My Biggest Fear

I worried so much about postal issues with the save the dates. I researched the rules and badgered quite a few out of town guests to make sure they had received them. I obsessively checked hits to the wedding guest website to try and confirm that save the dates were being received. After things seemed to have gone off with out a hiccup, I stopped worrying.

Yesterday, there was a returned save the date in the mail box. "Oh, no!" I exclaimed waving it at Michael like it were a letter bomb. It happened. A family member out of town who no doubt had been reading about and seeing pictures of the save the dates must of thought I forgot her. I checked for clues, but all it said was "UTF" hand written in blue ink next to the address. At first glance we were confused. "Sounds like a disease" I remarked relieved at least it didn't seem to be a postage issue.

The bright yellow label stuck to it said "Unable To Find" and beneath that "Unable To Forward" so take your pick of "UTF"s I suppose. Obviously, an address issue. Hmmm...I checked it against what I had. The only issue I could find was that I had written point instead of port in front of the city, but if the zip code was right that shouldn't be a big deal. I checked with a relative would confirmed all my info and then sent a message to the recipient.

The address had been correct, but the city had changed it's name and with it it's zip code! Weird. So, I was triply relieved that 1)It wasn't a postage issue 2)It wasn't my goof and 3)I now had correct info for their invitation. Phew! I'm slightly irritated at the waste of the pretty stamp, but mainly I'm sad for their looooong wait. Hopefully, theirs was the one undelivered exception.

Kick Ass Save the Dates

So, you may or may not remember waaaaaaay back in June when I mentioned coming to a consensus on the save the date design. In a nutshell, I wanted a simple magnet that had something humorous on it since folks will be staring at it a long time. Mike ran with that comment and insisted on something interactive. After a few ideas we landed on magnetic poetry for the interactive part.

Materials

1. Paint Shop (or other design software)
2. Magnets (order printed online or print your own magnetic sheets)
3. Photo Prints
4. A source for quotes
5. A craft cutter (I used a Silhouette) or Xacto knife
6. Spray adhesive
7. Glue stick
8. A4 Invitation Envelopes
9. A stamp
10. Inkpad
11. Tissue paper

Before I begin, please remember we're having a Midsummer Night's Dream inspired wedding. Now to begin with you need a source for your pretty quotes. We used 4 quotes from Midsummer, 2 from As You Like It and 1 from Romeo & Juliet. Is my theatre major showing?
My Quote List

1. "It is not night when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night; Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, For you in my respect are all the world"
2. "Out of these woods desire not to go. I do love thee. Therefore go with me. I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee."
3. "Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be"
4. "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact"
5. (MY FAVORITE)"it is thyself, mine own self's better part: mine eye's clearer eye, my dear heart's dearer heart, my food my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, my sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim."
6. "That thou did know how many fathom deep I am in love!"
7. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite."

Shakespeare was the obvious choice for us, but you could easily do song lyrics, bible verses or inside jokes. Once you've got your list you'll want to experiment with colors and fonts. You can download all kinds of free fonts from the internet so don't feel limited by your word processing program. None of our fonts are standard. We chose to make each font different so that each quote would have it’s own and poetry made by mixing them together would have a non-uniform look to it.

Once you've got your quotes done all pretty, you'll want a background. We preferred this so that once the words were broken apart there was still something pretty and intact to look at. We didn't want a picture of ourselves, although that's customary. We chose a picture of a cool old tree with "fairies" circling it. I just scoped out deals on photo prints and had 50 printed once we'd run it through Paintshop to our satisfaction.

The next step was making the frame that had the actual information on it. Typically, save the dates have: the date, your names, the city & state, the wedding site url and "formal invitation to follow". We did all of those except for city & state. Exact location is listed on the wedding site, which sorry blog fans is guests only. The frame would ultimately go around the background image, but needed to be magnetic so once we designed it we put it around the quotes and sent that image to Vistaprint. Here are the two pieces: Top-Background Print from CVS and Bottom-Custom Magnet from Vistaprint. A word of warning: do not adjust your image to the magnet size Vistaprint lists under the magnet type. Instead open the product description and use the dimensions there. They compensate for bleed and it kept cutting off the bottom of my frame. Also, with any DIY project order a test batch, make a prototype, make any adjusts and then order your 50 magnets (or whatevers).

