A Different Kind of Invitation

This is the story of how I designed my own bridal shower invitations.

Because I live three hours away from where the bridal shower will be held it didn't really make sense for everyone to keep it a surprise from me. And because my mom is doing most of the planning she has been using me a sounding board for ideas. I helped her pick the location, the favors and, well, the invitations. 

At first we ordered a few samples from Wedding Paper Divas. Our favorite was this little number:

Image via Wedding Paper Divas

Unfortunately we didn't realize how tiny they were until they arrived. We thought we'd be getting a regular 5x7 inch invitation. Not the case. For some reason this particular invitation clocked in at measly 4.10x5.25. Well, that wouldn't do. We continued to search around, but kept coming up empty-handed. 

Finally, I decided that this whole process would be easier if I just made something myself.

After all that practice I'd had with making our save the dates with Photoshop it was actually super simple. I followed the general wording and layout of the invitation above, since we knew that we liked it, and knocked out three different versions in about a half hour. Some we liked more than others, but the end result was this:

(Personal Photo)

Ah, simple and clean, with a little pop of color. It kills me to have to blur out so much of the invitation, but I think you can still get the gist of it! Oh and I left in a serious typo too. Can you find it? (Don't worry, I managed to catch it right before they went to print, but we almost had a serious uh-oh on our hands!)

We decided to save ourselves some sanity (and some ink cartridges) by outsourcing the printing to CatPrint. We went with their 100lb linen paper and can't say enough good things about their customer service, their prices and their quality.

So there it is. The story of how this crazy bride became so involved in her own shower that she designed and ordered her own bridal shower invitations.

Is anyone else way too involved in their bridal shower?

John Hancock? It's HERBIE Hancock. DUH!

Now that we have a bajillion engagement photos we've been trying to figure out what the heck to do with them. You already saw our save the dates, but I have a few other tricks up my sleeve for these photos.

And one of them just arrived:

(Personal Photo)

Meet our combo engagement album and…. guestbook!

I have been drooling over photo guestbooks for quite some time now:

Image via Abundant Moments Photography

Image via Marley & Mel Wedding Photography

I love the nostalgic feeling I get when I see photo guestbooks. They remind of yearbooks from the good ol' days. The shiny new yearbooks would arrive and everyone would flip through its pages, leaving silly notes for their friends and promises of great summer adventures together.

As soon as our engagement photos arrived I set to work on creating our guestbook. There are a ton of programs out there that can help you create your own photo album. For me, it came down to AdoramaPix  or Photobook America.

In the end I decided to go with Photobook America. It has some mixed reviews, but overall I was pretty impressed with what I read. Oh and I stumbled across a great Groupon deal which may or may not have influenced my decision. I was a bit nervous since I had never designed a photo album before, but I have to say that I found their software to be pretty easy to use. Even though it was hard to initially navigate, once I got the hang of it, it was smooth sailing.

As a side note, if you are planning on making your own photo album and are having trouble deciding on which company to go with I highly recommend checking out PhotoBookGirl as well as Jason Dunn's in-depth reviews. They both created photo albums with at least a dozen different companies and detailed their experiences. It was infinitely helpful to me.

I am so, so happy with the final result and the total cost (including shipping) was only $50. Now I just need to find a good pen that will write on this black paper. Hmmm…

(Personal Photo)

(Personal Photo)

Are you going the photo guestbook route? Tell me about your experience (and what kind of pen you're using)!

PS. 100 Wedding Bee points to anyone who gets the reference in my title.

Floral Progress!

First of all I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful and helpful responses on my florist dilemma post. You were all so encouraging and gave me a lot of things to think about!

And now, I'm happy to report that the Coyotes have finally decided on a florist. Yippee!!

To recap, Momma Coyote and I met with two florists. One was very straightforward and gave me exactly what I showed him in photos while the other was more creative and kind of ran with my inspiration to create something new. Both were great options, but after a few conversations with the more creative florist I realized that we just had two very different visions. I found that I had trouble explaining to her the kind of feel I wanted for our wedding -- something that I did not run into with the other florist.

