Love is in the Air

Since Mr. T and I got engaged, 3 couples who are friends/acquaintances have also gotten engaged. I guess it's the whole Valentine's Day thing--love is indeed in the air! Also, we know two couples who got engaged before we did.

It's good to have so many affianced folks around, because I don't feel as guilty discussing wedding ideas with other engaged people--they are probably the only ones as interested as we are in all of the minutiae it takes to plan a wedding. I mentioned honeyfund.com to one of the folks yesterday, and he was really happy to find out about it (he was having the whole wedding budget versus honeymoon budget issue too).

I left a message inquiring about touring our first venue today. Yes, we theoretically have LOTS of time, but I'd really love to lock in our date, for one, and second, once we have the venue, everything else will flow from there--food, budget, decor, invitations, etc. It seems like a lot of places will not let you attach anything to the walls, which I understand, but is a little disappointing. I will have to channel the decorations into other areas, I suppose. Question #1 for the venue: Do you have black or orange table linens?

I got my yearly work bonus on Friday. Although of course I wanted it to be higher, it was really exciting to move the money into our wedding savings account and realize we have saved 30% of our budget already. I wouldn't mind saving more than our budget, though. At work I have to do budgets for projects and I always add some "padding" for the unexpected--and rule number one is that something unexpected will come up. So I'd like our wedding fund to have some padding too.

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone! It seems odd to have St. Patty's Day and Easter in the same week, just like it was odd to have Daylight Savings Time early this year. I got my niece an adorable Easter card (letterpress, of course) from Hello! Lucky:


So cute! I love pink and brown together.

Letterpress-OUCH!

So, I was right--I've been looking up letterpress pricing and most places run between $1100 and $1300 for the quantity that we would need. YIKES. And that's just invites, reply cards, and envelopes. No ribbons, inner envelopes, or other embellishments.

That Etsy vendor is looking more reasonable, although honestly, $700 still seems crazy to me.

I did find one letterpress vendor that has done letterpress printing since 1946 (!) that was more reasonable, mainly because they do it with polymer plates instead of lead type, so it's a slightly different process than traditional letterpress. Their stuff still looks beautiful though, for example:



The absolute cheapest (one color of ink, completely blank envelopes) would be $400. Also, it would mean we would have to go with white or cream stock, which I didn't initially want to do--I was thinking orange stock with black ink.

Two ink colors, blank envelopes, would be $630. It's worth considering, I suppose. Also, they are local to us, so we could even go pick them up if we're allowed--no shipping costs!

As I was looking I found these great letterpress Halloween cards from local vendor "Hello Lucky!". Mmmletterpress. The second is a great way to make the most of one ink color, I thought.

Save the Date Cards

I think the Save the Date (or "STD"--hee, hee!) cards will be pretty easy to do once we have a venue settled. We can do a simple 4 x 6 postcard in the design of our choice and have them printed for about $100.

I found some really cute ones online, again courtesy of Offbeat Bride. I adore photo booths and I always drag Mr. T into them when we see them in bars and stuff, along with whichever friends are with us, which can lead to hilarious photos where only pieces of our heads/bodies are visible from frame to frame.

(I actually was considering renting a photo booth for the wedding, but I will have to see how we're doing with the budget first.)

Here's the whole invite. I believe they put it together themselves. Again, Mr. T is worried that homemade invites have the potential to look...very homemade, but I think these are cute:




Here's the photo strip. They had a friend take their photos against a white backdrop, holding up pieces of paper, and then did Photoshop work later to add the wording and the photo booth effect. Very cute!



I know we can do whatever we like, but part of me thinks we should keep to the Halloween theme even in the Save the Date cards. Maybe if we do a photo booth shoot we could put different costumes on for each picture? Or maybe just having the palette in orange and black is enough? Hm.

The Invites--to DIY, or not to DIY

I don't mind a certain amount of DIY. I'm not the most crafty person, but Mr. T went to art school, so I think we could pull off designing and printing our own invites on our own printer at home. Mr. T is worried that they will look terrible. I guess I can't fault him for being concerned.

Still, finding premade Halloween wedding invitations is pretty much not going to happen. I actually did find one vendor, but they were in the U.K. and I didn't love their stuff.

