Weddingbee Blog

If you haven’t noticed, this week has been all about invitations!  I felt compelled to share the back story of how we decided upon the set that we did. It was a journey that started with DIY e-party invites and a roller coaster ride through the world of choices, including couture invites, a major meltdown, which you’ll read about here, and an attempt at Adobe Illustrator!

Obviously, this hasn’t been an easy process for us, and since I know a lot of you are going through the same thing (trying to decide on what kind of invitations to have).

When it came time for us to chose something, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

I stressed out a lot about the e-party invitations and there were only about 25 of those! I sent out a pack of ten, ran back to the supply store, and then sent another ten. Some people didn’t even get one and just got an email because I was over the whole process.

Mr. B didn’t want me to go through that again, and I didn’t want to go there again, either.

I had resolved myself to just buying some, but even still, I faced challenges. One Saturday morning after breakfast we decided to take a trip to Dandelion Patch, a stationery store here in Northern VA. Mr. B said, “Let’s go look in person and forget all the Internet searches.” We went on whim, hopeful we were going to find “the ones”!

I want to fast forward to the car ride home, because I was bawling.

Yes, I cried. Like really, really cried. I know it sounds awful, because I should have enjoyed invitation shopping, but I didn’t. I got overwhelmed. The binders upon binders and millions of customizable options really sent me for a loop. I buckled and pretty much shut down.

There were just way too many options and the prices were ridiculous. We should have gone in more prepared. We should have been more vocal about our limited budget. Instead, we ended up walking out with quotes on about four different invitation suites that were either not exactly what we were looking for or way out of our price range. (I’m talking way out.)  It didn’t help that the couple next to us was placing their order.

Our favorites? We both loved Elum letterpress invitations. They would be perfect for our venue, gorgeous, timeless, and couture. Yeah, couture…in other words, not in the budget! Still, very beautiful though:

You can view the rest of this suite here.

You can view the rest of this suite here.

You can view the rest of this suite here.

So back to our car ride home…I felt like a crazy person. Good or bad, I had decided I was going to do the OPPOSITE of what I had been planning—I was going to make our invitations! Screw paying someone $1,000! Screw those binders! I know what I want and I’m going to make them myself.

The lowest estimate we got at Dandelion Patch was for $900.00 and I couldn’t help but think we could have beautiful invitations for way less! The bees did it, right?

When I wiped away the tears, I felt a rush of excitement. Meanwhile, Mr. B looked frightened. Like a good fiance, he accepted that I was going to be making our invitations. He nodded his head and said, “Sure. You’re going to do a great job, honey.”

I got home and guess what I did? I downloaded a free trial of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Design! I probably jumped the gun a little and downloaded it too early (they only offer 30 free days of using the program), but what can I say? I was anxious to get this show on the road.

Up next: My Attempt at Illustrating!

Did you get frustrated or overwhelmed by all of the different types of invitations out there?