Dollars and Sense

So, wayyyyy back when I first got it in my head that we (I) wanted to DIY invitation, I figured it would be cheaper than buying them. I knew it would take LOTS of man hours but I figured the end result would be pretty inexpensive. Well, I was wrong. I was also right. You see, we ended up spending WAY more than I thought but significantly less than we would have for similar purchased invitations.

After getting all of our invitations out, I sat down with my receipts (ok e-mails) and figured out how much we spent on invites. As I tabulated, my eyes just about popped out of my head! I SPENT HOW MUCH?! Turns out I had spent a chunk-o-change over the months that it took to compile the invites and I must not have noticed it adding up! However, a quick peek at the internet shows I did get pretty good value. While they were more than planned, similar designs would have run anywhere from $5-12 each before postage!

Enough of my Yip Yapping, here's the breakdown:

~$41.47 for the "free" RSVP cards from Vista print. (loading your own art/mat paper/shipping charges)     ~$40.46 for sealing wax. I got 12 sticks because each was supposed to do 8-10 seals. I only used 4...          ~$196.18 from paper source, includes outer envelopes, bifolds, petal envelopes and belly-band paper
~$25 Wax stamper
~$25 Copies at Staples. Printed on off-white card stock, cute in 4.
~$40.92 Postage for RSVPs (We used 44 cent stamps even though they were post cards because we         could not buy the postcard stamps before the price hike and we wanted to send them out before that)
~$78.12 Postage
GRAND TOTAL:
$447.15

Divide that by the 93 invitations and you have $4.81 each with postage. I do feel like this number is a bit high, because it includes 8 wax sticks I still can use for other things (and will!) as well as extra envelopes and paper that can, and have, been re-purposed.

In fact if you take postage out of the equation all together, that $1.28 less per invite, which is $3.53 each. $3.53 is MUCH closer to the $2-3 dollar per invite range that I was imagining. Of course, I should add, that number was based on nothing but my imagination.

I hope you found this helpful! I know I had no clue what the cost would be going into it, and just by chance and tons of man-hours later, we were in budget(ish).

Are you going the DIY route? Did it save you money?

When Rings Make You a Ding Dong

Firstly, I appologize for my weak attempt at a punny title.

Secondly:

We have our wedding bands! And I could not be happier, however, it took me awhile to get to that point.  It is not a very long story or even that traumatic, but lets start and the beginning. 

Months and months ago we started shopping for rings. Our first stop was TQ Diamonds, the same place Mr. Aardvark purchased my engagement band. I went in knowing I wanted something with no bling that  could be worn alone or with my engagement band. I didn't want anything too delicate, and if at all possible, I wanted to co-ordinate with Mr. Aardvark. 

After a little poking around we found these:

I was totally smitten! They looked great together and met all of my pre-conceived notions. I even decided to take a cell phone picture. Of course, as I said, this was months and months ago and we were not yet ready to buy, so we filed them away and continued looking. We went to a handful of other stores, but I always found myself coming back to these. I didn't see anything that even came close, and thusly, I did not take any pictures. 

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. We are ready to pull the trigger. The first rings we by far the best and we both liked how they felt on. We got measured, and put in our order. A few weeks go by and we get the call. The rings are here. That brings us up to yesterday. 

The day started out okay for a weekend, except that our furry friend had been particularly annoying during typical human sleep hours, and I don't think either of us slept too well. Mr. A started to griping at the cat, which I (in a totally logical and not at all crazy way) took very personally and got to griping at him. We both got pretty grouchy by breakfast, but we had a lot to get done that day! We had made plans to meet Bridesmaid OT in Madison and planned on picking up our rings in the morning beforehand. We grumpily made the hour or so drive into town and had kinda made up by the time we got to the store. 

