Mrs. Hummingbird, Toronto
Age and Occupation: 25, Publishing Coordinator
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Videogame Designer/Cartoonist
Engagement Date: May 4, 2007
Wedding Date: June 28, 2008
Blogging Since: September 18, 2007
Venue: A garden wedding followed by a tented reception on Mr. Hummingbird's father's property.
About Me: I’m a pop culture loving, vintage obsessed foodie living in Canada’s biggest city with my fantastic fiancé and our lovable fluffy cat Bettie. I’m stoked to marry my best friend and to throw what I hope will be
the most fun and colourful party of our lives.
Invitation Frustration
April 8th, 2008 @ 2:30 pm by Mrs. Hummingbird
How Do I Hate Thee: An Ode To Wedding Invitations
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
(Paraphrased from Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Picture courtesy of http://howtobegluten-free.blogspot.com.
(I have no idea what it has to do with gluten, but it pretty much looks how I feel right now.)
In real life, I am a huge paper fiend. I have a huge collection of cute notebooks. I drool over pretty stationery. I even work as a publishing coordinator at a press, so my daily life is full of paper. However, when it comes to the wedding, dealing with its paper-related products kind of makes me want to scream.
First, our invitation design magically deleted. Then, we had to go through the whole redesign process (including name personalized R.S.V.P cards). Then, we did the redesign, only to find out the kind of paper we chose (a thicker linen textured kind) did not fit into our lovely printer. Then, we had to cut the paper down into small sheets and hand feed it, sheet by sheet, into the printer. Then, we had to cut it again. And again. And again. (We have something like 250 invitation pieces so the cutting went on for a while . . .).
Then, we have to envelope check all the pieces we’ve cut to make sure they actually fit in the undersized envelopes we’ve bought for them. Then, we have to address all the tiny envelopes. Then, we have to use spray adhesive to put all the pieces of the main invitation together. Then, we have to stamp all the envelopes . . .
In the beginning, I was seriously looking forward to this part, but now, after a week and a half of dealing with invitations every day, I have to admit, I am kind tired of looking at them and am eager to get them the heck out of my house.
We should be done today (fingers crossed), but in the meantime, while I’m stuck licking envelopes, I’ve got to ask - Has anyone else had something they were really looking forward to doing during the planning process drive them crazy? Dress shopping? Honeymoon planning? Invitation assembly? What was it and how did you deal with it?
15 Responses to “Invitation Frustration”
Wow. We are designing and printing our invites at home too… and they are driving us crazy, but your story actually makes us look lucky!
I am whole-heartedly sorry for your invite troubles, and I hope they go away soon!
pretty much the whole d@mn wedding planning process.
i’ve yet to truly enjoy myself.
i thought it would be sooo much fun. but never seeing your FI (long distance), not having much money, and living with your mother has poured a cold bucket of water on the whole thing.
I thought it’d be so marvelous and so personal to arrange all the music for the ceremony.
Yeah, not so much.
It got to be a total chore. I was coming up with ridiculous ways to procrastinate about it: gosh, I’d love to go work on that wedding music, but I simply must clean all the toilets first.
Yeah, I tried doing DYI stuff, and then after encountering one too many frustrations we said, screw it, we’ll pay someone. What is an extra $XX in the long run. Problem is, that has been our excuse for one too many things….
The most frustrating thing for me is that everything else gets in the way! (haha.)
“(I have no idea what it has to do with gluten, but it pretty much looks how I feel right now.)”
People with gluten allergies/intolerances or celiacs can get really frustrated because a) it’s really difficult to find food that you can eat that isn’t ridiculously expensive and b) they feel that no one really understands what it means to be gluten-free: I guess most people assume it’s a variation of Aktin’s diet or no-carb diets, but it’s not and c) you’re lucky if you can eat even one thing on any restaurant’s menu and then one usually has to change something and/or worry about cross contamination.
(Of course you wanted to know all that! 
)
Bridesmaid dresses hands down has been the biggest headache. I have girls of every shape and size and opinion…and not afraid to tell me too! I love shopping for people and in the beginning I was ecstatic to work with these girls and find some totally awesome dresses….uh no way. Someone had something to say about every dress so I had to put my foot down and just pick one and call it good…kinda sucked the fun out of it.
Oh well…onwards and upwards is what I say! 
Just figuring out what all the individual pieces of the invitation look like and need to say, and then writing that all down for the designer to implement is headache enough. I am actually sooooo grateful to my mom for stamping her little foot and telling me that there would be no DIY on the invitations, and she didn’t care what the cost, she would be happy to pay.
Now I can spend my time worrying about whether anyone in my family will ever get around to buying anything appropriate to wear! Although normally savvy and enthusiastic shoppers, they swing wildly back and forth between shopping like crazy but finding nothing, and refusing to shop at all.
Pretty much every single step of the actual planning process. I’m not even looking forward to the wedding anymore, and we’re paying for the whole f%$kng thing. I can’t wait until the nightmare is over and i can just be married.
I am right with you. I took all my stuff to the printer last Monday and they said it would be ready by Tuesday. I went in on Tuesday and it was not done and what was done was cut all wrong. They are suppose to have red borders and they had white borders around half of each one. I then brought them home and spent a day with spray adhesive and the invites and separating all the parts per each invite. Last night I got to figure out how to print on the rsvp envelopes and writing names onto the rsvp cards. Tonight we are hopefully finishing up the RSVP cards and putting them in the envelopes and printing them off and stamping them, so they will be done.
at first the whole wedding process was driving me crazy (i begged FI to just elope for about a month straight), but now we’re about 3 months away and are finished vendor shopping and are into the DIY and decision stage. And I’m actually have fun again. Nice. The invitations were a huge pain, and the thing I’d been looking forward to the most, but now that they’re done and out of the house, I’m really happy with how they turned out. If only I can stay this optimistic for the next three months….
You need to pin one of those invites to a dart board and HAVE AT IT! 
The entire wedding planning process/engagement has been a nightmare. The diamond on my ring is set crooked (and for some reason no one is able to fix it…yet), my dress shop seamstresses can’t schedule a fitting for another month (I’m getting married in June and totally freaking out), the invitations were printed crooked, the guest list has 200 more people than I wanted, and to top it all off, the deal on the house we were supposed to close on in 2 weeks fell through this morning, so I have no idea where we’ll be living. Such a blast I can hardly stand it.
Another one for the whole process. We have a 2.5 year engagement and I’m so sick of everything…..but I cant stop doing all of it! That and having to explain certain things to people who think that all weddings should bea alike–for example: My e-ring is a lavender sapphire instead of a diamond (we started out with one, but I wasnt comforatble wearing one among other things), and to explain that and why i’m not doing other traditional wedding things, just gets exhausting.
it took me over 6 months to be happy with my design and choice of colours! hahaha! so i feel your pain! I looove paper so that was the hard part as well!
We chose our design, colour, papers, and chose specific dimensions, etc.
We used double sided tape and assembled everything together. BUT we had our invites printed, and cut.
The printing was the major bulk of the cost. but overall got invites for $2.50 instead of $8 we got quoted from an invitation company.
I thought planning the honeymoon would be a blast..but then I got so insanely busy, so quickly, I had to hand it over (assign it) to Mr. Lovebug. THAT would have been much more fun than cutting up 62 little strips of paper….or stickering 300 pogs…
Ditto to beanchar’s brilliant idea.
