Weddingbee Blog

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I’m grumpy, and I blame it all on invitations. Well, that and ginormous vet bills for emergency ICU admissions of poisoned dogs, but since I’m more relieved to have alive dogs, I’m blaming this on the invites.

Way back when, I declared that I didn’t care to spend any money on invitations. I love, love, love paper (it’s the nerdy teacher’s pet in me who always loved stacking up her new notebooks and writing utensils at the beginning of the school year) and have drooled over invitations online just like any other bride, but in the big scheme of things they didn’t matter enough to me to warrant more than the minimum outlay. I’d rather buy furniture.

So, on one of my many wallet-sucking trips to Wal-Mart, I grabbed a couple of packages of cheapo invitations (on clearance, no less). My intention was to show everyone that it didn’t matter if you spent $26 or $260, you could still have good-enough invites while saving a bundle. In fact, I joked that I could hand-write every invite on a different type and color of paper because nobody would ever know; only the “insiders” ever see the invites all together in happy stacks. But now I’m stuck.

Like Sara, I struggle with DIY. First, I’m fired up. “I can do that!” I think. “Piece of cake!” Then I get started and freeze up. “Oh, this is harder than I thought.” I walk away. Eventually, I pick it up again intending to research and make decisions, and before I know it I’m exhausted, grumpy, and overwhelmed. “This is going to suck,” I think, “and there’s no way I have the skills to get it done.” I pick whatever is closest, decide I really don’t care anyway, and then obsess about whether I should have done this differently or chosen that instead.

True to form, I have fifteen versions of invite wording and keep messing with font sizes. I think constantly about swoopy versus upright fonts (yea, yea, I’m going all technical on you with the terminology, ha). I ask the mister for input, then decide I like the other one better. I feel hopeless and sad that I’ll ever come up with something not-sucky. Next thing I know, I’m back on the Paper Source website with a cart full of colors that have nothing to do with our wedding palette, all because I don’t want people to get our invite and think we’re cheap. This from a woman who declares her unwillingness to “pay retail” regularly. To everyone.

The challenge is finding a balance between not wanting to spend a penny more than necessary with meeting my own expectations. When the going gets tough, I tend to settle for whatever’s easiest and then regret it. Looks like this has become invitation-deciding-as-life-lesson, hasn’t it?

I’m going to have to accept my inner perfectionist, find a way to make her play nice with my inner cheapskate, and either make the decision myself or trust the input of those whom I ask for guidance. And then reward myself with a glass of wine.

Does anyone else feel hopeless or overwhelmed halfway through every project you take on? How do you get past it?