I was really excited to finally have the rings and jonesing to get them engraved and in our hot little hands. On top of that I did not really feel like dinking around all morning in a jewelry store with an already grumpy Mr. Aardvark. We took a look at the rings. They were just as I remembered! Or where they? Mine seemed to be more of a gloss finish than high polish.  I mentioned it to Mr. A who asked if I wanted to tell the clerk. "No, it's fine. " I said and gave the guy our inscriptions that we wanted engraved inside. 

We went about the rest of the day and had a jolly time with Bridesmaid OT. A few hours later Mr. Aardvark got a call that they were done so he ran to get them while OT and I shopped and had a girl time. 

On our way home, having put our grouchiness on hold to be social all day, we griped a little bit more.  Then really decided enough was enough and made up for real.  

When we got home, we opened the ring boxes, I was crushed. Suddenly, I hated that mine was not shiny like Mr. Aardvark's. I had been so stubborn and in a rush at the jewelry store that I didn't really think about whether or not I was okay with the difference. Mr. Aardvark had asked (more than once) if I wanted to bring it up to the sales clerk but I had been so wound up that I didn't want to.  Now, it was too late! The rings were engraved.  (As a side note, I had hoped they would have beautiful script engravings but we were not offered a choice and ended up with regular type). I felt bad that I did not like the ring and I felt stupid that I had not said anything when I could have and I felt too proud to admit any of this to Mr. Aardvark. So I sucked it up. 

As we were winding down for the night Mr. Aardvark caught me casually looking at rings on etsy. "You don't like your ring do you?" Again, I told him I did. I was just looking at right hand rings. That was actually true, none of the ones I was searching for were wedding bands. I was trying to convince myself that I have lots of other fingers for "girly-er" rings and that a simple, not-too-frilly wedding band was what I wanted. So in the nature of coming clean, I told him that. It kinda helped me believe it too. And then being the totally sane, rational person I am, I burst into tears. Ridiculous much? I think so. But it had been a long day. 

Today I thought I had gotten over the whole thing and that it had mostly been due to the fact that we were so grouchy yesterday. But then I had an idea. At first I tried to squash the idea because it had the potential to create a lot of running around and hassle but then I remembered where that mind set left me yesterday so I shared my idea with Mr. A. 

"TQ does all kinds of custom jewelry. In theory, they should be able to polish my band to a high gloss right? I mean if they can't it's totally fine, but maybe they could?" 

And then something amazing happened. Mr. Aardvark said he could ask(and may or may not have chuckled a bit at me for being such a ding dong about all of this), and as soon as we got back to our place, I got out the rings. 

It was like a weight had been lifted. I just had to be honest about how I felt and suddenly I was totally okay with my ring. Maybe it was just sharing my feelings, maybe it was the possibility that someday I could polish it. But whatever it was, I am now totally at peace with my ring. And to celebrate, and bond with it a little, I decided to have a photo shoot. And let's be honest, if you have read through all of my trials and tribulations, you deserve some pretty pictures! 

The boxes are very cool, but I am not sure why Mr. Aardvark's is so much bigger than mine.

 Mr. A has a 7mm band and I have a 5mm both have yellow gold mil-grain on the edges.

Here are the three amigos together.

This is what my two look like on-hand.

And here is the band all by herself. I am honestly, very happy. Maybe I will get it polished someday. But maybe not. For now she will sit in Mr. Aardvark's closet until April rolls around and she gets to make her big debut to the world!

Did you have any hardships with your rings? Did you have to work anything out? Or am I the lone ding-dong who got rattled by rings?

Fly Your Flag!

 I have loved the idea of Flags at an exit for awhile. They are so cute and playful, and pretty in photos. On top of that, we wanted our "big exit" to be from the church instead of the reception, and being daytime, we nixed the idea of sparklers. Further more, our church does not allow rice or birdseed or bio-confetti to be tossed because it would end up all over the city sidewalk ( and I guess the city doesn't like that?). Flags seemed like the perfect solution. But what would the flags say?

