The Big Invite Post

Phew! The invites are out, and based on initial reactions, I believe we have a success. And I have many tips and lessons learned to boot!

Here are the hard facts on the invites for those who are curious:

 - Pocketfold: From Cards & Pockets, in Sand

 - Invitation mat: From Cards & Pockets, in Sparkling Merlot

 - Invitation envelope: From Cards & Pockets, in Snow White

 - RSVP envelop: From Cards & Pockets, in White

 - Invitation envelope liners: From Cards & Pockets, in Sparkling Merlot

 - Invitation and supplement inserts: Printed by TGI Direct on bright white 100# text on an iGen digital press

 - Ribbon: Michaels, in gold

 - Flowers: Michaels, various colors (all on clearance so I'm not sure they're available anymore)

*I have to apologize ahead of time, because my pictures aren't the best, but hopefully they do them a little bit of justice.*

Ordering of all of the supplies, as I mentioned in my previous post, was a bit of a stressful process. Not because of issues from where I ordered them (which, by the way, was all from Cards & Pockets - I have used them before and love, love, love them!). I had previously purchased swatch books from the site so I knew what colors would work best with what I wanted for the invites. So I go, I place the order, I triple check my quantities (ordered about 10% extras just in case...which came in handy) and my order comes quickly in the mail. All was great except for one small detail - I ordered my invite liners in the wrong color.

Doh.

Thanks to the wonderful customer service of Cards & Pockets though, I was able to return them and get a refund, while the shipment of the correct liners shipped out to me. Which, brings me to:

Tip #1: Double, triple, quadruple check any order you place for this kind of stuff.


It kind of goes without saying, but even when I was feeling super duper careful about this stuff, I still mistakenly chose "Sparkling Sapphire" instead of "Sparkling Merlot" and was so concerned about my quantities of materials and not on the colors. Oh well, all fixed.

Then I invited all of my local ladies over to help with the invitation assembly process. I had all my materials, I had sent my files to the printer and all was looking good so I figured, hey, let's at least have a party about it! Wrong. The invites weren't ready. Due to a couple of issues with my files (fonts, stuff not lining up, sillyness), my actual printed invites were delayed. Which, brings me to:

Tip #2: Don't freak out about things you can't control.

Not easy to say to a bride on the edge, but I was freaking out about the fact that I wouldn't have the company of my friends to help assemble every last bit of the invites with me. But after taking a step back (and getting talked off a ledge from my wonderful fiance), I realized that everything I needed my friends to do wouldn't get done in one day anyway. So while I didn't actually have invitations for my friends to assemble, we still had plenty to keep us busy.

Now here is where I would show pics of my beautiful friends helping me assemble these things, but in the throes of wine, food, and a lot of fun (at least for me), I forgot. But here is what we ended up with:

Alright, so it doesn't look like much. But that's a lot of gluing of invite backers to pocketfolds, cutting of ribbon, and gluing of flowers to the ribbons. Within the next couple of days, the rest of the printed materials arrived, which brought much joy and happiness to my heart:

Obviously not all of them, but you get the idea.

The invites were variably printed, which means I sent a data file to TGI to tell them everyone who was coming, and they essentially did a mail merge of sorts (I am totally, 100% over-simplifying that process by the way) so that all of our guests invites were individually personalized for them. Like so:

(Yes Jill, you were my example) :)

And, as a nice convenience for us, everyone's names were personalized on their Response card as well, so we didn't have to worry about people forgetting to put their names on their cards:

There was also a spot for people to let us know a song that would get them on the dance floor. Love. Love love love!

There was also this little gem, that took me foreverrrrrr to do, mainly because I hand-drew the map of Traverse City:

Then came the gluing of the envelope liners to the pre-printed envelopes (TGI was also nice enough to print the addresses for us), which literally involved taking some glue, putting it at the top peak of the liner, inserting them in, and pressing down. Easy peasy:

After this, our dear friend Leslie came over to help finish with gluing the invites to the purple backers, and then inserting all of the inserts, while I stamped the RSVP envelope and invite envelope with my parent's return address and put mailing stamps on the envelopes. Unfortunately, I'm a big dummy and I don't have a picture of us putting them all together. Yeah, I know. But we were definitely in the letsgetthisdoneplease mode. Look at my little helper all nice and focused:

That's Allen putting glue dots on the pocketfold so they would seal, and also on the ribbon so it would stay put. Those ribbons are crazy little fellas. But if you look closely you can see it all nice and put together. Sorta. More detail on the design to come at a later date.