Now for the trickiest bit, cutting all those tiny words apart without severing them completely from each other or the background. I invested in a craft cutter because I'm a crafty DIY person in real life as well as the wedding planning arena. Now, you need to make sure you have a craft cutter that hooks up to your computer as opposed to a cartridge based one for this. If you do, you simply pull your design from Paintshop into the design software that came with your cutter and start drawing boxes. Make sure you have the correct dimensions for your image. Once you've tested the blade options and found the one that will cut deep enough to allow them to be broken apart by the recipients I recommend putting a pen (we used a fine tip Sharpie) in and letting it draw where it'll cut to test your alignment.

We destroyed 30 magnets before discovering this trick. Once you have it aligned properly you simply feed them through. Please make sure you’ve allowed enough room for the cutting mat to feed through without bumping anything! We gave the adhesive mat a spritz of spray adhesive every so often to keep the magnets from sliding. You will probably need a replacement blade once you're done. If you're doing this project on a much smaller scale you can simply draw lines with a straight edge and go over them with an X-acto knife. I think it may yield more perfect results, but for just shy of 50 magnets it was completely impractical for us.

With the complicated part behind you comes the repetitive tasks (that if you're lucky enough to have a groom and wedding party like mine) you can enlist help for. First, I had to carefully separate each frame from the quotes magnet. I recommend bending it all the way around and then pulling in opposite directions so you don't yank a word or two free. Then you secure the liberated frame magnet to the background image. I used a glue stick and then set them under heavy books. I experimented with spray adhesive, but it was messy and unforgiving. I found it took a lot of squidging to get the frame just right and the approximate weight of a high school yearbook to ensure they dried nice and stuck.

Here are both pieces assembled :

Hurray!

Next I bought A2 invitation size envelopes at Office Depot in ivory. My bridesmaid and official blog photographer, happily hand stamped them. I then loaded them in but not this way unless they were being hand delivered. When mailing magnets the post office requires they be loaded into the envelope magnet side away from the address. Which is why I recommend cutting some tissue paper. That way your guests, unlike mine, won't open their beautifully stamped envelopes looking at black magnetic frame and photo processing paper.

Ta-da! Interactive, magnetic, Midsummer Night's Dream inspired save the dates. Don't be shy, comment on this project please. The wedding budget prevented me from sending it to more than 44 households so pretend you're receiving one, what do you think?

"Dishes Are Done, Man!"

I did it I dragged my sick butt to the post office with the 25 remaining save the dates and mailed them. It was pouring cats and dogs so I waited for it to let up and rushed over. It was surreal because there was no line. Not one soul standing there, at the post office.

I had that moment where I considered skipping the little maze the line forms in and walking straight to the counter, but found I couldn't do it. I trotted through the maze and waited at the appropriate spot to be called. Visions of Shrek bull dozing through the empty velvet robe maze were playing in my head the whole time.

I asked for pretty stamps. The very nice postman asked what the event was to make stamp suggestions. When I said wedding he threw out three options. It felt like choosing desert at a fancy restaurant. There was the standard two gold wedding bands, pass. There were some cool viney flowers, warmer. In the end I liked the king and queen of hearts.

They have kind of a vintage feel with muted colors. Their clothes have vines on them and the word love is written in a pretty script near the edge. Appropriate for our wedding which we joke is hosted by the king and queen of the fairies.

A little different, but still in the wedding vein. Perfect! I can't wait for people to start getting them. Woohoo, first big DIY project finished.

Wrong Again...

I know you're all tired of hearing about the Save the Dates, but it's my blog and thus I vent. Before I get into it (forgive me if I've told you this already) I want to share something that made me laugh. We ordered 10 magnets as a test to make sure they were right before we bought the rest. I made a note on my calendar on the day they were supposed to arrive. On the message boards Save the Dates are commonly abbreviated STDs. Well, I wrote "STD test" on my calendar! I realized what it said laughed until I cried and then scratched it out and wrote "test magnets." Whoops! When I posted my little funny on a message board a mother of another bride responded that she had thoughtlessly sent an email saying "the rhinestones and tassels have shipped." After she sent it she realized it sounded like they were outfitting strippers rather than making table number and place cards. Hee, hee.

So, I paid rush shipping on the magnets and they came in as promised today. I was still kind of glowy from my meeting yesterday, but the magnets burst my bubble. They were still cut off on the bottom! The frame around the image has the important info on it so this is a huge deal. I was so frustrated!

