Category — Invitations & Postage

I’m not sure where the time has gone, but seven months have passed since our engagement.  At the time, my mom was concerned that we may want a longer engagement. With a month until I Do’s, I can say with full confidence, we are ready!

Yes, there are still the details of the welcome bags, take home gifts, endless timelines, tastings and other things to complete, but for the most part, I would say I’m ready to be married!  The day after the wedding is looking pretty enticing right now.

The invitations and ketubah were the most exciting part of the process (other than the dress!)  I found an artist that I absolute love, Rachel Deitsch, who kindly helped my dreams become a reality.  She worked with me and my groom to ensure that the invite (which was the first that she had designed) was absolutely perfect.  It combines vibrant colors, Jewish texts, and an overall sense of who we are.  The inside also has the pomegranate theme, which is absolutely stunning. Rachel also converted one of her prints into a ketubah, which it has a similar feel.  Her work is incredible!

So with the invitations out, I’d say there’s no turning back!  The wedding tasting happened a few weeks ago when we went out to Boca. We decided to forgo the traditional wedding menu for something that is more of a representation of who we are and how we feel in love.   We’re doing stations during the reception with sliders, brisket sandwiches,  multiple varieties of french fries, tacos, dim sum, etc, etc etc.  It will be quite a kosher feast!  We wanted the focus to be on fun foods that will energize people to dance!

The dessert options are very similar. There will be a small cake for cutting, but the main desserts include donuts, little ice cream cones, popcorn, cookie sandwiches, etc etc etc!  I think we put more thought into the menu than anything else!

We’ll be back in Florida in a few weeks for the rehearsal dinner tasting, which I’m so excited for!  I just ordered personalized chocolate for the welcome bags, which I think are a cute touch (although probably one of my most unnecessary purchases.)  The Wedding Channel Store is having a huge sale right now, so I recommend picking these chocolates up soon if you like them.  They were on $50, now down to $20, with an extra discount on top of that!

Next up: How sample sales saved my wedding budget!

After 18 hours of stuffing and stamping on a busy weekend, the wedding invitations have been mailed out! Being able to put those babies in the mailbox and cross them off my long “To Do List” after two years of engagement was nothing short of euphoric.  When I first started looking at wedding invitations, I fell in love with the pocket-fold style and knew I had to have it. Then I discovered the price tag associated with most purchased pocket-fold invitations and decided this was a perfect DIY job.  With lots of help from one of my bridesmaid ’s (who happens to be a graphic designer) and Cards & Pockets, an amazing website for DIY brides that  I found chock full of invitation materials, I was able to create my pockets of cuteness!

Finished “pocket of cuteness” invitation

Close-up of invitation

My wonderful graphic designing bridesmaid created the snowflake design on the invitation which has the Star of David as the center of each snowflake! Each pocket-fold included the invitation and four inserts: Travel, Map, Directions and a RSVP postcard. While the majority of the creation of the invitation was a labor of bridesmaid love, I took on the task of creating the wedding map.  After searching for designs and discovering websites dedicated to creating such maps, I decided to, of course, DIY! Considering my future hubby is sort of a map aficionado, he helped me draw out an abbreviated version of southeast Florida and then we got to work picking clip-art images to make the map “cartoonish.”  The finished product took us a couple of hours (only because we are both perfectionists).  So, without further ado, our wedding map!

“Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.”

Meet my gorgeous RSVP card, created by the lovely Elizabeth Khan, a friend of a friend. I sent her several ideas, and through the power of email correspondence she created my ideal invitation. It’s classic, elegant and timeless - exactly how I want my entire wedding day to be. The invitation itself will be on ivory card stock with an additional layer of chocolate brown behind it, and chocolate brown writing. I am including the invitation, RSVP and accommodations card — I can’t wait to send them out!

My next paper project is a menu for each place setting. I thought this would be a fun and easy project for me, as well as a great way for my guests to know what they’re being served. I found a seller on Etsy.com who I’ve hired to create our design, and I will be printing through Digitalroom.com. (I recently won a contest for 200 5 X 7 postcards  from them – very exciting!)

I’m going to attempt the next few paper projects (ceremony programs and a welcome letter for my out-of-town bags) completely on my own thanks to the recent purchase of a new MAC computer. I’ll let you know how it goes!!

221 days until wedding day. I can’t tell if time is going really fast or really slow?? :)

All of my married friends have told me that every wedding includes at least one mishap. Well…

My fiancé Jake and I had a very productive evening last Friday, stuffing our wedding invitation envelopes, addressing them and finally sending them out on Saturday morning. We were at the post-office check out window at 9:00AM as soon as they opened. The attendant at the window was so nice and wished us a hearty congratulations on our wedding. Everything was perfect. My fiancé and I both felt a huge sense of relief once we sent off the invites we did not give them another thought until…

Sunday 7:30 AM:

Jake wakes up and says “Oh crap we f’ed up.” I turn to him and groggily say “What are you talking about, we sent out all the invites?” And then he says, “Yeah but we forgot to put stamps on the response cards.” My heart stopped. “What did you say?” The only thought in mind head was “OY I am really going to hear it from my mother.” I didn’t really panic, I just thought how in the world could I have forgotten to put stamps on the response cards? I have been a bridesmaid in seven weddings, maid-of-honor in two, and attended hundreds of nuptials in my 33 years. “Oh well, it could be worse,” I thought–if this is the only screw up, then I’ll be happy.

Thankfully, we have a wedding website and at 7:45 am on Sunday morning Jake and I set up an online RSVP section on our wedding website. I highly recommend WeddingWindow.com there is a small fee but its worth it, as I’ve found the site to be a great wedding organizing tool for me.