We are meeting with our florist in a few weeks to nail down the specifics and in the meantime I'm gathering some more inspiration so I'm better prepared for our next chat.

Hey Mr. DJ

Even though you can have a rockin' reception with a band (I am taken back to Mrs. Pretzel's amazing recaps) Mr. Coyote and I decided to go with a DJ. We can be a little picky with our music so we want to make sure that every song played will be available to us in the version we want.

Choosing our DJ was literally the easiest wedding decision we made. BM J recently wed in June 2010 and everyone had a blast at her reception. Her DJ kept the party going all night long and gave them the exact type of atmosphere we want for our wedding day. When Mr. C popped the question a few months after J's wedding we quickly snatched up Nate Miller of Conway Entertainment to be our Deej for both our ceremony and our reception.

 Personal Photo / The dance floor was packed the entire night at J's wedding thanks to Nate. You can see my little bro and full-time dance partner (Mr. C isn't much of a dancer) in this photo.

Personal Photo / We are fully expecting this to happen at our wedding too. No pressure Nate! ;-) 

Choosing Nate as our DJ was the easy part. Choosing the music? Not so easy. Our playlist isn't even close to being finished and is constantly changing and evolving.

The problem is, Mr. Coyote and I are huuuuuge music lovers, but we have very specific tastes - most of which isn't appropriate for a wedding. Nine Inch Nails? Soundtrack from Avenue Q?  Yea, heavy metal and soundtracks from vulgar Broadway musicals are not exactly wedding material here folks.

And so we've had to branch out a bit and get creative. Whenever I hear something that I love and is family appropriate I immediately jot it down. And then I change my mind. And then I change it again. And again. And... You get the point. One day Jason Mraz seems like the perfect fit for the processional and two weeks later I've crossed it out for Elvis or The Beatles. Even though we are all over the place with our music choices we know we have time to sort out these details. In the meantime, we've been having a lot of fun listening to music together and experimenting with different options for our wedding day.

The only thing set in stone right now is our first dance. That's been a constant for a while now, but I'll get to that story later.

So tell me Hive, did you go with a DJ or a band? Have you been experimenting with your playlist like we have?

PS. At the risk of revealing my true identity as a total nerd: If any of you are familiar with Avenue Q and World of Warcraft you may want to check out this video. 

The Engagement-Photo Saga Continues

Remember the huge dilemma we had about where to take our engagement photos? How I wanted to take them at on the college campus where we met and Mr. Coyote was adamantly against this idea? Well, about a week or two before our engagement sesh with our awesome photographers Mr. Coyote began to have a change of heart.

One day, out of the blue, he looked at me and said, "You know. I've been thinking. We aren't from upstate. It doesn't make any sense to get our photos taken there. It would make much more sense to get them taken down here. At the college. You were right."

Double-You Tee Eff, mate?!

I couldn't believe it. First I asked if he was joking. He wasn't. Then I asked if he had lost his mind. He hadn't. Then I asked him what the hell I was suppose to do about it now because we were scheduled to go upstate in one week and we already had to cancel once and now I'm not only going to cancel again but I'm going to ask them to reschedule and then drive their butts all the way down to Westchester and why didn't you THINK about it when I first brought this up to you in freakin' December?? And yes, it all came out in one long, run-on sentence like that too. What can I say? I have healthy lungs!

Well I wasn't about to let this one go just because we'd already scheduled a session upstate. You bees should know by now that I am way too stubborn for that! And so I did some stalking on the awesome Wedding Bee Classifieds and found a photographer in our area who was just starting out and offering free engagement sessions in order to build up her portfolio.

And that is the story of how we ended up with two sets of engagement pictures from two different photographers.

Are you ready for photo bomb part two??

Here ya go!

Huge shout out to Nancy Choi for coming out on a ridiculously hot summer day to take these photos:

How did you agree on the location for your engagement session? Anyone out there crazy like us and have TWO separate sessions?