Wedding Blog

It is amazing to me how quickly things can spiral out of control. The invitation creation has easily been the most stressful part of wedding planning so far, and that’s silly because it was one of the pieces that I would have sworn I wasn’t so interested in.

We started with a simple concept for invitations, a brightly colored one sheet announcement with the all information and RSVP by phone or email, drawing inspiration from the fabulous invites of Unless Designs. Her designs have a cheerful poster-like feeling to them which I love - you can frame your invitation afterwards and hang it in the dining room.

(a cute Unless Designs piece)

But my fabulous roommate/bridesmaid began to brainstorm designs and her work is so lovely, I wanted more instead of less. Then, I went paper shopping and our simple project was now not so simple. It is absolutely gorgeous don’t get me wrong, these are the invites of my dreams, but let me tell you that the stress level ratcheted up with every piece of enclosure that I added.

The place I went wrong was walking into the paper store. Because once in there, surrounded by all the pretty papers, I went into some sort of impulse buying fog. The new colors for Envelopments were there and they just happened to be in my wedding colors. I can’t resist those colors, it is a sickness. So I ordered them without any real direction because I hadn’t counted the invites we needed to make, hadn’t discussed this type of design with my graphic designer roommate, hadn’t really done any research. Then the employee tells me that these pieces of paper will take 2-3 weeks to arrive! At which point, another cashier pipes up and says “Oh, sometimes it takes as long as 4 weeks.” OH MY GOSH!

Stupid impulse buying! I couldn’t wait that long. We are getting married in January! We need to get this show on the road. So, the next day, I came back down from the freak out, and battened down to do what I do best - find things on the internet. Within two hours I had found Paper by Joy who could promise me shipment of my order, in the colors and sizes I needed, within 10 business days for no extra charge. And for a fraction (40% less) of the cost of my local paper store. Super bonus? They arrived much sooner - four days after I ordered with free ground shipping.

But the moral of this story is to have a plan. I shouldn’t have plunked down the debit card without a clear idea of where I was going with these papers no matter how lovely, and definitely not without putting in some time to research whether this was a fair price. I could have made a costly mistake if I had not been able to cancel the original order.