Weddingbee 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?