SWAK: Sealed With A KILLER?!?

Still waiting to get some pictures back, so I'll start the recaps soon... but in the mean time, I want to share with you a story that I can laugh at now, but was pretty FURIOUS at the USPS at the time...

I had taken a sample invite into the post office to get a price estimate before I ordered all of the paper to create the invites.  They told me that I was right on the edge of needing the 45 cent vs. 65 cent stamp.  So I went ahead and ordered and created the invites (thanks, Kristin for all your help with the invites!).  It was definitely a labor of love, but that's another blog post!

Just so you know, here's a sample of the invite:

Ignore the white-out... I didn't want to post someone's address. :o)

And there are MANY different stamp designs to choose from for 45 cents (a.k.a Forever Stamps), my favorites being these:

Bonsai Trees... pretty!

Cherry Blossoms on the National Mall... Pretty!

Flower painting... Pretty!

Love Ribbon (the red would clash, but still)... Pretty!

Pixar Movie Buddies... Cute and Fun!

Wedding Roses (the 45 cent stamp for invites)... VERY PRETTY!

And the 65 cent stamp is also known as the "wedding stamp":

I would be OK with any of those... really, I would!

So imagine my surprise when Jason and I took a final invite to the post office to find out if we needed to do the 45 cents or the 65 cents, only to be told we needed to do 85 cents because we "weren't just mailing paper" according to the (male) USPS worker.  I took the invite out and SHOWED him that it was only paper, and he still said we needed the 85 cent stamp.  Fine.  150 invites, 20 cents more per invite.  That's an extra $30.  Whatever.  I'll pay it just to get these dang things mailed.

Then he showed me the 85 cent stamp:
Yep, those would be Birds of Prey.  Nothing says "Love" and "Wedding Invite" like deadly birds.  According to Wikipedia, those lovely beaks you see in the stamps are for "tearing flesh."  Yep.  Our wedding invites were going to be stamped with some freakin' flesh-tearing, winged predetors.

Not only were they more expensive, but the brown birds clashed with the black/white/pink/gray color scheme of our invites.

I was on the verge of tears.  No, this couldn't be.  I asked the guy if he had any other prettier stamps.  When he asked why, I flat out told him, "Because those birds are ugly."

His response, "Well, I kinda like them."  Whatever.  Typical male.  They are ugly and definitely NOT meant to be put on ANYONE'S wedding invitation!

Thank goodness Jason was there.  He asked the guy to show us another option.  He came back with two of the red love ribbon stamps.  So now we are looking at 90 cents per invite.  That's almost as much as I spent to create them!

I was welling up with tears again.  Jason just took the invite back and told the man we would think about our options.  I was NOT going to ruin our beautiful invites with those ugly birds of prey, and I definitely didn't want to pay double our original estimate for freakin' stamps.

Jason said I looked like this as I drove home:

Cruella DeVil from 101 Dalmations

Don't worry, there's a happy ending to this story.  We went to another post office the next day where we had a lovely female USPS person to help us who said we could do the 65 cent wedding stamps.  When I asked her if it was too thick or stiff, she said it was fine, and we didn't need to go for the more expensive stamps.  We preceeded to buy the stamps, and our beautiful invites got put in the mail to all of our guests with the beautiful wedding cake stamp.

The moral of the story: 
Get a female USPS person to help you.  Men just don't understand you don't want people to associate your beautiful wedding (and the invites you spend days assembling) with those ugly Birds of Prey.

Computer Apps 101

You remember taking Computer Applications... right?  I'm pretty sure we were required to take it in both junior high and high school, then again in college.  You know, that class where you learn all about how to use Microsoft Office.  Everything from formatting a paragraph in Word to making charts and graphs using data in Excel.  It was an easy-A class for me.  I used to borrow my dad's laptop and make powerpoints for FUN on roadtrips (seriously, how lame is that?  man, I was a nerd!).

Well, I vaguely remembered using Mail Merge to take a list of names (like our guest list) and using that to create labels.  I thought I had it in the bag!