I asked Mike to fix it and order more since I want them to go out next week. He shook his head and said something to the effect of "we've got plenty of time." I lost it. I insisted it was life or death that they go out next week. It is in reality crucial that we send them soon, but we probably have a window of two-ish weeks or so before we're in trouble. The other thing was I wanted to get them out and get the reactions to some of my unconventional choices over with. The longer we wait the longer I imagine the back lash. The anticipation is almost more stressful than the reaction will be. Mike said he would take a look at why the bottom was cut of this weekend, but I was pretty upset by then.

I told him we should scrap the whole thing. I told him I'd just do a simple one (like I wanted to from the beginning) and be down with it. After I calmed down we realized the we had enough for the out of towners for the most part. I'd just cut and assemble them anyway. I'd send them to people flying in with a note explaining what the cut off part said.

Simple enough? Well, 8.5 out of the 10 were destroyed in the cutting process. Good thing they weren't right. I have one and a half usable (but cut off) finished save the date. Sigh, we ordered 40 more after Mike "fixed the problem" and then realized exactly where we went wrong. Vista Print lists their large magnets as being 5.59 x 4.33, but the actual size is 5.47 X 4.21 (because of the bleed). This explained our cut off image and why my cutter keeps cutting my magnet poetry wrong. Whoops!

Hopefully, we'll do better with the next 40...

Some Assembly Required

We completed the design for the save-the-dates and once again I fooled myself into thinking, "the hard part is over." He was happy. I was happy. The creative stuff was done and it was time to get serious and mathy. I did as my DIY bride books advised and made a detailed list of materials and started searching for deals.

I'm not the best math-er for sure. First, I wanted to find the best place to order the prints that will become the background and magnetic quotes for the save the dates. I checked all the photo sites for deals for large groups of photos and then realized I didn't need 200+ prints (guest list X 2). I needed one per household, duh. Much like carpenter's tell you "measure twice, cut once" I advise DIY brides to count at least 3 times and have someone check your math before you buy. Especially if you've been rearranging the guest list and your brain is number soup.

The next big lesson for me was always do a test. In the case of this project we order a print of each to see how they'd come out. It's never a bad move. If everything's great your a few mouse clicks and an hour from your lovely prints. On the other hand the time, money and stress saved if they're not right is immeasurable. It's hard to err on the side of caution when you're excited, but it must be done.

The next items on the to-do list were to price out magnetic sheets, 4x6 envelopes and postage. It turns out it's not so easy to find to find 4x6 envelopes. They are kind of like a reasonably priced meal at the airport, rare. After reading three different blogs posts about how crafters went to office supply stores and came home empty handed I checked Amazon. God bless 'em, 50 envelopes for $5.95, sold. Does it seem stupid to anyone else that 4x6 is the standard size for so many things and you can't find corresponding envelopes?

Postage was much trickier because I was told (and read somewhere) that there's special rules for mailing magnets. After much stressful searching it turned out magnets are "unregulated" unless they're strong enough to move the needle on a compass from several feet away. Phew, kind of, I'm still nervous. We'll mail one as a test before we drop the other 49 into the mailbox. More caution, aren't you proud? You would be if you need how much I'm dying to dive in to this project (and of course show it off).

Magnetic sheets are not as easy to find as one might think. It did not help matters that I started by searching for the wrong size, number soup! Mike and I had our typical discussion where I assumed we'd do a simple construction and he through out flashier more time consuming ideas. I then totaled up doing all the assembly ourselves start to finish. After that I totaled up if Vista Print did the magnets and we did the rest (cutting apart the poetry words, putting the two pieces together and mailing), it was a whole $6 cheaper to do it ourselves. Dream honeymoon here we come! Of course we've established my mathematics abilities so it my be even less of a savings...

Is it still worth it? Run your fingers back up the DIY chart to the part about "why are you doing this?" Unlike, a lot of my other projects this is truly the first impression of my day and saving money is great, but even if we break even I'll be something unique we made together. I hope people enjoy it and when they put a finger painting on the fridge after the wedding think "what a day."

The test prints were beautiful, but there was a snag. I loved our tree bark with climbing vine frame in high resolution, blown up to 200% on the computer, but in 4x6 well ick. So, we'll tweak them before we proceed. At least we have a solid idea what we need, where to get it and how much it will cost. I did win a small victory in convincing Mike that letting Vista Print do the magnets was the way to go, yay! Slightly less work on my plate and I'll have my craft cutter! We decided to go with a Silhouette after reading a lot more reviews, polling brides on the DIY boards and comparing features (research, research, research). It should be here end of next week!

