Weddingbee Blog

These are the cards that almost weren’t. There was some universal force that did not want these save the date cards made, but I pushed through it, and they were finished, and successfully sent!

Here is what went wrong:

• Our magnets were delivered to the wrong address, and then mysteriously appeared (opened up and fussed with) on the hood of our car in the middle of the night.
• When I finally got around to opening up our (free! they came with my eBay-ed Gocco) 100% recycled cards and envelopes, I absolutely hated the texture. I am not at all a texture/paper snob (I am so new to this paper crafting world) but even I knew these were junky cards (no wonder the eBay seller didn’t use them!)
• After panicking and trying to school myself in the ways of paper (weight, size, cut, cardstock ugh ugh ugh) I went to PaperSource in Pasadena. The colors completely overwhelmed me and I left with nothing! I did some more online searching and finally figured out what colors and such to buy. Made a second trek out to Pasadena (and I hate wasting gas and time, I prefer to stay in my neighborhood!) and the store was closed for a private event!
• I have no computer design programs. I have never designed anything in my life, and I don’t know why I thought it was such a great idea to do all the wedding design stuff myself! Designing these cards was incredibly difficult for me. I went through two different versions and I am still not sure I picked the right one.
• I do not read Japanese, so the Gocco directions were useless to me! I had to do much Googling and tutorial reading to figure it out. The Weddingbee wiki was a great place for Gocco help!

Here they are, in all of their home-made DIY glory:

actual card
(this one is a bit crooked, but I took pictures after I sent out all of the good ones)

back of envelope (showing off our wee little moo sticker!)

When I first set out to make these cards I made several costly (financial and environmental) mistakes:

• If I had more time I would have ordered cheaper paper and envelopes online. I probably would have made them regular sized instead of square which would have saved me $12 in postage (not a huge difference but with the paper and such it does add up!). Looking back now I wish I had used the recycled paper I had. There is nothing more green than using 100% recycled paper that was gifted to you! Don’t worry though, I did end up using the cards for another project.
• I originally planned on only using two Gocco screens, but the first one I printed was blurry, so I had to redo it. My second design (a fern for the envelopes) didn’t burn fully when a flashbulb didn’t go off, so I had to redo that. That wasted $20 worth of Gocco products.
• The place we ordered magnets from only sold them in 50, 100 or 250 sets. We needed 60. So we had to order 100. I know if I had searched around some more online I could have found a source that would make me 60. I just didn’t have time!
• Waiting a few more weeks until I had settled on colors/theme would have been ideal. As you can see, our original colors were green, chocolate brown and gold, but this changed shortly after the STD cards were sent out.

All in all if I had more time and had successfully used the Gocco on the first try, this project could have cost about $100, which is a pretty reasonable $1.66 per card. Unfortunately, it was about double that. I am glad I did this trial run of sorts, before the actual invitations went out. It helped me know what to expect from the world of wedding paper.

Did you make any mistakes (and learn from them!) in your planning process? I would love to hear about them!