Well, my first problem came when I couldn't figure out where the "Mail Merge" option was in Excel.  Problem solved when I realized you had to use Access.  Easy fix: just copy and paste the list from Excel to Access.  WRONG!  According to Access, my Excel data was "damaged" when I tried to copy the whole thing.  But don't worry, I found a solution... copy and paste them one-by-FREAKIN'-one.  gggrrrr......

So I get that done, then click on Mail Merge and open Word to create my labels.  After playing around with it for a while, I think I finally got it figured out and got my labels all printed, stuck them on the envelopes and stuck them in the mail.  Yes!  DONE!

WRONG... A couple days later, an invited guest randomly popped in my head.  I couldn't remember seeing their name on a label.  So I went back and checked.  Sure enough, no label for them.  They were on my original guess list, but where they should appear in the Access list, there's no # for them.  Access automatically numbers your entries in order of entering them.  Where my missing guests should be, it jumped from 18 to 20.  Crazy.  It skipped a number every time I got the error message too, so I didn't think much about the missing number the first time through the list.

Well, good thing I remembered them!  Just hand-addressed that envelope and sent it off!  Well, I kept coming up with friends and family that I knew were to be invited, but that I didn't remember seeing their address label.  Geez.  Right now we are at 8 invites that didn't make the list.  Guess I'm going to have to go through and verify that everyone who was supposed to get a Save the Date really did get one.  Grrr...

Epic Fail, Mail Merge.  Epic Fail.

Now I just have to figure out how to make it work for our actual invitations!  I already have the labels "designed" in Word.  I figured I'd just have to type (or copy-and-paste) each address from Excel into the document, but maybe I can get mail merge to work if I can make sure the Access file is good first.  Wish me luck!

Save The Dates - Unveiled!

Enjoy!

Our STD's Have Gone POSTAL!

(Corny title, I know.  But hey, you gotta have fun with these things, right???)

Well, it's official.  Our Save-The-Dates are In-The-Mail!  Guess we are really doing this thing!

Our Save-The-Dates were a two-part thing.  We ordered the actual STD's (sorry, that abbreviation always makes me giggle!) a couple months ago... then I realized about New Year's Eve that HOLY GEEZE we are 5 months out from the wedding and don't have our Save-The-Dates out yet!

So I got on Vista Print and had them ordered the next day!  I don't want to put pics of them up until I know everyone who reads the blog has received theirs in the mail, but I'll give you a sneak peek:

Envelop(e) with Style!

Honest Question Time: How do you open an envelope?

• Open the flap?
• Use a letter opener across the top?
• Rip it down one side?
• Tear it all apart?

I know, you're probably thinking... WTF???  What does this have to do with wedding planning?

But you see.. I feel in love with a new wedding idea: Envelope Liners.  Check them out:

Oh So Pretty

So cute!

Fun Flare!

To make then, I'd have to create a template, cut out over 100 pieces of paper, and glue them into the envelope just right so that they cover the inside of the flap without covering up the lick-and-stick stuff.

It's not that I would mind doing it... I'm just worried it'll be a lot of work for 3 people to notice, then throw it away.  Unless your a Envelope Flap Opener, you'll never even have a chance to see them.

So, what kind of letter opener are you?  Would you even notice?

A Pink By Any Other Shade...

So we had ordered out Save-The-Date's a couple weeks ago... guess what arrived today (a week ahead of schedule)?!?  As anxious as I was to see them, I was also nervous...

You see, there are SO MANY different shades of pink! 

Our color is a bold hot pink/magenta... Not too purple, not too red, and DEFINITELY not light pink.  I've had so many issues trying to get that color right.  Depending on which printer I use (2 at school, 1 at home, etc...) I get a different shade even printing the exact same thing.  The shade of pink that I like printed at school (I use it on all of my answer keys) actually looks like a funky light purple on the screen.  But the shade I like on the screen prints red.

If I had printed the myself, I could've done guess-and-check (yes, I'm a math teacher) to see when color I liked best... But as it was, I had NO CLUE how the printers at VistaPrint operate, and had to print them all at once, so it was pretty much a crapshoot on picking the color of pink.  I just picked one that was somewhere in between the ones I liked on all the different printers and crossed my fingers.

So as I opened the box, my eyes immediately went to the pink...

