Weddingbee Blog

My invitations came yesterday! Woohooooo~!

Of course being the neurotic person that I am, I had to get started right away on putting those babies together! I have plenty of pictures, but I won’t be posting them until after these babies go out. Sorry.

Anyway, to put these things together yourself, you need a good glue gun or a tape gun. My vendor recommends using these:

Scotch ATG Tape Gun

Koyuko Tape Dispenser

I put together 10 invitations last night, and these work wonderfully! I used the big one for the invitation and the backing layer panels, and then the small gun for the outside seals.

So all of you DIY’ers out there, I highly suggest getting both of these guns for your crafts. They work really well!

CDD brought up an interesting idea in our beehive today about sending save the dates via email.

I love these beautifully designed envelopes adorned with vintage stamps from Greer Chicago. Each one comes with an address label and note card, and can be mailed as is.

At $6-$10 each, they are a bit pricey, but what a cool way to send a unique invitation or save the date to each of your guests.

Bari Zaki who creates the envelopes is actually a bookbinder. She does some gorgeous custom work if you’re looking for a one of a kind wedding album.

While we cannot compete with the awesomeness that is Miss Caterpillar’s invitations, I thought I would still share our rehearsal dinner invitations.

To match our wedding invitation, we used the same layout and color scheme and swapped out the artwork for something that is very us- kids playing bocce. Also, we planned to incorporate bocce into the pre-nuptial festivities on the eve of the wedding because we love bocce that much. Despite Mrs. Bee’s suggestion to not go out after your own rehearsal dinner, after our dinner, everyone is headed to Union Hall in Park Slope for bocce and good times. I’ll plan to call it a night by 11 because I know she is probably right.

The invitation

The envelopes and address labels

We opted for a guestbook scroll in lieu of a traditional guestbook, and it turned out to be quite a nice little keepsake. Other popular guestbook alternatives include wishbowls (which we did in addition to the scroll) or MyPublisher albums. But my current favorite idea is to use a picture book of the city you’re getting married in. So much more interesting than a regular guestbook, no?

360� New York - $16.47 @ amazon

My invitation mock-up is here!!! Eeek! It is so beautiful! I might want to make minor changes to it, but as a whole, my invites make me so happy!

Even Mr. Butterfly was surprised at how pretty they were. Heh - of course, his enthusiasm might have been partially motivated by me constantly telling him to be more enthused, excited, involved in the wedding process.

I would love to post pictures, but I want to send them out first. So, you readers will have to wait a couple of weeks before you can see them. Sorry :P.

There’s nothing I like better than a bargain. And that’s exactly what Gartner Outlet has! The selection is small, but there are really cute things in there if you dig around. For instance, these wedding party thank you cards come in packs of 14 for just $2.99. So cute!

While my title may sound flippant, I’m asking genuinely! It seems to me that there are certain types of weddings (cathedral ceremony, ballroom reception) where you may need a program (not technically of course, but it’s usually expected). Then there are less formal weddings, to downright untraditional ones. Do they all require a program? Or does the level of formality of your wedding dictate whether you “should” have one or not?

A program traditionally includes the names of the wedding party, readings, etc., but what about all those other things people are putting in these days? Pictures, stories of how the couple met, biographies of the wedding party, games, puzzles, favor CDs…

While I love all these ideas, it seems a bit more than I need for my pretty unconventional, informal wedding. At the same time, I do like the idea of listing the order of events and naming the wedding party. But if I’m going to bother having programs at all, I might as well go all out, right? I’ll add some pictures and stories and….then it’s the complicated type of program again.

Do you think all weddings should have a program? How much does a program register in your mind when you’re a guest?

Oh, wait– my wedding’s just three months (!) away, so hopefully anyone who is coming will already have saved the date. These save-the-dates were the subject of some drama but it all worked out, and off the little save-the-dates went into the world, informing people of when they ought to be in NY to attend our wedding.

I’m late in posting this but, in the interest of being thorough– and as we all learned from Maude Lebowski, thoroughness is an attribute not to be overlooked– I thought I would catalogue my save-the-dates, in all their adorable glory:

the grosgrain ribbon reads more orange than red in “real life”

machine calligraphed envelopes en route to out-of-towners (avec my much-coveted lovebirds stamp)

the rip-off oh-so-reasonable hotel blocks we reserved.

Because we knew (or, rather, I knew) that our proper invitations would be much more formal, I wanted the save-the-dates to show a bit of whimsy. I died over the ribbon tie (go figure, I was a fan of pop-up books as a child as well) and loved the orange and gold color combo, as inspired by my day planner.

And we just received our invitation proof, but in the interest of surprising those of my to-be-wedding guests who actually read this thing, I won’t be posting that until the invites are signed, sealed, delivered (and yours).

For reference, though, we used Julie Holcomb Printers and we worked (extensively) with Shana at the Wedding Library. Thankfully Shana has a) patience and b) impeccable taste, because both were needed (really the former, much more) as my mother and I compared, contrasted and fought about debated letterpress invites and degrees of formality. Fun for the family, no?

Yesterday morning on my way to the train station, I stopped by the post office with our first wave of invitations. Despite it being 8:30am in the morning, I fell in behind a line of people and chimed in when people started complaining that there was only one window open.

When it was finally my turn, I put on a cheery smile and told the woman behind the window that I had wedding invitations I wanted “hand canceled.” She looked at me and said “Sorry honey, we don’t hand cancel here.” How is that possible I ask, I called USPS and they said every post office does it and does it free of charge. She looked at me unamused and said “well, we don’t do it.” How do you cancel oversized mail that doesn’t feed into the machine then, I asked. “We have another machine for oversized mail,” she said. “Besides, even if you avoid the stamp cancel machine, your invitations go through other sorting machines.” Oh, I said defeated. Fine. So I handed over my babies to her and told them to be strong and prevail against the evil machines they would soon face.

