Invites - This Is The End

Posted by: Dan on May 05, 2008

Well it was a good weekend… mainly because we’re finally done with the invitations!!! I’m sure you’re just as sick about reading about the invites as I was near the end of getting them done.

Let’s recap the weekend and the final stages of the invitation invitational.

Saturday Brooke came over early so we could head to the post office to get the postage. I wanted to weigh the invites to make sure that we’d have right postage for the size/weight. Turns out we could get away with a single 41 cent stamp. However the reply cards, which I though we could get away with a smaller stamp, was the save thing. Since postage is going up we figured we should go with the “Forever Stamp“. So $123 later we were out the door and on our way home.

Notes on the trip to the post office… Waukesha’s post office sucks. The people are nice and helpful but the parking is super-awful-bad! We had to park across the street and run over. When we left some guy parks right in front of me (note that I was in some crazy “sideways” parking spot). There’s a billion other spots in the lot and Captain Pink Shirt has to park in front of me.

Bettina (Brooke’s sister and close friend of mine) was super-duper cool and brought us lunch. She also put the return addresses on 100 envelopes to help Brooke and I out. Cool ain’t she?

I had to print up the directions (yeah I know they should have been done months ago). I was very short tempered at this time because I was fed up with the invites and short on sleep. I think I snapped at Brooke once or twice (sorry hon!). Those finally were printed and cut. By then Brooke was done addressing her envelopes and Bettina was off.

Brooke took a nap and I pretty much finished up all my invites. Wrote the addresses, stuffed the envelopes, sealed them and put stamps on them.

By this time both Brooke and I were done for the night.

Sunday we pretty much finished up Brooke’s invites. I assembled the invites and stuffed the envelopes while Brooke licked, sealed and stamped them. I stuffed the all in a bag and put them as far across the room from me as I could. :)

Monday it was time to mail them. Brooke took the bag of invites along with her and after work hit the post office to send them out. I had one or two more invites to finish up tonight and now I can officially say we’re done.

Brooke and I were joking that “now it’s for real” and there’s “no turning back now”. Not like everything we’ve been doing up until now has been pointless. It’s just that almost everything so far has been “for us” and hadn’t involved too many others outside out family (include close friends in that “family”). Besides our parents and our wedding party helping out with a few things it’s almost like… I’m not sure really. I don’t want to say like no one knew… but that’s kind of how it feels. With the invites out it’s “official” for everyone invited.

Invites - Preparation For The End

Posted by: Dan on May 02, 2008

Tonight I decided was going to be a relaxed night for wedding related activities. Brooke’s coming over tomorrow and we’re going to finish up the invitations. There was a little more work to do to make sure things goes smoothly tomorrow so I figured as long as I finish that we should be set.

I finished cutting the tags and punched the holes in one end. I cut all the ribbon to 1 foot lengths. I did a test print for the reply card envelopes. All we need now is some stamps, some time and we should get this puppies done!

Oh wait… forgot about the directions. I guess I have to finish those tonight. Unless someone wants to do those for me????

Johnny Cash, I Know How You Feel

Posted by: Dan on May 01, 2008

(With my apologies to The Man in Black)

I’ve been everywhere, man.
I’ve been everywhere, man.
Crossed the street over there, man.
I’ve drove thorough traffic with care, man.
Of shopping I’ve had my share, man.
I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve been to:
Walgreens, WalMart, Target, K-Mart,
Office Max, Michaels store at least a hundred times or more
Teacher store, Craft store, Office Depot
A graphics place for paper (very) cheap-o

I’ve been everywhere, man.
I’ve been everywhere, man.
I’m pulling out my hair, man.
Can’t find what I need, man.
Go to another store, man.
I’ve been everywhere.

See, my sanity is gone. Over the past few days it’s been constant work on wedding invitations and what goes along with them. I do want to make something clear here, since it may appear otherwise from my recent posts. I love doing this, it’s been a lot of fun. I enjoy little projects and seeing the end result is always a fun surprise. So while it may seem like I’m complaining, I’m not.

Okay with that said, I’ve managed to get a few things done since Monday’s post. I did have to run around a bit the past few days (hence the hacked up song above) but I manged to get what I needed. The RSVP cards are printed and cut. I’ve managed to make a few tags – still need to make a few cuts on those. And the rest I don’t want to talk too much about so I don’t give away how the invites and all the goodies will be put together. More on that later.

More Invitation Craziness!

Posted by: Dan on Apr 28, 2008

Due to our (okay… my) lack of planning the RSVP cards didn’t have a handy little envelope to get mailed back to us. So Brooke and I headed out on an adventure to solve this. After 3 stores we finally found something that would work. The good thing about the cards was that since I was designing and printing them myself I could fit them to what ever envelope we found.

However, we had another little issue. You know the envelope that you stuff everything into and then gets placed inside the envelope that’s mailed? Yeah we didn’t have that. So a work around is needed for that.

(Update: we’ve found a work around which requires more printing and cutting for me, but it’s worth it since it works well.)

So for the next few days it looks like I’ll be working on the invitations – not the actual invitations but things that get sent along with them.

(My brain is fried tonight, sorry for the weird post)

Invitations - Completed

Posted by: Dan on Apr 27, 2008

Everyone cheer… the invitations are finally done. And let me tell you it was a chore. The worst part – trying to find double sided tape, the kind that comes in the handy “apply directly to the paper” type of dispenser. I hit WalMart this morning and they didn’t have any. Then I ran to Walgreens and they didn’t have any either. Finally I hit K-Mart and found some (at $5 each though – rip off!).

I had about 60 invitations to do today and I went though them a little faster than I thought. I think it helps that I did a bunch last night so I had a system.

Just for fun, let’s see what what was used during this process.

110 invites – with some material left over in case I need to make a few more at the last minute.

1870 cuts to make them

220 score lines

440 folds

One ink cartridge

170 sheets of paper

4 rolls of double sided tape

Rubber cement

One paint brush

Roughly 43 hours

My sanity

And here they are: