Weddingbee Blog

After crafting the rough mock-up I didn’t even like, I decided to try for something a little more fancy. A little more stylish. And a lot more tedious and time-intensive.

I decided I wanted a cascading design like this:

[source]

And I also loved booklets like this.

[source]

So I opened up Photoshop and once again got to work.

I knew I needed an invitation card, an RSVP card, and a direction card (only for about 20 of the invites, though). Since a lot of the invitees don’t really know Mr. MJ or me personally, FMIL Mary Jane has been trying to brainstorm ways of telling them a little about us. To help, I decided to add an “About the Couple” card to the mix.

Here’s the result of my first digital design (I’ll show you the details of each card in my next post, promise!). There’s no folder for it, it’s not fastened together, it’s printed on plain white paper, and the measurements aren’t quite right. But I still liked it better than that original mock-up!

And here’s a peek the “test run” I did using some actual supplies.

Now, I had to figure out the measurements of everything so that I could go supplies-shopping.

Since this new design is bigger than the original mock-up, I needed some envelopes. I was prepared to order them online, but decided to see what OfficeMax had to offer. Bingo! “Greeting Card” envelopes. 100 for $17! There were only two sizes, the other being the size I already had. These are bigger than my invites… but not too much bigger. (And it’s my wedding! I’m allowed a big envelope if I want one!) I hope these’ll mail for $0.42… but if they don’t, they don’t. (It’s my wedding! I can spend more on postage if I wanna! [Can you see a theme developing here?]).

Next, off to Michaels, where I intended to buy more of the floral paper for the fronts of the enclosures, a cute (and less expensive) paper to use for the backs of them, more creme-colored cardstock… oh, and a bunch these.

These are gonna be a whole lotta fun to work with. Not.

But those were the least of my problems. Because I needed about 20 more pages of the floral paper… and Michaels was out of it. There I knelt, on the hard tile floor in the scrapbooking aisle, for about 5 minutes, trying to figure out what to do. The paper would take weeks to make a special order, and I’ve got to have these in the mail in about 8 days’ time.

My first thought was to just buy a different (but similar) paper to use for some of them, but there were several problems with this. For one thing, they’d no longer match the STDs. Not such a big deal. But also: the little flower graphics I added to the cards would no longer match. That was surmountable, however - the cards were not yet printed. Additionally, FMIL bought the floral paper for me. I really wanted to include it. And finally, she also already bought tablecloths and other decor for the picnic in colors that matched the paper. Crap crap crap crap crap.

I finally decided I did have enough floral paper to make a belly-band for each invite. I’d just use a coordinating solid color for the enclosure itself. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

But what of the backings? 12″ x 12″ paper wasn’t big enough to wrap around all 6.5 horizontal inches of the invitation contents, so I’d originally decided to use a different paper for the back cover (to save money, mostly - that floral stuff was spendy!). Ultimately I decided that since I was now buying less-expensive solid cardstock, I could use the same stuff for the fronts AND the backs.

I selected brown cardstock because 1) it still coordinates with the floral printed paper and 2) Michaels had a lot more of it than most other colors. I bought every sheet of brown cardstock they had: 20 “French Silk”, 5 “Mud Pie”, and 14 “Bitter Chocolate”. (They’re a little different, yes, but it’s not like people are going to be receiving multiple invitations to color-compare!) I had to somehow make around 70 - 5″x14″ enclosures out of these 39 brown pieces of paper, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that.

On my drive back to work, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to - not without haphazardly daisy-chaining paper scraps together. I didn’t have enough paper from which to cut 140 - 5″ x 7.5″ pieces (to be bound together like the covers a book). And a single strip wasn’t big enough to wrap around the invite contents. Sh*t on a shingle. Oh, and guess what else. Remember my brilliant belly-band idea? Can someone tell me how was I expecting a 12″-long paper belly-band to stretch around 14″ of real-estate? Again, I’d have to tape a couple of pieces together or something. Classy. Effing classy.

As I drove back to work (red-faced and cold-sweaty), my car’s speed was approaching 85 while my mind surpassed 100 miles a minute. What I really needed was to be able to make each enclosure from a piece of paper 12″ x 6″ or less. This would solve my short-supply-of-paper issue and it’d be easier to assemble, too. So basically, I needed some way to get my 4″ x 6.5″ invitation contents to attractively fit in to 12″ x (less than six”) enclosures (which would be folded). After a minute or two, I had an idea for that. And by the time I arrived back at work, I had the belly-band thing solved too.

When I got home from work a few hours later, I altered my most recent mock-up to reflect my new ideas. (Pretend that instead of the papers you see here, the enclosure is solid brown (including the part peeking out behind the contents) and the belly band is made from the floral paper.)

Crisis averted! This might actually work! Up next… Design details and layout fun!

Have any big snafus caused you to change your DIY plans?