Our DIY Invitation Suite

Our invitations were definitely a labor of love. Thankfully, I learned the basic ropes of Adobe Illustrator when I sat down to create our save-the-dates earlier this year. This meant that the invitation process went much more quickly and smoothly than the save-the-date creation process. What took me a long time was finally settling on a color scheme and design. There are so many choices and it can feel overwhelming at times. At the end of the day, I simply needed to sit down, pick a design and walk away from it--and that's just what I did. I'm incredibly happy with the way that they turned out. Here is how it appeared to our guests upon opening the envelope: 

Poor Mr. C punched out all of those belly bands using a Martha Stewart punch one morning while I was sleeping in. He popped in The Hobbit DVD and went to town. By the time I woke up he had 100 beautiful belly bands neatly stacked into piles. He was also a huge help in the assembly process as we ended up mailing off around 80 of these invites to our nearest and dearest. 

The Moo mini card is a photograph I took at Versailles on the day we were engaged. French macarons will be making an appearance at our wedding in the form of favors and I felt that this little touch tied in the French/Parisian/Marie Antoinette feel I hoped our guests would get from our invitation. On the back of the mini Moo card is the information for our wedding website. 

I wanted to keep things really simple and uncomplicated with our invites. I would have loved to have envelope liners or one of those lovely pocket fold invitations -- but really invitations and envelopes all eventually end up in the trash. It's sad, but true. I wanted our invites to give off the look and feel of our wedding without being too over-the-top or expensive. Our RSVP was a postcard so that I could save the extra step (and postage) in including small RSVP envelopes. We had both the RSVP and invites printed at Catprint.com.

The RSVP postcards have a blank area on the front and instructions for guests to write us a message or draw us a picture. That way, even when we received RSVP's for "no" we could still have something fun and interesting to keep as a memento. I will share some of the drawings and messages in another post! 

And here they are, all ready to be mailed off! Another great thing about keeping things simple is that each envelope only needed one regular stamp. The post office even has beautiful vintage flower seed packet stamps right now and a lot of them match our wedding colors. Perfection!

It was a lot of fun working on these invites, but I am definitely glad that it is over and done with! Everyone seemed to really enjoy them and I received a lot of compliments on the design and little special touches like the belly band and the baker's twine.

How did you decide upon your invitations? Did you create them yourself or purchase them ready-made?

Our Bachelor/Bachelorette Weekend

Mr. C and I did something slightly unconventional--we recently celebrated our joint bachelor/bachelorette weekend in Las Vegas. I thought it would be a a lot fun if some of my bridesmaids and his groomsmen could meet and mingle during an awesome Vegas adventure. Not many of our entourage were able to make it (my bridesmaids live all over the country and two just had their first babies) -- but it was an amazing time nonetheless. This might not be the most typical way to celebrate, but I highly recommend it!

In the end we had two of Mr. C's groomsmen (one being my older brother) and two of my bridesmaids plus the husband of my matron of honor. It was a fun, laid back group and we tried our best not to get into too much trouble (wish I could say the same for my brother and the other groomsmen!)

After getting a little too much sun by the pool.

In order to save money we ended up staying at Excalibur. It's certainly not the nicest or classiest hotel, but it served our needs of a place to crash. Plus it was dirt cheap and their pool is actually really nice, and that's where I ended up spending most of our afternoons anyway. The one big disadvantage is that Excalibur is located way down at the end of the strip. In the past, I have also stayed at Treasure Island and Aria, which have much better locations in the middle of the strip and closer to Caesar's Palace and the Venetian. I think a lot of new visitors to Las Vegas don't understand how much walking and stair-climbing you will do as you explore the strip and its many outrageous hotels and attractions. This was actually my fifth time to Vegas, so I had a pretty good idea of what to do and where to go. But don't wear ridiculous heels unless you pack yourself some flats to wear on the walk (or take a taxi or the tram).

Better recognize!

K, my matron of honor and very dear friend, went above and beyond by making all the party members goodies bags and booking us reservations at the restaurant inside of the Paris hotel. Being with large groups in any location can sometimes feel like herding cats, so I appreciate her patience! For dinner we sat out on the patio and had a great view of the Bellagio fountain show which goes off every 15 minutes in the evening. It was such a lovely time to sit outside in the beautiful weather with such great friends. I will honestly never forget that feeling of love and fun.

