Well, with word from many of our invitation’s safe delivery and even an RSVP or two, I think it’s officially time to share with you our invitation selection, creation and mailing journey. Journey feels like the appropriate word because we’ve come a long way to get to here (where invitations have been mailed and received). We tried to start earlier than we had for the Save the Dates because they had ended up feeling like such a rush.
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Reject invite (so if you like it better...
don't tell me) |
Our first question became style. What kind of invitations did Javier and I like? We decided to start with a ‘professionally’ supervised visit to Paper Source. We looked through those massive books they keep decoratively scatter on a table and learned what we liked: more modern styled invitations, with interest created by different size and style fonts (rather than graphics or borders). Great! Seems easy enough. Truthfully, most of what we liked seemed pretty simple to me; some fancy font here, and a little color there – and boom = invitation! Right?
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Another 'finalist' invite
turned reject... |
Which brought us to our next question…..would we buy off the rack? Or could I create something we liked on my own? Back in June we sent a few folks ‘6 finalists’ for our invitations. They were a mix of Audrey designed invites and some found on mint.com. We learned a few things after this email; when you ask for opinions, people usual provide them (crazy people…). And when you ask 4+ people for opinions, you usually get 4 different opinions. Everyone was super nice and included lots of ‘get what you want!’s, but I felt discouraged. Javs and I had different favorites and I wasn’t convinced I liked any of the options after staring at them for so long…
I started over. (ridiculous, I know. But I am ridiculous persistent.) I determined I really didn’t like the ones I had designed and succumb to the idea that I couldn’t do every (and that everything didn’t have to be personal and creative and thought up by me). I ordered proofs for three brand new designs, thinking that seeing them in person might help us make a decision.
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| the three proofs we received! |
I guess my ‘in hand’ theory worked, because after we received the three proofs there was one that stood out. I loved it. Javier loved it. It seemed to fit our simple, modern look and feel and matched perfectly with an outdoor, less-formal wedding. Win! Even better, I could easily return to the website, type our personal information into their designed windows and we’d have our invites in no time! (Come on, that would have been too easy….) You see, what I had failed to notice about our winning invite was the wording….it read:
Together with
Bride’s parents and Groom’s parents
BRIDE
&
GROOM
Want you to come to their wedding….you get the rest.
Well, Javier and I aren’t hosting the wedding. (Trust me, if we were, it would be a lot different than it will be...and I don’t mean in a good way.) Momma and Daddy-o Staps are footing the bill and hosting this awesome shin-dig, which meant the invitation needed to come from them….but when I tried to remove ‘Together with’….well I couldn’t. And customer service confirmed for me that I never would be able to….oh. Oh. OH. So we weren’t going to be ordering these easily customizable invitations after all. But what were we gonna do?
ack, SUSPENSE!
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