You know what…I think the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is plan a wedding. Sure, the day “belongs” to Jeff and I, but the whole point of having a wedding ceremony and reception is to honor our friends and family. If we didn’t want to do that, it would be a lot simpler and cheaper to get married at City Hall and run off to Kauai for a honeymoon. But we actually want to celebrate with our family and friends, and because we love you all so much, we want the very best! We want the ceremony to be fun, we want the reception to be delicious, and we want the campout to be spectacular. But a lot of times, desire exceeds budget, and that causes a lot of frustration.
Luckily, Jeff and I both agreed that we wanted to make our own wedding invitations. Hopefully, this would save some cash, and add a personal touch to our nuptials. We took a class together, and just like in grade school, it’s easy to bond over paper cutouts and bowtied ribbons. It was a two and a half hour class, and we made four different “suites.” Each suite is tied to a certain design theme, like a fleur de lis. That theme is echoed through the invitation, the escort cards, the table tent, etc. While none of the suites we did really suited our style (say that ten times fast), we learned a lot of techniques that we will eventually apply to our final design.
After class, we spent an hour trying to figure out what elements we wanted to include. Did we want a pocket fold or a tri-fold? Did we want to do response cards with envelopes, or postcards? Embellished invitation, or clean and simple? Is this red too orangey? We ended up going home with a treasure trove of options. Piled it all on the dining table, and two hours later, we have a beautiful, unique invitation that carries a bit of both of us in it. It’s going to take awhile to make each one by hand, and in the end, it maybe only saved us $200 or so dollars, but I think worth it.