Feeling fab with Mr. C!  This was just before our amazing dinner at Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris hotel.

With my stepsister, bridesmaid J. 

We didn't party at any of the major clubs, but we did end up getting bottle service at the lounge at the top of Mandalay Bay. There was plenty of drinking and dancing and it was nice to be a smaller more low-key area than packed into a crowded, loud nightclub. Wow, that makes me sound old -- but I am 30 and I do like to get my beauty sleep!

With K, my matron of honor and friend since the age of five!

K and me when we were in elementary school. Believe it or not, I'm actually three months older than her!

Mr. C with groomsmen and coworker M.

One of our major splurges was eating at what is apparently the number one buffet in Vegas: Bacchanal  located in Caesar's Palace. It was $55 but totally worth it for the sheer indulgence of the experience. I started off with all the seafood I could grab: crab legs and warm butter, mussels, oysters, shrimp cocktails. I moved on to the Asian section and scarfed down gyoza and lo mein noodles next to a slice of pizza, because why not? It's not like I have a wedding dress to fit into. . . wait a minute. I rounded it off with some mini burger sliders, corn on the cob, and a basket of fried mystery. 

The desserts were insanely decadent! Little mini parfaits, gelato, macarons, made-to-order fruit crepes, cheesecake, candy. It was off the chain. The worst part is that we were so exhausted from staying up late several days in a row (plus the jet lag from being on Eastern Standard Time) that all we needed was a large, satisfying meal to set in a permanent food coma. We made the wise choice to walk the mile and  a half back to Excalibur instead of coping out and taking a taxi. It was a good decision but it also meant we were too tired to rally the troops for another night on the town. Our trip to Vegas ended in the fizzle of losing some money on the penny slots and passing out in the hotel room.

Posing with Mr. C outside of Caesar's Palace.

You know, the best part of our bachelor/bachelorette weekend was spending so much time with the amazing people in my life. I don't get to see my matron of honor very often. She lives in Baltimore and the last time I saw her was two years ago at her own wedding. My stepsister recently moved from LA to New York City and I only see her a few times a year as well. My brother lives in Atlanta and I am always surprised how muc time can pass between our visits, considering we only live an hour and a half apart. Usually my vacations are taken up with visiting our families who are scattered across the US (in California, Illinois, and Michigan) and not taking the time to meet up with friends. This was a really fun excuse to meet up in a fun place. I will not soon forget all the amazing memories we made that weekend.

Mr. C, my brother (and groomsmen) and my stepsister playing the penny slots (our favorite pastime in Vegas!)

Did you have a bachelorette party? Where did you go and what did you do?

Unnecessary Wedding Purchases

We're all guilty of it--giving in to the constant barrage of Western culture telling us that our biggest, most special day ever is the perfect time to spend oodles of money on silly, unnecessary things. American consumerism at it's finest! All those fancy wedding blogs only make things worse. Well of course I absolutely must have fun sunglasses at my wedding. And let's not forget a new, special perfume just for the big day! Did someone say paper parasols? Those would look amazing in our wedding photos. I'm ordering nine of them!

Image source via: lazygamer.net

And that's how you end up spending all of your hard earned cash on silly, unnecessary things. Right now I feel like I could just take my paycheck, turn it into a paper airplane and just sail it off the top of a skyscraper. Poof! Gone forever.

So why all this unnecessary spending? I think that part of me is terrified that I will look back on my wedding with regret. I will lie awake at night sweating over the sparkler exit that we skipped because I didn't feel like spending $65 on sparklers. I hate feeling regret. What a silly emotion because of course, we can never go back and fix things so it's best to just accept things as they are and move on. Unfortunately my brain does not often listen to reason and I assure you that I will still lie awake at night regretting stupid, irrelevant things. So in a frantic attempt to bypass future regret I have plowed full speed ahead into unnecessary wedding details. Right now I have 100% control over what will and will not be purchased for our wedding and I feel like it's now or never for these little special splurges. We are only weeks away and my checking account has been feeling it hard lately!

