Overall, the invitation-making process was pretty simple. Concept and design weren’t too difficult, assembly during the work party was quick (eating lunch took longer), and mailing them out – cake! I wanted to blog about a few miscellaneous points summarizing the process – reasons other than budget constraints for my decision-making and all the %*$@ that went down.
I. Because I didn’t want our invitations to feel too formal, I opted for what I consider semi-formal wording. I also wanted to use first person plural to make it personal (we are inviting you).
Together with our families, we
Justin Mendoza Casido
and
Marie Eugenie Margate
request the pleasure of your company as
we commit our love and life to each other
II. I didn’t do a couple of things we suggest to our clients to include on their invitations:
a) Put your ceremony time on the invitation earlier than the actual time – I put our actual ceremony time on the invitations (read that guests? ACTUAL CEREMONY TIME). Our church usually holds ceremonies at 11:00am, 1:00pm, and 3:00pm and the only one left on our date was 11:00am. Since we’re incorporating Filipino traditions, our officiating priest suggested we make the ceremony at 10:30am to ensure proper time for picture-taking afterward. I felt bad that it’s already so early so I couldn’t bring myself to lie about the time! And what about the guests that are early birds (there’s a few of them out there I’m sure!) who show up 30 minutes before the time they think it’ll start – that means they’re going to wait an hour before the ceremony starts – I just couldn’t do it!
b) Attire (Formal, Semi-Formal, Casual, Black Tie, etc.) – In all honesty, I didn’t really think of including it at the time, but I’m hoping our guests can get a feel through the style of our invitation. I think our invitations say “We don’t need ya’ll to be wearing tuxes with bow ties and formal gowns, but we don’t want anyone showing up in jeans and a t-shirt either.” What do you think our invitation design says about attire?
III. Spending way more money than I really should have – Remember my post on bridal stupidities? Well, I have a couple MORE instances for you!
a) I initially ordered paper instead of cardstock for the details booklet to save on costs. I then gave April a PDF file of the design with crop marks to print out. When I got them back, I realized they were a bit smaller than the size I intended them to be! I tried to make it work, but couldn’t with the stupid crop marks showing. Why couldn’t I just have sent her the frekin AI file like I usually would and tell her the dimensions I intended?! Don’t worry friends, lesson learned (right Apes?). Anyway, I decided that if I’m going to order more paper, might as well go with the thicker stock as I originally wanted. F*** it! In the end, I’m glad I messed up because I was able to use the thicker stock but getting it in the first place and giving April the correct file format would have saved us some money.
b) Earlier this year, I was kinda getting over wedding planning. I felt like we accomplished so much and I just wanted to take a break from it all! (Did you gasp?! I know, I know.. well read on.) So here’s me totally nonchalant, thinking I can take a break – easy peasy, then on a Tuesday, I got an email from the calligrapher asking if we’re still on schedule and to make sure she gets the envelopes by Saturday. I emailed her back saying yes and you should get the envelopes by Saturday, then panic ensues! In other words going through my mind, “Fudge nut!!!” I hadn’t even ordered the envelopes yet! So I emailed my order and opt for Next Day Delivery ($). Our supplier usually emails back confirming they got the order, so on Wednesday morning, I emailed them asking if they got it – no, they didn’t! So I placed the order and Thursday, no package. $#^%!!! On Friday, it came and I head to the local UPS to get it delivered on Saturday. Well, it costs $$ for next day and an added $$$ for delivery on Saturday because they usually don’t do it that day. So instead of telling the calligrapher that I forgot to order envelopes and they won’t get to her on time, I ended up spending $$$$$$ on top of the $ to get calligraphy that I originally wasn’t going to get done. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a big deal to the calligrapher since I got the finished envelopes done in less than a week. I just wanted to perceive myself as totally on top of things! In the end, was it all worth it?! I’m still trying to decide but out of the whole invitation, I got the most compliments on the calligraphy. Suprisingly, the men were especially impressed asking, “Wait. Someone wrote this by hand?!?”.
IV. RSVP Deadline (Sorta) Issue – I intended to mail out the invitations three weeks prior to the RSVP deadline. Because of the details booklet issue, I didn’t get them out until two weeks prior to the deadline. I was going to change the date before the booklets were re-printed but it totally slipped my mind at the time. It didn’t matter too much to me because Save-The-Dates were sent out three months before the invitations were so I figured our guests are already deciding if they can go or not (some lovely guests already RSVPed when they got STDates). Plus, Justin and I knew there would be plenty of laggers so I intentionally made the deadline earlier than when we really needed it. But I had my mom call some of the laggers and she got kind of upset at me that I only gave two weeks for our guests to RSVP. I explained to her I needed to get a head start on all the DIY details, how many centerpieces we would actually need, and that I didn’t intend on doing any wedding stuff a week (hopefully two) before we leave for San Francisco. People we invite are going to go or not going to go and we just want to know ASAP.
Ok, I think those are all the items I wanted to point out! As a thank you for sticking around a text-happy post, here are some last photos as the invitations were finally getting sent out:
BTW, invitation stamps are now $0.64.