We both love the look of letterpress printed stuff, but my initial research has been discouraging--I found one vendor on Etsy that charges $700 just for 100 invites. I will keep pricing, but that first amount doesn't make me feel very confident about affordable letterpress invites. But, you never know.

In my googling I did find some adorable DIY invites. I love the look of the inside of this first one:

It looks all Edward Goreyesque, which I love. I also love the white type on the black background. I'm not as crazy about the Hardy Boys front cover. Mr. T says it's obvious that they pasted the invitation together and says it looks cheap to him. I don't mind the pasted together look so much, but I'm not a graphic designer. I also found these:


I think this is from Better Homes and Gardens. I like the look of the vellum, and I like the font they used too. I haven't shown it to Mr. T yet, so I don't know if this is an approved font or not. I was joking with Mr. T that we should use Comic Sans or Papyrus for our fonts, trying to keep my best poker face on so he'd think I was serious, but he knew I was kidding. I guess 10 years of dating helps you to know stuff like that. Mr. T is very opinionated on the subject of fonts. An Italian restaurant opened up in our neighborhood and printed their very cheap looking sign using Papyrus...when they went out of business, he snorted, "well, no wonder!" (As an aside, if you haven't seen the documentary "Helvetica," and you are at all interested in books, typesetting, or graphic design, you should check it out.)

I also found some just plain old Halloween invitations, which we could have customized with our own text. I liked this one:



I like the simplicity, with just the black and orange. Perhaps it's too Halloween and not enough wedding, though? The bonus is, these are cheaper--$200 for the quantity we'd need. However, it doesn't include a reply card. I suppose we could do our own, just on orange cardstock (although that presents the problem of matching the oranges...). I also thought about having all the reply cards be vintage Halloween postcards, something like this:


We could get books of postcards and each invite would have a different postcard. Of course, we'd still need to print on the backs.

Mr. T would like to have one of our artist friends draw something for the front--do a totally custom invite--but I'm not sure yet where we could get those printed or how much those would cost. There are machines for home printing--almost like silkscreening--called Gocco, but they are hard to find and set up costs would be $200 or so, plus paper expenses and ink, etc. I like the looks of the ones I've seen, but I'm not convinced it would be cheaper, or that it would look good in my noncrafty hands...I guess Mr. T would be assigned silkscreening duties.

I mused aloud the other day that I'm considering taking a calligraphy class, to address our invites. Now, I know I could just address them myself in my normal handwriting and that would be fine. (Unless, of course, you're reading one of those wedding magazines that admonishes you, "Get your invites to the calligrapher early!" The calligrapher??? I priced this, just out of curiosity, and it would cost us about $5 an invite. Ouch!) But, I have plenty of time, and I think the calligraphy would be a nice touch with the Halloween theme. Also, I could do signage for the reception in calligraphy. Mr. T surprised me by saying he'd taken a class when he was a kid and that he'd be into taking another one with me. I guess there are still things to find out about your partner after 10 years! So, we might do that.

I'll do a separate post on Save the Date cards...those will be easier, once we get a venue, that is.

La Musique

As I sketched out our initial budget it became apparent we were going to have to scale it back a bit. Mr. T suggested doing our own music on an iPod, an idea that I'm warming up to. I love music and used to spend hours making my own mixed tapes...ah, cassettes.

I ran across this idea, I think on the Offbeat Bride blog, again (love that site):



What a great way to compile a list! And this way I can make certain we'll have an array of music to get everyone dancing.

I'm brainstorming Halloween-ish songs to put in the mix, like:
Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo
Thriller by Michael Jackson
Monster Mash (not sure about that one, but it keeps popping into my head, unfortunately)
Every day is Halloween by Ministry (possibly for later in the evening...don't want to scare the families too much)
Pet Sematary by the Ramones

Any suggestions?

Godawful Wedding Crap

This site made me laugh. I'm not sure which I like more, the bride and groom cutting into a 3-D representation cake of the bride (do you start at the head? creepy) or the mermice cake toppers. Also, the wedding toilet paper was priceless.

Signed, Mata Hari

The library emailed me and told me that one of my requested books is in: Signed, Mata Hari. I love the internet, and I'm loving the library card. I only hope that all of my requested books don't come in at once! I'm a fast reader, but I have my limits...
I love her coat!