Then we stuffed them in their proper envelopes (because the invite name had to match the response card name, which had to match the envelope name). There was a whole lot of quality checking on these babies:

Which brings me to my next tip:

Tip #3: If you're going to individualize your invites, double triple and quadruple check them.


Going through at the last minute, there were a couple of oopsies (people who had Rehearsal invites in theirs that shouldn't have, people with same last names getting mixed up Response cards) so I'm definitely glad we were going through them all just one last time at the end. But there could still be some oopsies out there, so if there are...oops.

In the end, I absolutely love our invites. Not only the design of them (which I'll get into in another post because this one is already long enough), but the fact that all of them were individually touched, put together, and personalized for each of our guests. And the feedback I've been getting on them has been absolutely awesome so thank you to everyone for their kind words! I promised they were put together with lots and lots of love :)

Creative Block

I've been spending the last few weeks starting to work on the creative for our invitations. Here's where I'm at so far:

Haha :)

The problem that I'm running into right now is the same one I've had all along - I have TOO many ideas! I've really been trying to narrow them down, and I know that I have the right "look" at this point for the wedding overall...but where to go from there? Yes there's inspiration boards, etc etc and I have all of that, but pulling all of those into a piece of paper tends to have its difficulties.

This weekend, my mom and I are going to meet with my aunt to discuss flowers - logistics of getting everything up north and cost to do so, overall look of the flowers (some of this is obviously limited by the transport up north, but I know it's all going to look amazing), and really nailing down the details of the day. I have a feeling that this will be a HUGE help in getting an overall picture of the day, especially because I know my mom and aunt will have a lot of great ideas to get everything executed. I just hope that all of those discussions get the creative juices flowing for me afterward!

Bouquet Bliss

A few (out of MANY) of the gorgeous bridal bouquets I've been seeing online lately. All of these are courtesy of Karen Tran Florals:

THE update

Alright guys, the blog post you have all been waiting for. 

We have a venue.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Ok, WOO again! So much to update on! After much, much, MUCH searching, and then re-searching, and then going back to our original thoughts, and then wiping all of those clean and making a fresh start of it, we have a venue. This was, by far, the most painful part (so far) in the wedding planning process for us, but I can honestly say that we are so happy with the decision we've made, and it's going to be a blast for everyone.

My dad said one thing to me during this whole process that really stuck with me: "You know, you're having all of these people come up north for your wedding - don't you want them to feel like they're up north? Or feel like they're on vacation?"

And BAM! The tone was set for our wedding, almost instantly. I couldn't get that thought out of my head. Then my mom stepped in with those thoughts in mind, and with all of her awesome connections and creativity, found us the link (and the people) that made that thought turn into reality.

Where is the venue, you ask? Well, it's still in Traverse City (downtown, actually). It's a private property that sits right on Grand Traverse Bay with about 200 ft of waterfront. Yes, we're rocking the outdoor reception. Yes, that's scary, but I love it. There is no other way to bring everyone up north and make them feel like they're up north without actually feeling all of that - being outdoors, being on the water, hanging out with the people you love, watching the sunset, and then partying the rest of the night away :)

Also with this venue officially solidifies our date. It was actually already solidified with the church, but now that the venue is booked, it's official official. And that date is...

September 10, 2011

Mark your calendars, it's going to be legen...wait for it...dary. 

Do you know what this means?! This means that the date is settled, we have a venue, we have a caterer, we have a bar, we have a church, and now we can start booking all of the really super fun stuff like photographers and DJs, we can start talking flowers, do invites, everything else that we've been looking forward to! How awesome is that?! That's what this weekend will be dedicated to - we're heading up north with Allen's parents to get as much of that done as possible. Also, I will take more pictures of the reception site. I can't wait for you all to see it :)

I feel like we're finally making progress on all of this now. We're checking things off the master list (and trust me, it's a long one). Finally we get to breathe a sigh of relief, and all of the really super fun stuff can start coming together. I can't wait to share the rest of our progress with all of you!!

Flowers by Gabrielle

As many of you may or may not know, my Aunt Carolyn co-owns a flower shop in Grosse Pointe called Flowers by Gabrielle (Gabby is the other co-owner) and I used to work with them quite a bit back in my college days. They do all kinds of events all over the area, including weddings, Stanley Cup parties (no joke), parties gallore - including kid's birthday parties, and all kinds of other stuff too. I am lucky enough to say that they will also be doing the flowers for Allen's and my wedding on top of all that!

