may project: accomplished! final invitations

Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 8:13 AM

So I've spent a full week of spare time now finalizing these silly invitations... and it was worth it. I have pictures of the entire suite uploaded to Photobucket: http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u273/spontamyous/wedding%20prep/.

The most labor-intensive part has definitely been lining the envelopes, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone planning on DIY invites - the wrapping paper gives a bright first impression, and it makes the entire suite look (if not more polished, than at least) more substantive.

What I would not recommend, unless you're really a stickler for details and have a lot of extra paper lying around, is the personalized response cards. What started as a "great" idea turned into the aforementioned week's worth of fastidiously typing in the names from our guest list, formatting the card to fit the number of attendees, and then trying to figure out their personality (I'll get to that later). One major stumbling block was getting the last names of guests who would be attending as "plus ones" - all those ladies who live alone, but knew who they would bring. (It wasn't necessary, but it seemed right.)

Anyways, since I'm still trying my darnedest to maintain some personality throughout this ridiculously life-altering planning process, I decided on the following options in place of "will/will not attend":

1) would be delighted! / regretfully declines.
2) will be there! / will be sqaure.
3) can't wait! / can't make it.
4) is ready to dance! / will sit this one out.
5) will pencil it in! / has better things to do. [for teenagers]
6) has bottle, will travel! / would rather stay home and nap. [for babies]

And since I've never met most of Erik's guests, this was a bit of a gamble. To play it safe, I always used option 1 for the first name and then added the snarkier ones as needed. Some of them were really fun to personalize further - like to the toddler across the street, I added a third option: "will come only if hoodies and action figures are allowed." And for a friend up north: "bringin' it Alaska-style! / snowed in."

So would I do it all again? Hell no. This was miserable, and though I'm really glad it's done and I'm mostly happy with the results, you'll never believe how many times I said something along the lines of, "We should have just gone to an f***ing invitation store!" And if despite that advice, you decide to take on 100% diy invitations anyways, please make sure to factor a few cases of beer and an awesome gaming system into your budget, for your fiance's sake.

PS: Hi Erin!