust, and I hope I don't let her down. Granted, it's an intimate family wedding, but still, it's hugely important. I'm thankful to have a chance to practice my workshop skills! It already feels like that was so long ago.

Flower DIY Workshop, plus random stuff

The MOH agreed to take a DIY flower arranging workshop with me in a few weeks. Since it looks like we're now having flowers on the tables, as well as my bouquet, the two bridesmaids' bouquets, and boutennieres for Mr. T, his best man, our officiant, the dads, PLUS corsages for the moms (and my grandma, if she comes), and it also looks like we dumbly decided to do it ourselves (with Mr. T's mom's help), I thought some training was in order.

The workshop is $75 per person (supplies are provided), and they walk you through all of the items mentioned above. While I think it's worth it, I also think that the MOH shouldn't have to pay for my bright ideas, so that's $150 added to our budget...which I'm wrestling with. I know it will all be cheaper than hiring a florist to do these things, so I suppose I just need some perspective. Right? Plus, if we're just hopeless at it, that will be a nice warning well ahead of the wedding, and we can start replanning our tables and talking to florists. So I guess it's a worthwhile investment. Right?

Speaking of bouquets, I just love feathers in them. Here are some fun photos from the interweb:






I really love the idea of feather boutennieres and corsages. We can make them ahead of time, and then use those same feathers in the bouquets to tie everything together.

Regarding the centerpieces, we've been struggling with how to incorporate the candy jars into the centerpieces, now that we've added pumpkins/flowers into the mix. I couldn't help but be interested in this candy-themed wedding on Weddingbee. First, I love their invites--candy bars with a golden ticket inside! Who wouldn't love that??




Second, for their escort cards, they used images of candy to convey the guests' dinner choices. You can barely see it, but the cards were clustered atop different boxes of candy--whatever candy your card was on coordinated to the table where you were sitting. High-concept, but I guess it worked for them:


Here are some pictures of their centerpieces:



I love the bright colors and how the candy is also in the vase with the flowers! Nice.

Here's a picture of a menu on the table...they put a different quote from Willy Wonka on each table's menu. I love these people!


I've been talking about my love for papercutting...look at these great numbers and letters I found via Weddingbee, for an Etsy vendor:




I love these! Sigh. Maybe we can recreate something like this on the invites...

I found another great pumpkin image, sort of like the Martha Stewart pumpkins I've been admiring:


I also found some great cake images during my search for cupcakeries. Look at the amazing Corpse Bride cake, complete with cake topper to represent the two brides:


And look at this great Hello Kitty zombie cake! Obviously not a wedding cake, but I love it:


And finally, speaking of HK, I love this pic of a Hello Kitty wedding done in Japan! The bride and groom run the Hello Kitty museum in Germany. Look at the top of her dress!

Wedding Status Meeting

Mr. T and I actually had to schedule a status meeting this weekend to check in about our budget and guest list. I knew I wanted to discuss wedding stuff on Sunday, and he announced, "we'll meet between four and five," so we did. Well, I was doing laundry, actually, so we had to start late. Luckily he forgave me, although I did get some flak about being tardy while I was hanging my laundry. I found the exercise of having a scheduled meeting very productive...much more productive than talking to Mr. T while he's watching television, which doesn't lead to the highest retention rate.

We had to increase our budget by about $3000, thanks to our increased expectations about my dress, our rehearsal dinner, and a few other things. Luckily, we are still right on track in terms of our savings, so that's good. I'm glad I have all this budget training from my job...it keeps me honest on our spreadsheet.

Speaking of which, the spreadsheet I got off indiebride.com kicks ass. Clearly someone who knows and loves Excel created it. Unfortunately, while I can get by in Excel, I'm no master, and editing some of the formulas is proving troublesome. I'll figure it out, though, or I'll just MacGuyver it for my needs. The spreadsheet includes a tab for the guest list, with drop down menus indicating type of guest--his family, her family, guest/spouse, or attendant. Then it gives you a count and the percentage for each type of guest. It also gives you a count for the total number of invitations needed (though we're inviting about 100, we only need around 60 invitations). This spreadsheet practically does your laundry for you. I'm in love!

