Weddingbee

Wedding planning often challenges us to undertake projects we’ve never tried. Whatever their past career experience, engaged couples suddenly find themselves acting as event planners, stylists, graphic artists, personal shoppers, and many other things all rolled into one. Sometimes, taking on these new projects leads us to discover latent talents we never knew we had.

And other times? Well….

Meet our wedding invitations!

Embarrassing as it is to show off a disaster (especially in light of some of the super-fabulous Gocco projects by other Bees), I thought our mistakes might be useful to illustrate a few Gocco tips:

- Yes, that is a red smudge in the upper-left corner. TIP: Don’t touch your prints when they’re wet. They smear really easily! (On a related note, if you have 4 cats, you might want to put them in another room….)

- The Gocco has a 3 1/2 x 5 inch print screen. You can make larger prints if you do multiple runs because, for instance, you can print the top half of a page with one screen and the bottom half of the page with a second screen. I budgeted two screens for this print — one for the red and blue and the other for the black. But I totally failed to notice that the black parts on the lanterns were about 4 1/2 inches wide — in other words, larger than the screen size!

We could have printed all the black parts if we’d done a 3rd run for just the lanterns, positioning the screen horizontally to catch all the lantern bits. But we didn’t have enough screens/bulbs OR enough patience for a 3rd run. Instead, I wound up going back to fill in each print with black pen. TIPS: Buy more bulbs and screens than you think you need. And carefully plan your print runs in light of the Gocco’s size limitations.

- Yes, the text lines are off-kilter. Because our paper size was larger than what we were printing, we weren’t able to line up the print so that we could just stick the blank paper in the upper-left corner of the print pad. The blank paper had to go a bit over the top of the pad, and a bit to the side. And sometimes the paper didn’t stay where we put it, and other times we didn’t quite succeed in the line-up.

Thank heavens for my PG-11, which has a print registration plate that helps you align multiple print runs. Rather than guessing where your new print run will land, you can print onto the clear plastic registration plate and see through that to move your previously-printed paper until both print runs are perfectly aligned. TIPS: Whenever possible, line up your print pad and inked screen in such a way that you can just stick your blank paper into the upper-left corner of the print pad. It saves much hassle. And consider a PG-11 if you’re going to do a lot of complicated prints; it really does make a difference.

- There’s a spot in the “When we exchange marriage vows” line that’s pale because our ink was running out. It was easy to get into a printing rhythm and forget to check the prints for ink quality. TIP: Especially when you’re printing a lot of text, be sure to keep an eye on your ink levels. (And if you do get bare spots, a little black pen again does wonders as fill-in….)

- I loved this font (Algerian) when we designed the invite on the computer screen. But once Gocco’d, it didn’t look as good as simpler fonts. TIP: Stick with un-fussy fonts for best effect.

I was also very worried about the colors, but luckily they looked MUCH better when mounted on red accent paper and blue pocketfolds.

Stay tuned for the final product!

What wedding-project-creation disasters have you had? Did you learn anything useful to serve as a warning to others???

• Momma Cupcake’s Wed...
• Weddings Abroad Part I: G...