PERFECTIONISTS SHOULD NOT DO THEIR OWN WEDDING INVITATIONS.
Honestly, had I been a sane person, these invitations would have come together quickly and been sent out by now. Who cares if they're a little unevenly matted or the embossing is gloppy. Well...too bad I am NOT sane and I develop a twitch if things are not *just so*
Let me tell you a little story about my DIY invitations:
Things started out smoothly enough. I found the instructions online, clicked over to Anchor Paper and ordered all my materials: a ream (250 sheets) of ivory linen paper to make all my inserts and the main section of the invite, 100 sheets of bronze stardream cardstock and lots and lots of Super Tacky Tape to glue them all together. I found the other materials I needed to make them at Michael's or Joann Fabrics: a Cricut cutting tool with a scoring blade, a bone folder, and a new shiny pair of sharp scissors.
Once all that was assembled, I got my actual pocketfolds done in about a week. Then the struggles came.
I believe I have mentioned the embossing powder debacle as well. We pretty much tried at least 12 combinations of stamp/ink/embossing powder before I decided on one I liked. Then we stamped and embossed everything really quickly.
Then, we needed to figure out how to format all my inserts so that when printed, they would all lay out properly tiered against each other. HA! HA HA HA! Wow. Okay. Well that was a P.I.T.A or a pain-in-the-...for those who do not know my lingo. My mom and I went rounds and rounds. Printing samples, cutting, measuring, printing again...etc. Once we finally had it, we took the first insert to Office Max. I asked the young man there to fix something on the page that I hadn't seen. These particular inserts were printed two to a page. He printed all 100 sheets of them and then I saw that he had only corrected the mistake on the top part of the page. After fighting with him, he determined it was MY fault that I didn't tell him it was still wrong and I had to pay for the 2nd set of them to get printed correctly. *sigh*
After that, I was none too keen on spending 40 bucks on each set of inserts I had to print. (Which was 4 more sets...) So, Mom and I bought our own printer cartridge and printed them at home. I'll make a long story short by saying we had a heck of a time making the ink match between my main invitation and the seperate inserts. BAH. Once we had finally made it look right and figured out the formatting, I reached into my nice big ream of paper and found that I did.not.have.enough.remaining.paper to complete my invitations. (Because of a nice gentleman at Office Max who wasted 50 sheets of my paper.) Uhm.Yeah. That paper? Non existant in Denver. I ordered it from Minnesota. I am now 8 weeks from my wedding. These invites were supposed to be printed and sent out over the weekend, but alas...now I had to order more paper.
By some MIRACLE, my mom found a gal on Craigslist who had my exact paper that she had used for stuff at her own wedding. The only problem? She was selling half a ream of it for $20. Non negotiable. I bought an entire ream from halfway across the country for $26. I love throwing money away. LOVE IT! I decided, well screw it...she has it...I'll buy it. So I did. And now my invitations are printed, cut and assembled.
They are currently sitting in my wedding room. Now that we are 7.5 weeks out from the wedding. Tomorrow is my day off. I plan on spending it addressing envelopes til my hand falls off. Oh...and then going to the post office to pay millions of dollars in postage, since I am sure my beautiful, 4 layer invitations weigh a 1/4 pound each. I will be so relieved to finally see them go. I hope everyone gets them on time and has time to send them back. *Sigh*
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