One tough decision we had to make was cutting a few of our guests, or at least putting them on our "B" list. I hate that. I wish we could just invite everyone. It makes me feel icky to decide that I haven't hung out with this or that person enough in the last few years, so they're off the list. However, unless we win the lottery soon, I have a feeling these types of decisions will confront us again and again. Sigh.

Beautiful Invitations

I think I found these through WeddingBee. First, from local letterpress Hello, Lucky!, a SF-based invite:


So cute! I wish they had a Berkeley one. I noticed that Hello, Lucky! is now doing digital printing, a much more affordable option. But sigh, I love the letterpress.

Second, a woodcut (lasercut?) invite:



I LOVE this one. However, the bride admitted she went through a Hong Kong vendor who couldn't speak English, so I don't think these invites are in my future. But I covet them.

Invitation Inspiration

Last night Mr. T and I had a budget date (well, the MOH came too...let's call it a budget outing!) at the Asian Art Museum to see an exhibit of Afghani jewelry and art...admission was $5! A steal. We felt cultured AND frugal.

Afterward Mr. T and I were watching LA Ink at home. Kim was working on a text-based tattoo, and Mr. T said, "that's sorta like the typeface I'm thinking about for our invitations!" and jumped up and turned on his computer, mid-episode.

Unfazed, I just kept watching the episode...I figured it would keep. After it was done we looked at some other inspiration fonts online. Mr. T started asking me for invitation wording so he could gauge how much room he had to work with. I was like, "Really? You're going to make me write our invitation wording at 11 pm off the top of my head? I need to think about this!!" I felt frustrated about being pressured, and he was puzzled about why I wasn't more enthusiastic, since I love wedding stuff. His argument that it was just placeholder text, and my argument was that he shouldn't get started on design without the real text (both of us speaking from our work perspectives, I suspect...it's funny how different our work worlds are, sometimes!).

So, we ended in a stalemate, or perhaps a compromise. It's funny how inspiration can strike at the most inconvenient times. In the end he got some dummy text to work with, after I told him about 20 times that it wasn't final and it was likely that we would have more text than what I'd just supplied.

Since we were on a roll, we also looked at the engagement photos again, so we could pick out 10 for the photographer to re-touch. Mr. T sheepishly admitted that he'd overreacted and he didn't quite hate the photos as much as he'd declared previously. We picked out 10 and I sent the list off to the photographer. Hooray! I posted some on Facebook for those of y'all who are curious.

And finally, I dug out some of the wedding books and checked out some timeline stuff. At some point I'd bought a Knot book of checklists, and as I read through it last night I realized how great a book it is. I also realized we're doing fine in terms of timeline. The only things we hadn't done on their schedule was create a wedding website and send out save the dates. I'm thinking I do want to do save the dates after all, only just via email. I thought we could use one of the engagement photos.

Anyway, it was a relief to see I wasn't letting a million details slip through the cracks and that we were right on schedule, at least according to the Knot. Phew! I was up past midnight reading. Mr. T really started something with that invitation discussion!

No STDs for us

Mr. T and I decided we're not going to do Save The Date cards. Everyone that we care about knows when we're getting married. We really just need to send the hotel info to the out of towners, which can be accomplished via email.

Now we get more $ to spend on invitations! That was easy.

Invite Ideas and Inspiration Boards

I'm tidying up my saved jpegs, so that means they have to get posted before I forget about them!
First up, some invitation ideas. Lately Mr. T has said he wants to do a more typographic design, so I'm not sure we'll end up with anything resembling the following, but I like it all.

First up, a "woodcut" made out of construction paper. Although we certainly have plenty of time to make these, I think it would drive us crazy. Still, amazing, no? So skilled.



Next, an adorable pumpkin bag that holds the invite. A bitch to ship, but cute.



I love the silver ink on the black paper. I wonder how that's done.


Some more "traditional" invites. You can actually buy these blank and print them yourself at home. If we're cutting some more corners, this might be a way to go:




And finally, some inspiration boards about Halloween weddings, exciting! I love the one of the drinks; that's black vodka in some of them! Who knew that existed?








Oh, and one Day of the Dead board. Love the black glitter pumpkin! Hmmmmm....