Well, this past weekend, they had a monster of a wedding that they did the flowers for. They just posted the pictures up, and ohmygosh did my jaw hit the floor when I saw the photos. Stunning. Seriously. Here are a few of my favorites (all photos courtesy of Flowers by Gabrielle's Facebook page)

Bridesmaid bouquets - sooo gorgeous! (and huge!)

Tent Entrance

The Head Table - the entire table had mirrors on it so the flowers and candles reflected up (so cool)

Banquet Tables

Closer look at the banquet tables

There are so, so many things that I love about what they did! Of course, when you have the money to do all of this, that makes things easier ;) but I know my aunt and Gabby can make anything look gorgeous because they are so creative and so good at what they do! I know that I am in good hands for sure, and I can't wait to work with them. Love it!

Pretty Things Part 1

Ok so while I have tons and tons to update everyone on, I don't really want to talk about all of it until it's completely, 100% set in stone. So, in the meantime I will be dedicating the next couple of weeks to all of the pretty things I've been finding on the wedding blogs lately.

Today's post: Pretty Flowers I Love

Boutonniere - source: SMP

Bridal Bouquet - source: SMP

 

Bridal Bouquet - source: Karen Tran Florals

Centerpieces - source: SMP

 Centerpieces - source: SMP

I think you can tell the themes I'm currently already loving on ;) 

Remember, if you get a chance, please help donate to Allen and I for the Susan G. Komen 3-day walk! Links to our pages are in the upper-right of the blog. Thanks so much!

Winter Wedding Inspirations

I saw these on ruffledblog.com, and even though I'm going to a winter wedding this weekend (more on that tomorrow), I am not personally having a winter wedding. But if I were, I would want to use each and every one of these inspirations. HOW CUTE ARE THOSE FLOWERS?! I love it! The decor for the cake and everything is so simple and elegant, yet so easy!! To view the entire blog post go here. Gorgeous :)

Adorable flowers

Just a quickie for an adorable little flower arrangement I saw on Clover & Bee:

I absolutely love the urns with the roses and how they compliment the tables. As much as I love tall centerpieces, I don't love when I can't see across the table at the people I'm sitting with. I think these are the perfect compliment for classy, a little vintage, yet absolutely gorgeous. I would probably look for something similar to this, but maybe have a grouping of them with different urns and/or different flowers in multiples on tables. That would also depend on how our tables are set up, but at a minimum I think these would look great at a head table or something.

Love, love, LOVE! The whole wedding that these were featured from can be found here, and the photos of the event are awesome. A little too vintage for my style, but still adorable all the way :)

Budgeting

I am crazy frustrated with trying to find a reception spot. Granted, we haven't looked into that many places just yet, but on our first excursion up to Traverse City we saw one venue that I just drop-dead fell in love with. This would normally be an awesome thing, except of course, that my eyes are bigger than my budget and it's looking slightly unaffordable at the moment.

Speaking of budget, can we talk for a split second about how much I hate to budget?! My financially-savvy fiance and I are crunching numbers (ok, let's be honest, he's crunching all the numbers) to make sure this is all affordable so we don't go into bankruptcy in our first year of marriage. Responsible? Yes. Slightly eye-opening at what we can't afford? Absolutely.

That being said, we are extremely lucky that we have some beloved family members who have offered their services for a few aspects of the wedding process (his mom is a master cake-baker so she's got that on lock, and my aunt is a florist/artist/extraordinaire that is generous enough to offer her services as well). This will save us in a lot of areas, but even with this huge amount of help, I think I need to come back to some realistic views of how this wedding is going to go.

This is my "reel it in" pep talk to myself, in case you can't tell.

My dad keeps coming into my head when I start thinking about the wedding and all the fun, cool things that I would like to do with it. His favorite saying: "You and your sister, you have champagne taste on a beer budget."


I hate when he's right. Hopefully we'll be able to find a happy medium somewhere.

Woah gorgeous

2 posts in one day?! Are you kidding me?!

Ok I couldn't help it though - I was browsing and found these photos of gorgeous bouquets from Karen Tran Florals. I love the bride and bridesmaid bouquets! The centerpieces aren't too shabby either, but definitely out of my price range ;) Had to share. Love.



PS - so you are aware, this blog is also for me to categorize things I like for my wedding. Since it's so far out, I'm sure I'll forget all of this at some point, so I'd like to be able to come back here and be like "wait, where were those bouquets I like?" and easily access them. Woo!