Monday 4:30 PM:

I sent the RSVP link from our wedding website to all of our wedding attendees via email with a cute little note :

We hope you’ve been having a great summer. Our production staff certainly has, therefore our wedding invitations have been sent, without a return stamp on the response card :)
The email also included a link to RSVP online.

Its only been a day but we already have a bunch of people RSVP’s through the online link. I also got some cute emails back from friends and family saying that they want to respond to our wedding the old fashion way, and will buy their own stamps.

On Sunday we were at my uncle’s (who also happens to be a rabbi and our wedding officiant) house for lunch. I told everyone about our “funny” screw up and everyone had a good laugh. My uncle suggested that as a joke we give out stamps as wedding favors. I’m considering it :)

The first order of business in getting the word out about our wedding were Save the Date cards.  Since my fiancé rarely has a free moment (he’s a first year medical student) and we live four hours away from our photographer,  we weren’t able to take the formal engagement pictures that were offered in our photographer’s package and that we intended to include with our Save The Dates . We really wanted a current photo of ourselves on the save the dates though, so we had to improvise.  One particularly humid day, we headed out to a local art gallery and park to try and capture the essence of “us”:

As you can tell, it didn’t quite go as planned.  After 30 minutes we were sweating, the top 2 buttons of my dress broke off, and my fiancé and I were about to kill each other. So we called it a day and packed up.  When I uploaded the pictures later that day, I realized there was one shot that wasn’t half bad.  It was the one that ended up on our Save the Dates:

We printed these through Vistaprint.com, whose coupons are a valuable resource.  These were free, I just paid for shipping.  On the back, we included our accommodation information.   At the bottom of the card, we directed our guests to our wedding website {the address shown is not the actual address, though it was our first choice} which I created on Google Sites and bought the domain name for at Godaddy.com (which was really hard for me, given how much I loathe their commercials).

After going back and forth on design options for several months, quadruple checking the Hebrew, and catching a few printing snafus (I forgot to include the time of the ceremony!), we finally sent our invitations out a few weeks ago:

I cannot lie, I’ve been slacking.  I haven’t sent them all out.  There is one envelope left, addressed to Mr. Jon Stewart, whom we definitely don’t know.  My fiance thinks he’ll at least send a note.  I just smile and nod.

While my fiancé and I have checked most of the big things off of our to-do list like the wedding dress, caterer, photographer, and videographer, we’re really stuck on the  invitations.  My fiance and I have been thinking – are conventional invitations all that important? In the age of Evite and Facebook, do we really need printed paper invitations? And if we use printed invitations, how can avoid spending a bunch of money on invitations that will end up in people’s waste baskets?

We’ve already set up a wedding website via WeddingWindow.com, where we can conveniently manage our guest lists, send out electronic Save the Date emails and even have people rsvp for the wedding online.  We feel that invitations are an area that we could save money on, but at the same time I’ve seen some beautiful printed invitations.

Our wedding invitations must also be sent out by mid-June, since our wedding is in late September,  so we have to make a decision soon! Do we do the traditional paper invitation? Or should we go the nontraditional route and use our wedding website to send out our invitations via email?

Thank you everyone for your help selecting an image for our invitations!  We decided to go with the image of Loren proposing to me. Here is what Loren and I came up with after merging our designs:

I asked my bridesmaids to wear black, because I figured everyone would have a black dress and that way they wouldn’t need to buy anything new. Each of them will have a different color flower in their hair (naturally in rainbow order). Loren is having his groomsmen wear black suits, white shirts- slightly open with no tie, and Converse All Stars. I wanted his groomsmen’s boutonnieres to match my bridesmaids flowers, but he wasn’t having it :)  He said his dudes weren’t going to wear anything floral!

I love things in rainbow order. These are some spools from my art studio.

As for my own dream off-white mermaid cut/ sevillana style wedding dress…  it still  has to wait another two weeks… My thesis exhibition opens May 8th, I graduate May 15th, then on May 16th I will FINALLY go wedding dress shopping!

Loren and I promised our parents that we would send out our wedding invitations over a month ago.  Alas, they still haven’t been sent…  However, Loren agreed to make our  postcard wedding invitation as soon as he finishes his last final tomorrow.

In addition to being an Articles Editor on the Law Review and an up and coming Rock Star :), Loren is also an incredibly talented illustrator.

Hillel and Shamai, 2007

He was planning on making a cartoon of us specially for our invitations, but due to our time constraints we’ve decided to go with an already existing image.  I was hoping to get some feedback on what everyone thought would make for the best invitation…

Option 1) a Google image search of our names

(I should add that I am mildly obsessed with Google image searches and the structure through which information is disseminated)

Option 2) A composite image of  video stills from when Loren proposed to me.

(This is at my family’s home in San Antonio Suchitepequez, Guatemala.  It was about 102 degrees that day, and I was setting up my hurdidora warping board in preparation to weave.)

Option 3) My art piece: Napkin for my Husband 2007.

or Option 4)   the cheesy photobooth pictures

Which image option do you like best for our wedding invitations?

The U.S. Postal Service has announced that it is raising the price of First Class Stamps by 2 cents to 44 cents, effective in just one month on May 11th, 2009!  If you are sending out wedding invitations, those 2 cents can really add up!  Brides -  now is the time to purchase Forever Stamps!  Forever Stamps will continue to be sold for the current 42-cent rate until the increase takes effect.  Forever Stamps remain valid, well forever, regardless of any rate increase.