Image by Kate Hayes at L Photographie

Well, MOH MD answered that when she commented, early in our engagement, that I included the word "yay" in every one of my, twice(ish) daily at the time, e-mails. [I should note, blogging has really helped cut down on the wedding spam to my  bridal party.They thank you.] She said that "Yay" should be the theme of the wedding. While I did not go that far, I thought it was the perfect option for the flag and more fitting than say, "congratulations" or "Hooray" or even, "Yippy".

So with a very basic idea of what we wanted, Mr. Aardvark and I set out on our first post-invitation craft.

As per usual Mr. Aardvark was very helpful. It was his wonderful idea to use the heat gun to peal the sticker off our dowels. I was very grateful for this hot tip (pun intended) because it had taken me about 15 minutes to get one off.

Once all the dowels we de-stickered we cut them into thirds so they would be a reasonable size for flag waving. Then I asked really nicely if Mr. Aardvark would sand them, as I didn't want any of our guests to get splinters. Being the trooper that he was, he braved the Wisconsin cold to make sure all of our guests would be safe.

At this point the dowels got put on hold because it was entirely too cold to paint them outside and there was NO WAY spray painting inside was a good idea.

I moved on to the actual flag part. I had purchased 2 yards of muslin and it was too much by about 1/2 a yard. However, better safe than sorry. I'm sure I can find some way to use the rest of  it.

I pressed all the wrinkles out and then folded it into strips as wide as I wanted my flags and ironing it again at
each layer. This made it easy to cut along the crease instead of worrying about marking or pinning. It also helped me to cut a straight(ish) line.

I used my pinking shears to cut so I would not have to worry about fraying. If you don't know what pinking shears are, they are not just pink scissors (although, as you can see, mine are pink) they are fabric scissors that cut a zig zag and help keep woven fabric from unraveling.

Once I had all my strips cut I then cut them into flag size blocks.

I know it seems like a lot of ironing, but if you hate to iron, I would skip all of the steps except this one! Spray those suckers with starch and iron again!

If you don't starch, you flags will be floppy and flaccid.(Boo) And no one will be able to read or enjoy them!

For the next step you need a stamp (unless you have amazing handwriting and tons of time [I am running short on both]). I got mine from Stamp Out Online an etsy shop that makes fantastic custom stamps. They did our return address stamp as well, and have really helped feed my obsession with the font Harrington. Since our "Yay" stamp was so big, they mounted it on an acrylic block which made stamping even easier! (It was also really cool to watch the ink soak into the fabric).

I decided one color was not enough so after stamping some blue ones, I switched to green.

I toyed with outlining the green with pen, to make it pop but did not love the results. Instead, used a couple other stamps I had around to "highlight" the text.

Now, back to the dowels. I had given up on painting outside-outside so I set up a "paint booth" AKA cardboard box in the garage. I painted a batch and brought them in to dry.

Then Mr. Aardvark figured our a much faster way to paint them! (Note the angry bids PJs again. Getting much more use than we ever thought!)

After the dowels were painted and while they were drying, I had a moment of inspiration. I had extra "Fancy" paper left from the invites and a really cool pair of "Shredder scissors I purchased and had been jonesing to use.

I cut the paper into two(ish) inch strips and then got frindgy.

Finished product, feeling fancy.

I then cut the long fringy strips into shorter chunks. and rolled them a little bit so there was a little curl to them.

With the dowels dry it was time to bring these two together.

I wrapped and hot glued the paper to the tops our the pretty silver sticks.

And then, just below the tassel I did the same with the flag. If you can't tell from this photo, I got hot glue everywhere before I managed to get a system down. There was also a fair about of trial and error in figuring out that the tassel needed to go on first and the flag below it.

A couple of episodes of  Law and Order later, and I was done!

I am really enamored with how these turned out! They are so cheerful and fun! I am also glad that we had the extra paper because the topper/tassels are too cute for words!