So, to re-cap, the design needs tweaking, we're not doing the whole construction process ourselves and you can in fact mail magnets without crashing planes!

Bridenity, As It Were

I am a Disney princess, ballerina fairy. I am also, incredibly decisive and open about my opinions. I want to be girly without being fussy on my day. I want my day to be themed from start to finish. It has to be memorable and surprising. Not in a Hunted House sense, but in a "that's so Katie!" way.

Knowing what I want means that I want to make sure that I get it. I need to oversee and foresee all that will come to pass, until the day of when I will happily hand over control to my day of coordinator. I will have made a million lists, sent hundreds of emails and planned for every contingency. That is how I function. I love planning an event and I hate working my own party away.

Being hands on and crafty works well with wedding planning. I am obsessively asking 1)Is this worth my time and energy? 2)Do we need this? 3)What will I do with that after the wedding? Hand making 86 folding program fans, for example is a be fat no. We'll be paying someone to do it or changing the format. After the wedding all the guests can fan themselves through the hot, hot summer and think of us.

Save the dates are a MUST I have family and friends who are as good as all over the country. They need a heads up to make plans and save pennies. This is not handmade, it's something a bride posted on the DIY wedding board asking how to duplicate. This is what mine might have looked like if I had a less involved groom. Cute, right?

Fortunitly or not, (depending on the day) I have a groomzilla. He is involved, critical and down right over dramatic about a lot of the details. Sometimes he's initially impassioned and then completely apathetic after the fact. So, when I said I just wanted a simple magnet save the date he had other ideas. Actually, I really did get him going by saying "I want it to be funny. They'll be looking at it for a long time." That got his wheels turning.

First, he wanted a countdown to the wedding with "jokes or something." Then it turned into "something interactive." I objected to the dial that reveals information format because it would be to time consuming to assemble and awkward to mail. We pressed on a decided to do magnetic poetry style. I picture a grid of magnets that broke apart with Shakespeare quotes and one piece that didn't break apart with our info. Simple right?

Not good enough for Mike. He doesn't really do simple. He changed the design so that there's a background image surrounded by a frame with the info on it and the magnetic Shakespeare quotes are arranged on top. That way you'll have a pretty framed image after you pull off the words and write poems on your fridge.
Here's your preview, this is the image we picked before we edited out the weird face in the tree.

When the design was finished this afternoon I breathed a long sigh of relief at how well it had come to fruition thus far. We discussed uploading it to a site to print for us before we(ehm, Mike) got all fancy, but now we have to hand assemble these puppies. On the bright side I talked Mike into investing in a Pazzle(cricut-esque cutter, but fancier). Hurray! It's going to be a life saver during this process and far, far beyond.

I promise that as soon as they are assembled and sent I will post all the details, but for now let's just say all those receiving them will be pleased. Speaking of those receiving save the dates I've added impending babies and new wives to the guest list and sent out pleas for addresses today. Have a Happy 4th of July weekend and then respond, folks (or I will stalk you.)

We Have A Concensus!

Not on the date, sorry. Although, if it will help matters we've narrowed it down to four possibilities: March 3rd, March 10th, March 24th or April 14th. The remaining April option is my first choice (unless St. Patrick's Day suddenly becomes available, a girl can dream). We've decided on a save the date format!

We were toying with the idea of a wheel and window thing something like this, but magnetic:

In the end, it seemed too complicated. Beyond that I feared for its durability and how easily it would mail. We decided to do something in the style of magnetic poetry instead:

We wouldn't ask the recipient to cut it apart though. The whole magnet will break apart into individual words. Ours will be from Shakespearian quotes, mainly Midsummer Night's Dream. On an irregular size square we'll have the important info non-break-apart-able. Viola!

I get my simple magnetic save the date and Mike's gets something interactive and as an added bonus it goes with the theme. My first task is sussing out which quotes to use, that are both appropriate and will provide the best poetry fodder. After which point Mike and I will design the background. Neither of us wants to use a picture of us especially since it'll be broken apart. Hopefully, by the time that's done the date will be set. Then we will price out hand making them or submitting our design to Vista Print. I have a feeling the latter will be more cost effective.

I'll post pictures once we have a prototype and then again once the final product has been mailed.