Hand Canceling:

To cancel out the value of stamps, post offices usually feed mail through a machine that imprints a post mark over the stamp.

To avoid these evil machines’ dirty smudges, a lot of people request to have the stamps on their wedding invitations to be canceled with a cleaner and neater hand held imprint.

(photos from : liweddings.com)

Our wedding invitations are dark brown and metallic so my concern was not so much with the envelopes getting dirty but with the possibility that they may be mangled by the canceling machine. But since mail also need to go through further sorting machines, I guess hand canceling is just a piece of mind request.

I’ve read from different forums that post offices sometimes let you hand cancel your own invitations right there under their watch. I was hoping to get to do that but I guess not.

BOOOO 20th Ave and 66th Street post office BOOOO~!!!

Source: Urban Couture Collection Pack (Basic Grey) twopeasinabucket

I first fell into arts and crafts thanks to paper. I’d walk into an art store and get emotional looking at all the different colors, textures and prints. Because of my love for paper, I started to find ways to justify paying .50 for a sheet of 12×12 paper! .50 isn’t much but when you start collecting stacks of it, the cost sure adds up. Luckily I’ve found many ways to use my beloved!

For those brides out there who are doing DIY invitations, here are some my tips:

Carl Paper Trimmer from Staples

Xyron 510 sticker maker

1. Buy bulk cardstock and cut it yourself with a paper trimmer (I bought mine for $35 and it’s been with me for the last 4 years in very good condition). Depending on the quantity of invites and the complexity of the card you’re making, perhaps it’s not worth the stress to cut each card out. (But for me, it’s really easy so why pay the extra money?) The Xyron machine above is basically a sticker making machine. You put your paper in and out comes a sticker. Pretty neat. The cartridges are expensive though and rarely go on sale. I usually wait for 50% coupons and buy it at Michaels.

2. Instead of buying pre-made RSVP cards, make your own. Using 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock, type up the RSVP and try to fit as many as you can on that page. I like using Microsoft Office Publisher for this purpose. Once it’s printed, I just use my paper trimmer to cut out each RSVP.

3. The same goes for place cards too.

4. For those that don’t have much experience with buying paper, don’t limit yourself to the invitation aisles. Check out the scrapbooking section. There’s so much out there nowadays. Fantastic colors, prints and good quality paper that’s acid free and lignin free (which means that your paper won’t turn yellow or disintegrate over time)

Source: Joann’s

5. My last tip is to make your own guest book. I plan on buying an archival scrapbook (see above) and randomly placing photos of us in there, leaving plenty of space for guests to write in their wishes and thoughts. I’m going to mat the photos onto decorative paper that I’m going to use throughout my wedding (ie. invitations & favors). I’m loving the new Basic Grey’s pictured above. Perfect for a garden themed wedding.

Hope this helps. If you are artistic, even a little, try doing your own invites. I’d love to receive a handmade card over a professionally made one any day.

We already sent out our save the date cards so I figure it’s safe to post!

• Wedding Cake Stamp from Michaels ($3-4 on sale)
• Gold Ink pad from Michaels ($2 on sale)
• New York City postcard… 5 cents each
• uni-ball waterproof/fade proof pen in black

When we explored the streets of NYC for postcards we finally found a place that sold them for a nickel each. When we went to the cashier to check out he said…

“How many?”
“Um…….. 200 do you want to count?”
“No.”

Haha.

Mr. Poppy stamped the postcards and I wrote them out. It took forever to handwrite each postcard but it was well worth it! We didn’t want anyone to forget the date so we said to keep the postcard as a raffle ticket at the wedding! We’re hoping that people will put it on the fridge so they’ll always remember….

We already got so many emails from guests saying they will MAKE SURE they bring the postcard cuz they want the gift!!! I would post what the gift is - but a lot of my guests read this site… so…. I guess everyone will have to wait till after the wedding.

Do you see the red heart? Guess what I used to colour it? Marker? Red pen? Crayon?

I used nail polish that had glitter. hehe…. ^___^

My invitations haven’t gone out yet (SOON, I SWEAR) so I don’t want to completely ruin the surprise for my guests BUT I want to share just a teensy tiny part:

Our pocketfold and RSVP envelopes.

What’s inside? Haha, stay tuned…

Yes wedding stamps are like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens so we’re using them for the outside envelopes, but I LOVE these superhero stamps so much, I couldn’t resist using them for the RSVP envelopes. HOW COOL ARE THESE??? haha… Wonder Woman is my favorite. She’s one cooool chick.

But don’t fret my pets, once all my babies are officially mailed out, I will post pictures documenting every tedious step of our invitations. Prepare yourselves for more gory analogies haha.

These superhero stamps are available at any post office or online.

Paper-Source has teamed up with the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Illinois to bring you Wedding Wishes Letterpress Favor Cards.

These table cards can be used in place of favors (also available in favor card size):

or included with your invitations.

More designs are available. Call 888-Paper-1 to order.

thanks daisy028!

Cheree Berry (yes that’s really her name and what an awesome one!) was a graphic designer for Kate Spade in a former lifetime before launching her own line of stationery.

Her designs are so original, vibrant and fun!

Of course I have a soft spot for bees.

These are some examples of her custom work. This is a monogram created with your names tied into a heart-shaped knot.

A combination of your initials to form a unique logo.

A collage of your favorite words and symbols printed on vellum that wraps around your invite.

And I just love this save the date - it looks like a water color painting of a beautiful summer wedding.

To see a real bride’s invitation set created by Cheree, check out Amalfiwedding’s bio (who we’ve featured in the past).