Weddingbee Blog

Being that neither of our long-distance families wipe their fannies with dollar bills, we felt news of our Texas nuptials should be spread rather quickly if anyone we liked was going to show up. Well, semi-quickly, anyway. We were engaged in October of 2011, and around June of 2012 we decided to get our act together and get something solid in the mail. Fortunately, a friend from high school is exceptionally gifted with a DSLR, and was willing to photograph us!

We found the save-the-date design on Etsy, a godsend to the wedding world. It was $15 for the design from Sweet Azalea Boutique, and she was amazing! I also loved the idea of stickers to close the envelopes. Word to the wise, Paper-Source envelopes have a point that goes all the way to the bottom of the envelope, which was not great for the little stickers I had made by Posh Girl Boutique. I decided not to stress and just stick them on there anyway. Surprisingly, my dad and brother had very strong opinions about sticker placement, so I just let them battle it out until they came to a decision.

Next was what my grandmother praised as an “early act of compromise,” or, as I see it, as example of how we can rarely agree on anything. We could neither decide on which picture OR what color envelopes to use. I wanted to go with an elegant charcoal gray, but Manatee and the Paper-Source lady were ganging up on me that gray was Simply Too Dark For a Summer Wedding.Because Mr. Man so rarely has any opinion on wedding stuff, and I rarely ever completely give in to anyone else’s idea, we got half salmon and half gray, and I bought contrasting mounting paper to include both colors in each.The picture he liked went in the salmon envelope, and the picture I liked went into the gray. And the compliments for our creativity came pouring in—yay!

After that it was pretty simple. I went to Kinkos and a peppy, unfairly gorgeous, and nice associate summarized the card-stock options, offered her professional opinion, printed them out, and cut them all in about five minutes. The whole thing cost me around $25. I could have tediously cut them myself, but I wasn’t about to mess it up just to save $8. I used some glue dots from Hobby lobby ($3) to stick all the layers together. Manatee used an episode of Terra Nova (RIP) to be my designated envelope licker and stamp/label sticker after my mom and I finished our assembly line.

Now, the only real problem I was gnashing my teeth over were these stupid labels. After finding a watercolor background and ferreting out addresses from relatives, I presented my labels and a flash drive to a frighteningly large man at Kinkos. And he just looked at me like some sort of Kinkos bouncer and said “nope.” Despite my pleas, he says that he absolutely will not print in color on these labels or any other labels. Period. Of course I was immediately upset. He said something involving heat and transfer whatever whatever and I stopped listening because I was imagining every homemade jar of honey, etc. on any blog ever with a beautiful color label.

Of course I should have just let it go, but instead I went home to whine about it and stomp around and seriously consider buying a household printer just to do the damn thing. I even call the next day, thinkin’ I’m sneaky, hoping to get that super perky, helpful girl from my previous visit on the line. But apparently she was off that day too, because Kinkos Bouncer was on to me immediately.

“Ma’am, I told you yesterday I cannot print color on your labels.” Busted.

After this, I threw up my hands in despair and printed off my labels at the university. In black and white. Whatever.

And of course, after all this mess I found that I had sent out an STD with a family friend’s wife as Kim instead of Pam. Sigh.

Anyway! Did you run into any roadblocks on the road to stationery perfection?