Weddingbee Blog

I think wedding invitations are one of those things that we brides obsess over that no one else really gets that excited about. I’ve been to a few weddings in my day, and I honestly do not remember any of the invitations. I’m sure they were all lovely and carefully planned and obsessively perfected by the bride, which makes me feel even worse about not remembering them. But I promise you this—after worrying about our invitations, I can tell you that I will being paying a lot more attention to the invitations we receive in the future.

Let me be blunt. I have ZERO skills in the graphic arts department. I knew I would not be able to design our  own invitations. Luckily one of my bridesmaids, Machine Gun, went to art school and knows a bit more about it than I do. She has been super excited about our wedding, and when I asked her to help with the invitation design, she immediately agreed. I was thrilled. Then, I started to worry. I knew she would do a good job, so I wasn’t worried about that, it was more of just a general unease about friendors that I have. Like, it’s much easier to be direct with someone who is not your friend. You are concerned about them doing their job, not about hurting their feelings. It’s a business transaction. Friendors is mixing business and pleasure. (Eh, that kind of sounded sexier than I meant. Whatever, you know what I’m saying.)

Using friendors means you’re putting expectations on someone who is essentially doing you a favor. Usually, if someone offers to help you with something, you take that help and appreciate it no matter what, because it’s the polite thing to do and you’re grateful for any help at all. But this is your one time only wedding! You don’t want to take anything that’s thrown at you. You want the best! But you don’t want to be a jerk. Unless you’re on Bridezillas. Then you’re getting paid to be a jerk.

Seriously, though, using friendors can very easily lead to misgivings on both sides. Or it can go totally awesome. You have to wait and see. So I did. Now, my big mistake was giving her pretty much NO direction in what I was looking for. But she knows me, so she sent something that seemed “me.” And I will say that it was definitely “me.” Here is the first mock-up she sent me.

Now, let me tell you, I think this is super cute. I love the sort of folksy 70′s vibe in the colors and flowers. It’s rainbow colored! Obviously I love it. But, it’s not really what we’re want for the wedding invitation. Luckily, Machine Gun told me point blank in the email she sent me that if I didn’t love it I should let her know. She said (and I quote) “Here is the deal—I am not saying this to guilt trip you in any way—so if there is ANYTHING you want to change, seriously tell me. If you want me to scrap the entire idea, tell me. This is YOUR wedding so I want you to be happy… with that being said, designing wedding invitations for another person is a total pain in the ass!!! Maybe it’s just because you’re my friend and I care about you liking it/having a great invitation? Either way, it feels way more critical than just a regular design job for someone.”

Isn’t she awesome? She loves me and was making me feel way less guilty about wanting something else. And she was experiencing the other end of the friendor issue- the desire to help someone out and make sure they are really happy with what you did. Then you’re worried they’ll just say they like it to be polite and secretly hate what you did for them. And you would feel like crap if they totally hated whatever you did, because you were just trying to be helpful.

So, I wrote back, trying to not be a jerk because they are awesome invitations—just not what we had been thinking of for our wedding. Here’s where I “pulled my balls out of my vagina” as Bridesmaid Rifle likes to say (you’re welcome for that mental picture) and said what I was really thinking. I told Machine Gun what I wanted: “I don’t know if I sent these to you before, but I attached some invitations I like to this. I think I just like the uniform look of the block text in varying sizes and fonts. Anyway, I really appreciate the work that you’ve done on this. I feel like a jerk, because it’s not that I don’t like it, I just don’t think it quite fits what I was thinking. Hopefully my inspiration pics will help. I’m also attaching a God-awful Word document I made when I was explaining my ideas to Joe. (Make sure to download it instead of view google docs so you can see the horrendous fonts I used.) But I liked the idea of highlighting those few words in different font and then making Megan & Joe larger and more the focus of the entire thing.”

I attached these pictures (I won’t subject you to the terrible Word document I alluded to):

Image via minted.com / Design by three kisses studio

Image via minted.com / Design by the social type

Image via minted.com / Design by design lotus

And a day later she made some major changes and sent me our new and improved invitation design that I am so excited about! And, sorry guys, but I’m going to make you wait another day to see it, too!

How has communication with your friendors been? Any tips for those out there working with friendors?