Wedding | Jovers

I have been so wedding stressed out lately. Last night, I laid in bed for hours last night just thinking about all of the things that I still need to do, decorations to buy, things I have to make, questions I need to ask, people I need help from. There are 48 days until my wedding (!!!!) but, good gracious, it might kill me before it gets here. I am just feeling very overwhelmed.

I had a dream two nights ago that I went to have my wedding dress altered and when I went to pick it up, the seamstress has dyed it purple and made it into a tulle romper. I am not good at confronting people or saying no, and I didn’t want to hurt the seamstress’s feelings so when she asked if I liked it, I said, “ It’s different than what I was expecting.” But everyone else absolutely loved it and thought it would be so modern and chic, so I just paid for it and had to wear it like that on my wedding day.

Then I had a dream last night that my wedding photographer forgot about the wedding. I didn’t even notice she wasn’t there until the reception. So she just decided not to come and we didn’t have wedding pictures despite paying the ridiculous amount we’re paying. During this whole photography debacle, my dress turned yellow and I was freaking out – I couldn’t wear a dress that was yellow! So I had to wear a dress someone just went and bought really fast at the nearest department store.

Oi.

My mother and I went to the ballroom Saturday morning. We had a lot of questions about the floor plan and how many people and tables could fit on the floor with room still for dancing, etc. We got them all answered and I feel a little better about that now, knowing that there will be enough room for everything. However, we weren’t planning on doing a seating plan and the lady there highly recommended we do one.

I’m a little bit split on this, though. Two hundred people can sit on the ballroom floor, but then any number exceeding that (we may/may not have up to 50 – still waiting on RSVPs for a final head count) have to sit in the balcony. If I created a seating chart, I could ensure that elderly people could sit on the floor and not have to climb the stairs to the balcony. Also if we are full (the ballroom holds max 250) and a group of people arrive, but there are only scattered seats left, they will have to split up and won’t be able to sit together. Plus I think it will just overall be less chaotic if everyone knows where their seat is.

On the flip side, I then have to choose who has to sit in the balcony and they have to sit away from everyone else/have a harder time seeing everything. Then there are also going to be people who don’t like where I have them sitting and I’m sure will voice their opinions (*cough*grandpa*cough*). Plus it’s a lot of work haha.

My mom is really opposed to the seating chart, but I’m kind of leaning towards it. Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Have you been to a wedding before where the seating chart was great/disastrous? I have been to both: one wedding it was really nice knowing I had a seat the whole night and it was mine! The other two I had to sit far away from friends and with a bunch of people I didn’t know which was a bit awkward.

Then I think I just need to do what I want to do because it is my wedding and I need to stop trying to please everyone. Ahhhh. My head hurts just thinking about it all.

After we went to the ballroom, we did some shopping for some decoration projects – that was a complete failure. Turns out the small and simple projects I had in mind were going to end up costing hundreds of dollars which I hadn’t budgeted for. It’s just hard saying no to something that you love and know will be perfect. But I just can’t justify spending that much money on small decorations so I’m trying to find things that I still like that are more affordable, but so far have just had to settle with something that is just cheap and that will work – even if it isn’t cute.

With all that being said and done, I did have a small silver lining at the end of the night: I was ordering some mailing return labels with Andrew and I’s name on it. A friend had suggested I get some that way I can slap them on thank you notes and whiz through them, not having to handwrite our names and address over and over again. I was typing in our names, Andrew & Rebecca Smith, and just had to take a moment and soak in that line and how good it sounds.

And that’s when I knew that all this stress and anxiety and my empty wallet doesn’t really matter all that much – because in the end I get to marry my best friend and I couldn’t be happier.

Last night, I dropped off 120 little blue envelopes in the mail, and I couldn’t feel more relieved. My wedding invitations are done!!

I took a DIY approach to my invitations. I had ordered save the dates for a reasonable price off of a website, so thought that I could find some cheaper invitations as well. LOL NOPE. The cheapest I could find was going to be well over $800. For just the invitations. For ink and paper.

Being the ~~broke~~ frugal and creative college student that I am, I thought there has to be a cheaper way to do this. So I looked around on Pinterest and got some ideas and headed to work.

I found a free online template that I was able to download and customize. My church had a copier that I could use and only charge $0.10 a copy so my mother and I headed to Office Max to buy paper. We picked out a glossy white, thick paper (110 lb) for about $15. It came with 500 sheets. Back at church, we started to make copies. Two invitations fit on one sheet of paper, and we made extra, but we only used 75 sheets.

The hardest part of this whole process was this next step. When I found this template, I didn’t give any second thought as to how time consuming it would be to cut each invitation out. They have large paper cutters at church, and even with two other people helping me, it took over two hours just to do the invitations. It was so tedious and frustrating because you could only do one at a time, otherwise the edges would cut jagged and it just looked cheap and homemade.

For the reception and RSVP cards, four fit onto one sheet, so we had to use even less paper for that, I think we used maybe 35 sheets for each. We saved the cutting for another day.

Next I searched for envelopes in a color that would match my wedding colors. I first ordered a sample from envelopes.com and I loved the color! Since I had to order in quantities of 50, I ordered 150 A7 envelopes and 150 A1 envelopes for the RSVP cards. (Side note: I was so glad I ordered extra envelopes because we needed them! My mother, sister, maid of honor, and I went through so many extra envelopes when we made mistakes – and it is so easy to make mistakes when you’ve been addressing envelopes for three hours!)

As I was playing with the invitations, I wanted them to be a little more unique and personal than just a piece of paper in an envelope. I played with the thought of using a doily somehow, but wrapping the invitations in it or I’ve even seen it done where the doily is glued to the inside of the envelope. However, I just couldn’t make it work to how I liked it. So I just used a simple ribbon and tied all the pieces of the invitation together with a bow. I love the idea of my guests having to untie the ribbon to get to the invitation – kind of like a present that I am giving to them. Ha – maybe I am dumb, but I like the idea.

I love, love, love how my invitations turned out. It was very time consuming and a little stressful at times – after tying about fifty bows in a row, I was wondering why again I was being so cheap and not paying someone else to do them for me! But I am very pleased with how they turned out and I feel like they are a bit more personal than anything I could have ordered online.

ALSO! When I went to the post office to weigh my invitation to see how much postage it would need, it was light enough that I could use just one regular stamp. I didn’t have to pay the extra $0.30 or however much it is per envelope because most invitations are so much heavier. That in itself saved me $35 at the post office!

All in all, this DIY project saved me at least $700. A price break down of how much I payed for each item and from where:

Envelopes: $75, from envelopes.com
Paper: $15, from Office Max
Copies: $20, used church copier
Ribbon: $50, from Michael’s

Grand Total: $160
Per Invitation: $1.33

I also have about half of my pack of paper left, which I will use to make my ceremony programs, (expect a blog post about that too, hehe). I also had about 5 extra rolls of ribbon, which will also help make the programs. So part of this cost will also be put into making my programs.

As much fun as making these invitations were, I’m glad that they are done!

Jovers

Category Archives: Wedding

Wedding Planning Anxieties

My DIY Wedding Invitations