AND IT'S PERFECT!

A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  If it came out wrong, would I have to re-print them?  Change the wedding color?  Let it clash with the other wedding stuff?

^^^ Not stuff I have to worry about anymore! ^^^

Another thing crossed off my to-do list!

And I'm so anxious to share them... don't know if I should post a picture, or wait to mail them out this fall.  That's been the hardest thing about this blog... I get so excited about things (BM gifts, favors, details, invitations, etc...) that I can't wait to share them.  But I also kinda feel like it's ruining the suprise...

To Share, or Not To Share.  That is the question, but what is the answer? You tell me!

(And I should get some Kudos for putting versions of two different Shakespeare quotes into one blog post!)

Ordering our Save-The-Dates!

...or the post that was originally titled "STD's... Check!"  but I thought that sounded too much like a doctor's appointment! :o)

We had a little something to get out of the way this weekend... Ordering our Save the Dates!

I had bought a Groupon a couple months ago for VistaPrint ($50 worth of stuff for $10)... that expired this weekend.  Since we were going to Pitt on Saturday and Sunday, I knew we had to get the order placed Friday night.  I had a couple of ideas on what I wanted to do... Well, I had made some changes to it based on some friendly input (thanks, guys!) and some internet browsing.

Remember this???  I changed it up some.

We haven't had our "official" engagement pictures taken yet, so we had to take the pictures on our own.  We spent a hour or so Friday night taking some 70 pictures of ourselves.  I don't have a tripod, so we went outside and propped my camera up on a box on the steps outside our apartment.  It wasn't angled quite right, so I had to wedge a rock under the camera.  It was pretty pathetic!  Our neighbor walked by and laughed!  Jason, who usually limits my number of pictures, was actually a willing participant and had some genuine smiles... probably because he was laughing at me trying to run down the stairs back into the picture in 10 seconds!

Then I saw a post on WeddingBee of an invitation that I fell in LOVE with...

From Miss Hyena on WeddingBee

Those polka dots are just too cute!  I couldn't decide if I wanted to stick with my original idea or spend a couple hours revamping our STD's.  I wanted the photobooth strip, but I wanted the polka dots too!  And I thought combining ideas on one 4" x 6" image made it look too busy.

What did I decide???  The original idea?  The polka dots?  Well, you'll just have to wait a few months until I send them out!

Dude, Will You Be My Groomsman?

The last time we were in Pitt, Jason's friends were questioning who was in his half of the wedding party.  I guess his assumption of "They know..." didn't cut it.  Since then, some of his friends have even been asking his family if they know who's in the wedding.

He swore he was going to call them two weeks ago... yeah, totally didn't happen.  So I got to DIY another project!  While Jason was playing Mario two weekends ago, I came up with 4 possible ideas.  And the winner?

Meet... Our Groomsman Invites!

Jason came up with that sentence himself! ;o)

 We mailed out these postcards last week.  Just another thing to check off of Jason's Wedding To-Do List!

Invitation Preview

I know, I know... I'm still over a year out and don't really need to be working on invitations right now, but I had ordered some paper samples a month or so ago and got the urge to start working on them.

Here's a quick preview of the "working version" of our base (the main part of the invite):

For some reason this picture looks really blurry.  It doesn't look like that in Word, I Promise!

We plan to get a pocket invite so all the the hotel/RSVP/other info will be included there.  Thoughts?  Comments? Suggestions/Ideas?

STD's

No, I'm not talking about what you are probably thinking... in the wedding-planning-world, STD's stands for Save The Date's!

I've looked forever online to try and find exactly what I want to do for our save the dates.  I found two ideas that I really liked:

The photobooth:

And "Taking the Plunge":

So I played around in powerpoint for a while on my day off and came up with this combination of the two. 

 
I want the photo strip to have pictures of us with signs that say "Save" "The" and "Date"... and hopefully not wearing red that clashes with the pink.  I'm sure I won't have to talk Jason into taking a picture of us jumping into a pool this summer.

But I'm worried there's just too much going on.  Seriously... What do you think?  Do I need to just pick one idea?  It's going to end up being on a 4" by 6" postcard or magnet.

Help!