Wedding Blog
Oh. My. God.
If I never see another X-Acto knife in my life, it’ll be too soon.
At least, that’s what I said immediately after Mr. Sea Breeze and I attacked Phase 2 of the DIY wedding invitation project: cutting the paper.
As you may recall, deciding on a design and buying the cardstock for these things was quite the ordeal. Once I realized that folds and pockets were gorgeous but complicated and finally settled on a simpler design, I hustled my butt around not just Vancouver but all over Southern Alberta (okay fine, one store in Red Deer and two in Calgary, but have you been to Calgary lately? It’s SPRAWLING) to get the right quantities of just the right paper at just the right price.
So imagine the look on my face when Mr. SB decided that cutting sheets one by one is for suckers.
He pulled out the first pile of 50 sheets, slapped the ruler on top and started zipping that damn X-Acto knife along the ruler over… and over… and over… and over…
I gasped and shrieked and yet he did not pause, even when he lifted his head to give me the “Relaaaaaaxxxx, it’ll be fine” line.
The sheets on top that got cut first started falling forlornly to the side, exposing their brethren underneath to the wrath of the knife.
And still it went on… and on… and on.
I covered my face with my hands and begged the Paper Gods to deliver me from my suffering.
And finally… S I L E N C E. The carnage had come to an end.
“See?” Mr. SB held up a rectangle of paper triumphantly. And at first glance, it seemed I would have to eat my words.
Then I placed the rectangle on the stack of other rectangles and bounced them against the table a few times to line them up. And I didn’t need to look closely to see that we had a disaster on our hands.
To the untrained eye, we might have been able to fudge it. Unfortunately, that was only the bottom layer of a three layer card, so the wavy borders become VERY obvious once they were against something straight.
It was at this point I succumbed to frustration and rushed to the bathroom to let loose a few tears. I felt better afterwards, and was able to stoically return to the scene of the crime and do the only thing that I could do–try to figure out a way to fix it–without resorting to flinging “I told you so’s” around. Because really, although it would have been intensely satisfying to do so, it really wouldn’t improve the situation. In fact, it would make things worse. So that’s why I try not to bust out the bridezilla tears in front of anyone. It feels good to let them come out, but then get over it and keep going.
And being Zen about it is best, in the end. Because we did finally fix it.
It involved re-doing all the dimensions for the three layers again so we could cut off the wavy edge of the dark purple paper–this time, doing it the way I wanted to in the first place, one by one. Yes, it was painstaking, but at least Phase 1 was done.
I now understand why people pay what seems like exorbitant amounts of money just to have some pieces of paper cut for them. Because doing it yourself really, really sucks. I’m scared to think of what it will be like to try to glue them together straight. Yikes.
But we’re not even there yet. Next, up, Phase 3… designing the actual invite that will be printed.
Stay tuned.
Has anyone else (unwisely) tried to cut their own wedding invitations?
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Share this post: It’s Official: I AM Crazy
Aww it’s ok Miss SB - even though we cut our invitations with a paper cutter I still had to trim some by hand and I thought it came out TERRIBLE. However, no one noticed and all I got were compliments about the invites. I think that a lot of times, we make these things worse in our mind. Kudos to you for fixing it!
Wow! That definitely must have taken you some time–I sympathize! I went out to Costco and bought a large fiskar’s papercutter ($25 investment, but I love using it!) a little easier than holder a ruler straight with an exacto knife–It looks good though! Can’t wait to see final product!
I recently had to have 500 pieces of thick cardstock cut and Kinko’s did it for $1.49 per cut. I mean, per cut being for cutting one time through 500 pieces of paper. It was the best $1.49 I ever spent…
…or course, I, like everyone else have heard stories about Kinko’s incompetence in some areas, and this was just for a crafty little fun project for my fiance’, but maybe worth a try sometimes?
I can’t wait to see what gorgeous invites you’re creating out of that GORGEOUS paper 
You are brave! I left the cutting of our envelope liners to Momma Cookie for that very reason!