I made about sixty of these guys but they will not be the only thing making an appearance at our exit. FMIL Aardvark has been an amazing help and made an alternative waver for people who prefer ribbons to flags. I will share those soon! Yay!

What are you doing for your big exit? If you are already married, did you use flags? Did you like them?

You're Invited

Hive, I know I drug this out. I know, I teased you about the invitations in several posts. But the wait is over! I would like to invite you to, not only view our invites, but see just how they came to be (bee?)!

[Note, if you want to skip all the romance and get right to the main event, the invite pictures are at the bottom]

First things first, I would like to give a big shout out to paper source, staples, and vista print. These were the tree main vendors we used to put together our invitation suite. All of the unprinted on paper came from papersource. I found their quality nice, their prices reasonable, and their colors fantastic. The little beige inserts came from staples. They were were fast, cheap and easy. I would not recommend them if you are a stickler for perfection, but if you are a stickler for getting it done adequately I would say go for it!  And last but not least, I tweaked our Save the date design to make our RSVP and had them printed "for free" at vista print..

I used illustrator to lay out all of the text onto 8.5X11 paper in a way that it could be cut into 4 with each text block making a square. I really wish I had Miss Eagle's tutorial before hand but after a lot of trial and error I managed to get it pretty square. I then sent the files off to Staples to be printed and cut into fours. The fact that they cut was nice because it saved me some time but not that much because each one had to be trimmed to square afterwords.

Knowing that  a square has equal height and width, I used the height of the cards to mark where the extra width needed to be trimmed off. 

Rinse and repeat with both the "Invite" card (that said, "hey come to our wedding"*) and the "Info" card (that said, "go to our wedding website for more deets"*)

After everything was squared away we corner punched. Mr. Aardvark was a champ and did this part at record speed. (We are still finding little paper bits all over the house from this activity). The cutting and punching was BY FAR the most tedious part of the whole ordeal.  And of course, we had to re-do this part after hotel one crapped out on us. However, in the big scheme of things, this was a little blip on the planning radar and it could have had a lot high cost/PIA factor than it did.

Once we had the informative sections ready to go, it was time to enclose them. I decided early on that I was in love with the petal envelop.

They are just so much fun. Fun to look at, fun to open, and even a little fun to put together.

I felt like they would make it clear that what was inside was very special. However I could not very well have all the other bits of the invite skating around in the envelope willy-nilly. (Actually, I could, but I really wanted our invitations to be highly interactive so I decided to add another step.)

After carefully folding all of the petal envelopes, the mister and I glued them into bi-fold cards. We glued them on the left side which seemed a bit odd at first (considering it was the top when the card was closed) but we did it this way so the invitation would be the first thing read once open.

Our very fancy work station above.

Once all of the bi-fold and petal envelopes were assembled, we went about glue the invitation card and info card into them. As you can see below, our fur-baby was very helpful throughout the process.

Below you will see roughly what someone opening our invite would see. Note the upper left corner of the picture. A belly band and wax seal to be are waiting....

And with the petal envelope open:

Back tracking a bit, we decided on some pretty traditional, but not too formal, wording for our invites:

If you can't read the tiny picture it says:

"Miss and Mr. Aardvark, together with their families, ask you to share and celebrate their wedding. After which is, date, time, location, reception to follow bla bla bla."

On the info card we gave the name of the hotel (this is one of the old info cards with the bad hotel. Luckily we did not glue them in until after that whole mess) where we had blocked off rooms, along with our wedding website and e-mail.

The RSVP card (yes we went with post cards) simply said:
"We look forward to celebrating with you! Kindly reply by March 24th 2012. Name_____
Number of attendees_____. And the choice of A) Will be there (with bells on) or B) Will not be attending (too many bells)"

I thought this was cutesy with out being too hard to understand.

We also numbered our RSVP cards and guest lists in case someone forgets to put their name on the card we can figure out who it is from.

