FREAK OUT!

Most brides will say that they aren't/weren't really a bridezilla and were pretty mellow about everything wedding related. I, however, can confidently say that I was probably in the top 5% of lease bridezilla-esque brides. At one point, my best friend was having anxiety over my lack of anxiety regarding the event. I had a few moments, I'll admit, but I am relatively proud of how I handled the stress.

Now, there are a few USPS postal workers who would probably disagree with me, but they were just lucky enough to witness my one and only meltdown. 

I am a crafty person. I am a crafty person who has had a Cricut or Cameo for 4+ years. I have made 3 other wedding invitations or programs. OF COURSE, I made my own invitations. Now, before I share my gorgeous wedding creations with you, let me tell you more about my meltdown. 

Josh bought me a Cameo for Valentines Day last year because he knew that I would make our invitations and I needed something that was capable of more intricate cutting than my Cricut. I love it. We worked together to find the paper and approve of the design. I found an invitation that I loved, but I knew that creating the SVG would take me too long and it would never be perfect enough, so I reached out to a designer on Etsy that created the file for me. Check him out sometime if you are stuck and need some help: https://www.etsy.com/people/dominicparker. Anyone who has made homemade invitations knows that it is definitely a process! My design is quite intricate so it took about 12 minutes to cut 2 invitations. Josh had to learn how to load the machine so we could keep the production line going when I wasn't around. 

After many hours of making, stuffing, and addressing the invitations - it was time to mail them. I took them to the post office and had them weigh them. I wouldn't make a rookie mistake like not weighing them. The postal worker provided me with the appropriate stamps that I needed. Once all the envelopes were stamped, I put trusted them to the dozens of postal workers that would now deliver my precious creations to my lovely guests. 

The next day my Dad calls me and says: "Honey, Jaws (an invitee) just went home at lunch and the mailman is trying to collect 46 cents from him for your wedding invitation." Now I start to panic. I left work immediately and went right back to the post office to try and figure it out. Unfortunately, the woman I dealt with the previous day was at lunch and the lady that was there basically had no way to help me. I won't comment on her attitude. Flashes of the hours I spent and the irreplaceable invitations and the hours I would have to spend re-making start playing through my head. After 10 minutes or so in the post office, I lose it. 27 year old woman getting married in 2 months shamelessly crying in the middle of a post office. Not my proudest moment. Finally, my helper from the day before comes in and informs me that her scale wasn't calibrated yesterday and she under weighed my invitations. Her manager's executive opinion was to send them and hope that no one ever questioned them. (Never mind that they could have sent them all to the return address, or sent a post card informing us of the problem, or - novel idea - PUT THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF POSTAGE ON THEM BEFORE SENDING SINCE IT WAS THERE FAULT.) Nothing could be done but wait to hear when people did or didn't receive them. Public tears helped very little. Luckily, almost all of the invitations made it safely. My dignity is mostly still intact. 

Now....for the big reveal:
I used square envelopes from a bulk paper store. I used a portion of the invitation SVG file in a lighter opacity than the lettering purple in the corners of the envelope. I know that etiquette says you should hand address your envelopes, but I made the executive decision that I would put the same amount of time and effort in to each envelope and that they would look much better than my handwriting. 

In each envelope was the gate fold, die-cut invitation as well as an "Additional Information" packet.

Here's the invitation. They light is deceiving, but they are a dark purple card stock paper.

The invitation wording is printed on a light gold leaf metallic paper. I printed the square invitation, the reception card information and the "additional information" band on (1) 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

I picked a font pairing that I really liked and tried to use the combination on all of the wedding printing.

Here's a good representation of the color. Most of the little cutouts came off when I took the paper off of the Cameo mat, but I did have to use my tweezers to pull some of the stragglers out.

Invitation, Reception information, RSVP card

I love my invitations. I think that they are very "Me" and feel like they weren't cheesy homemade, but very classy. (Shout out to the husband - he was right! I should have called out our wishes for the reception and who specifically was invited. Since I had read so much about how it's not proper to say it's an "adult reception" or telling people that the invitation is only for 2 people, I did not want to call that out. I should have. It would have saved me a bunch of stress. I can't change it, but that is my advice to anyone going through this process.) It's so awesome to see personal touches for weddings. I tried to do that in so many of the things I did, but the invitations are probably one of my greatest creations. Hope you think they are awesome, too!

Always in Bloom

You know what's pretty? Flowers. You know what is awesome? Handmade fabric flowers.

Case in point: 

What you have here is the product of a random idea, that turned in to a few google searches, that then became the center of many hours of flower making. In the end, it came out to be one of the most fabulous things I have ever seen. 

I am a paper girl, mostly. Typically, my craftiness centers around my Cricut or Silhouette Cameo. One day I happened to see a wedding bouquet that was made of paper. It was super cute, but it was very "spring-like" and I think that almost any paper bouquet would have felt the same. Then I had an idea: "I wonder what a fabric bouquet would look like? Enter Google. 

I fell in love with this bouquet and enlisted the fabric master: mom. She fell in love. We started making flowers. And more flowers. Then we started arranging them with pins on a Styrofoam ball. Decided we didn't like a bunch of the flowers we made and set those aside. Made more flowers. I promise you that the result is absolutely worth it, but this project is not for the faint of heart. It is not a fast process, and the glue gun can be vicious! This flower-making session seemed to last forever...

In the end, my bouquet ended up with just ivory and purple. We used some velvet ribbon to make some embellishing flairs. There are a few buttons and garnishments in some of the flowers.

I had seen different versions of stems: a whisk, a solid piece of wood turned on a lathe, etc. I chose wooden dowels which were already green to actually resemble the stems. We covered the plastic bouquet holder in lace and then hot glued the ball to the holder. 

Once we felt comfortable with the mix of flowers we started gluing. My mom has this really awesome old school hot glue gun. Ya know, the ones that actually work and aren't crappy. Unfortunately, that means it gets really hot and isn't nice to the skin, but it works so good! Along with my bouquet we (mostly she) also made my Matron of honors, mother's corsages, all the men's boutineers.

Here's a few shots that our fabulous photographer at Bee Mine Photography took that highlight the flowers. Be sure to check out http://beeminephoto.blogspot.com/

 Fabulous. Gorgeous. Priceless.