Have you thought about KINKO’S? or Staples…or Office Depot? or buying an paper cutter??? for $20 at Michael’s???
Save yourself the stress. 
But this will be a fun story to tell.
I’ve spent MANY extra hours re-cutting walls etc for school design projects so I’ve learned my lesson. Even still I was hanging on your every word to see if Mr. SB pulled it off.
Kudos to you for not throwing out the I told you so’s
OK, first of all, I could swear that we are planning the same wedding, except that yours is a destination version–and you are holding it in the town where we’re going on our honeymoon! But seriously, our invitations are based around a VERY similar concept. Except that no, we did not try cutting ours ourselves–Paper Source did it for a grand total of $12. Money well spent, I say. Especially after reading this.
We are cutting our own envelope liners, though. And I had to just remind myself that it’s fine. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t perfect. Nobody will care. They’ll be too distracted by the pretty paper anyway. Right?
Uhh….yeah! Both the invitations and ceremony programs. They looked just like yours, except different colors and tied together with ribbon at the top (programs). The invitations were way worse because it involved threading ribbon AND hot gluing layers of cardstock. My husband (bless his heart) did exactly the same thing, with the exact same results. When we were doing the invitations my friend fired him. When we were doing the ceremony programs, I fired him. It was horrible - uneveness and jagged edges everywhere! And we had a papercutter! We got the invitations perfect (with the help of cutting courtesy of Office Depot), but the programs only got down two days before the wedding, so I just said to hell with it….
Relax….you still have enough time for a few minor mishaps!(:
I second StefM. We did a LOT of cutting for our invitations, so we were able to have some of it (depending on whether or not we were able to do the printing before or after the cutting) cut at Kinkos. They did a great job — it was all cut straight — and at $1.49/cut/500 sheets, it was a bargain compared to slaving away at home.
For the roughly 10 billion cuts I still had to do myself, I used a Fiskars rotary cutter. Personally, I find it a lot easier than an x-acto knife, but I think because I’m left-handed, I’ve always had a hard time using x-acto knives because I think the blades are slanted for right-handed use…
Well, if it makes you feel any better, the last time I used an exact-o knife (in high school, while helping Student Council decorate for homecoming) I turned around and stabbed myself in the leg.
It’s a blade, so of course it went straight in - to my leg muscle! OUCH!
I’ve avoided those things ever since.
Becky
Kinko’s or staples can both cut paper for you. I cut all mine at Kinko’s to save my insanity.
Btw, searching on weddingbee before any wedding related task is a great idea I found the kinko tip here as well.
I guess I forgot to mention that Mr. SB’s top priority during this whole process was saving money, which is why we (dumbly, as it turned out) cut our own paper instead of going to Kinkos. That was the deal - no evites if we did it as cheaply as humanly possible. If I had to do it all over again though, I would TOTALLY VETO the X-Acto plan no matter how much he complained!! It’s soooo worth it.
The rotary cutter is definately the way to go, if you have to cut at home. However, it’s so cheap to just have the paper cut for you (either before it’s shipped, like by PaperSource, or after you print, like at Kinko’s) that there’s no reason to do it yourself. After all, time is money too. And if worst comes to worst, the Kinko’s fee for a few cuts is waaaay cheaper than your emergency room co-pay for the stitches.
I cut my own wedding invitations with my crafty friend…using our two rotary cutters. There were some minor imperfections on a few, but I told myself none of my guests would be looking at them so critically. My crafty friend is a scrapbooking perfectionist and agonized over them…I made her feel better by flagging the less than perfect ones and telling her I would send those out to the male guests I was sure would notice such little details
We brought ours to Staples (to avoid the horrors of screwing it up on your own). Guess what?! They screwed them up fro us. Next to the machine was a pile of slivers as she cut adn recut trying to fix her mistakes. Our squares turned into rectangles 
***sigh*** I am all with you Miss SB…I am in the process of cutting my STD with my FH and he does all the cutting because me and rulers uh yea dont get a long!
Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! That sounds so stressful! I was cutting my own until my perfectionist nature got a hold of me. I just couldn’t make it look the way I wanted to. I too went to Kinkos. It was under $5 for a few somewhat complicated cuts.
FYI, some Kinkos don’t have the machines to cut large pieces. At least the ones I called didn’t. They said their machines wouldn’t take the 26×20 Paper Source flat paper I ordered! I found a local shop that was able to cut it for me though. Staples wanted to charge me $2 a cut to do it manually ~ nope, I’m too OCD, I wanted clean machine cuts!
I’m planning to cut mine too. Thanks to the paper trimmer I commandeered from work!
Y’all, trust me, if it were up to ME, I would have run-and-not-walked to Kinkos. However, when Mr SB gets something into his head, oh lordy, try to convince him otherwise.
@indecisivebride: Ha ha, I totally did the same thing and sent the overly-defective ones to Mr SB’s male buddies.
@Miss Pinot Noir: Omigosh, that sucks. If it makes you feel better, ours ended up having a way bigger dark purple border than they were supposed to have. I consoled myself with the knowledge that probably no one would notice but me!
Thank goodness for Kinko’s! We paid for someone else to print the main invitation but made our own direction and extra insert cards. The fiancee had planned to spend the entire evening cutting paper sheet by sheet with a paper cutters. That’s when I remembered someone telling me about machines that could cut through a stack of cardstock. Two chops and $1.8 later, we had our 80 sheets. I still hand trimmed pieces after printing, but at least we started out with straight edges.
And, it is true, only you will notice the littlest flaws. Everyone else will simply be excited to see your awesome invitations!
i went the kinko’s route as well. it saved us time and in the end money. and i even got my big cardstock cut there for free. some kinkos have the wide cutters out int he copy printer areas. we do 1 or two copies of something then turn around and use the cutting board. oh those were the days!
i feel for you! mr. marg and i went through the same thing last week when we were doing our programs. i hope the rest goes better!
Dude, cutting in no fun… nope nope nope. It is by far the worst part of the entire DIY invite process. I had access to a rockin’ professional paper cutter and I still hated every second of it. Our invites had 6 different pieces that needed to be cut, one at a time. laaaaame. At least it is all over with, no?
I think it’s only $1.49 per cut - even if you do a HUGE stack! The best thing to do is to figure out how you can get as many things on one piece with as little cuts as possible. Then it’s REALLY CHEAP if you think about it!
[...] more adventures with X-Acto blades. God I hate those things now. At least we (read: Mr. Sea Breeze) learned our lesson from the cutting the first stacks of dark and light purple card stock, so we did them one by one. [...]
Yes I am a master cutter after all the art projects that I have completed in my art college… Take my advice and don’t have distractions that force you to look up, when you are cutting that was the ONLY time in my cutting history that I managed to cut off a tip off my finger.
After hearing your story, I am now very happy that while I was diligently working on our invites, Mr. Y was sleeping on the couch.
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Mrs. Sea Breeze, Vancouver/Dominican Republic
Age in 2008 and Occupation: 30, Communications Manager
Fiance's Age in 2008 and Occupation: 29, Experiential Marketing Director
Engagement Date: October 6, 2007
Wedding Date: November, 2008
Blogging Since: July 17, 2008
Venue: Majestic Colonial Resort, Punta Cana
About Me: Planning a destination wedding by the sea should be (oh no she di-in't…) a breeze (…*sigh* yep, she did) but when you've never been to the Caribbean, your powers of imagination are really put to the test. Luckily, I'm 90% resourceful, creative optimist (and kooky, neurotic practicalist-if-that's-a-word for the other ten). Other than writing about our week-long celebration of family, friends, laughter and love, I adore books, shoes and… you guessed it… long walks on the beach.
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