After all of the pieces were assembled, glued, folded and dried it was time to bundle everything together. I had purchased quite a few sheets of this pink/burgundy and copper paper and had it in my head they would make beautiful belly bands. Of course that involve LOTS of cutting into 1/2 inch strips. Ladies, this was the second most tedious part of the whole process. (And only a little less tedious than the first!)

I used my ice skate box as a work surface while watching TV. Mr. Aardvark was a rock star at this too. You can totally tell which ones he cut because they are much more evenly sized.

Progress, slow progress....

However, it was all worth it in the end because the could be wrapped around the cards like this:



 

This was very easily the third most tedious part. I had it in my head that we should wrap them all before sealing them closed. Of course, once wrapped there would be no way of knowing what number RSVP card was inside and thus what address to send it to. I stressed about this, and put off wrapping them for a few days before realizing that I could put post-it notes with the numbers on the outside. Duh!

Once they were all wrapped it was time for my favorite part of the whole deal! The part where I get to play with fire! The tricky part was getting the paper strips to stay in place. Crackle nail polish to the rescue!

WAY back at the beginning of our engagement I purchased a slightly flawed wax stamp. I was sure to practice using it on birthday cards and the like. Now, for you a mini tutorial on sealing wax:

Step one: Chill out. use an ice pack or regular ice to freeze your stamper. If your stamp has a top and bottom, but no way to tell which is which while stamping, tape a paperclip to the "top side" so you don't end up with a bunch of sideways stamps. (it only took me a few to figure this out)

Step two: Ready, aim, Fire: Use a long lighter to melt your wax. a short lighter will work but you will burn your fingers. Also don't light the wick if you can help it. You will end up with soot in your wax if you do.

Step three: Stamp those bad boys! (remember to put the stamp back on the ice pack after each one.) If you mess up you can re-melt and try again but, keep in mind, most of the little imperfections are what make these cool.

Step four: Try to take a cool picture and get wax all over the place. Just kidding there is no step four. You are done after you stamp. BUT I will say that should you drip, let the wax cool a bit and it should peal easily off. If you try to get it off too soo it will be sticking and too late it will just crack but still be stuck on whatever surface.

Once the invitations were fully assembled I started addressing the envelopes. I had been dreading this part the most and it wasn't even that bad. I had been practicing my cursive since, oh, May. It was by no means perfect, but with the glitter gel pen (yes I am 12) and a new callous on my left hand I was able to whip out all 93 in one Saturday.

Not too bad for a lefty huh? I did end up with glitter all over the side of my hand but that was a small price to pay. 

My see-through ruler was also very valuable in the addressing process. I cannot write a straight line freehand to save my life.

Next up was more fun stuff! Embossing. Lots of people have told you all about how to emboss, so I will keep it short.

We had to test out what looked best on our envelopes....

We finally decided on the navy blue. Stamp (pigment ink not dye ink), sprinkle, heat (no you cannot use a hairdryer on embossing powder), repeat. Mr. Aardvark did most of these. I was SO happy to have the help at that point!

As an after though, and not really being ready to finish this project I stamped the inside of the envelope flaps. (Ladies, can you say budget envelope liners)

Again Kitty was SOOO helpful.

Annnnnd one more little tiny stamp embossed on the corer front.

Done. Now to stuff them in the envelopes. (And be sure to take the post-its off before I do.

Whew. That was a long post. I will save the cost break down for another day. I was SO happy with how they turned out. I skimped on the fancy printing but still brought texture in, and made them interactive and fun. The reviews, have been great so far! And I would say they were well worth the effort. As long as you start EARLY, invites can be a fun, if humongous project.

Papa Aardvark called me to narrate his opening of the invite (he gets my brand of crazy). Mama Aardvark sent me some pictures to prove that the $0.84 worked and the whole package made it. 

Did you DIY your invites? Was it worth it? Would you do it again? 

*Not actual quotes from invitation text.