And so without further ado, I bring you the insanity that is an American wedding:

1) A Signature Scent 

Image source via: Sephora

I'm a sucker for sentimental things and I loved the idea of having a wedding day signature scent. The idea is that you wear a unique perfume on your wedding day and honeymoon which you then save for special occasions in the future. When you wear it, you and your spouse will always remember your wedding day! Memory is heavily tied to scent, so I felt that this was a justified splurge, but a splurge nonetheless 

I think the concept of a wedding day scent has been well-covered here on Weddingbee (from Mrs. Armadillo, Mrs. Wallaby, Mrs. Ladyfingers, Mrs. Treasure, and Mrs. Beanstalk, to name a few) so I don't think this splurge was too unusual. A lot of Weddingbee bloggers seemed to have preferred Miss Dior Cherie, but unfortunately it is already my go-to daily perfume. After a trip to Sephora it didn't take me long to pick the ever-popular Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb. I started off with some samples and after mulling over the decision for a few weeks I decided to buy the smaller 0.68oz size which only ran me around $50. Okay, and I might have bought the tiny travel size version as well for the honeymoon. YOLO.

2) Glow Sticks

Image source via: Oriental Trading

Look, I wish I had a good explanation for this, but I don't. My thinking behind the glow stick purchase was that it would be really cool and really fun to be at a wedding with glow sticks. Who wouldn't want to throw on some fun glow sticks and dance the night away? And look at what a hit they were at Mrs. Pain au Chocolat's wedding! Those fun photos totally influenced this decision, by the way. I spent $35 on 50 glow necklaces in assorted colors, and if the guests enjoy them and I get photos half as fun as Mrs. PAC's then it was money well spent!

3) Sunglasses

Image source via: Oriental Trading

These sunglasses fall under the glow stick category of "just because." We plan to have them out on a table with the glow sticks after the dance party gets started. Guys, you have to know that I love a fun dance party, and these just screamed "AWESOME TIME" to me! They were totally affordable too, at $10 for one dozen plastic sunglasses. I bought two dozen. Plus, I can put them out with a cute sign like this:

Image source via: Braedon Photography

4) Sparklers

Image source via: Jonathan Hoffner Photography

Does every bride dream of a dramatic, heart-felt sparkler exit? Thanks to advice from Mrs. Airplane and Mrs. Unicycle I plan to make sure our guests know that we will be having a sparkler exit through a message on the programs. Unfortunately, we are having an open bar so maybe Mrs. Unicycle's theory on the sad combination of open bar and sparkler exit will still be true. Not one to be deterred from some overly optimistic vision of an amazing sparkler exit, I bought 150 20" sparklers for $65.99 from I Love Sparklers (as recommended by Mrs. Wallaby).


5) Parasols

Image source via: Style Me Pretty / Photography by: Amanda Hein Photography

I have six bridesmaids who are wearing mix-matched dresses in our wedding colors. I bought each one a paper parasol from Luna Bazaar that matches her dress color (blue, sherbet, pale pink). I also bought three gray parasols for my groomsladies who are wearing mix-matched gray dresses to match the groomsmen suits and I bought myself a white parasol to tie it all together. I think they will look so beautiful in photos. We are getting married outside in a field beneath some pecan tress and I can already imagine the warm summer sun streaming through the parasols. Again, this was a sort of silly purchase, but I hope my ladies are able to get these back home as a little souvenir of our Marie Antoinette-themed wedding.

6) Plum Pretty Sugar Robe 

Image source via: Lane Dittoe Photography

Ah, Plum Pretty Sugar, what marketing genius did you employ to ensure your wild success? $65 for a cotton robe?  But it's been in like every wedding blog post ever? Where do I sign up!? I would have loved to buy one for each of my girls, but with nine ladies total (six bridesmaids and three groomsladies) it was just way, way too much money to spend. I did manage to splurge on myself though, so at least I will have some nice getting dressed photos. I went with the classic knee length kimono robe in the "Beckoning Creatures" pattern as shown on the bride above. It should be here at the beginning of May and I can't wait to try it on (and take it on our honeymoon!)

Well, I guess that's about it. I'm sure there are plenty of other ridiculous things I've spent money on lately, but  this seems like a nice laundry list of indulgences. What silly and unnecessary things have you splurged on for your wedding?