It's in the Mail

Sara finds success with her DYI invitations.

By Sara Cardace

Well, we're basically at the one-month mark and I am definitely starting to feel a bit under the gun. I was just reading my fellow engagement blogger's post about finding her venue so quickly (congratulations Jessica!) and I can already tell she's going to fare much better than I have. If I'd gotten the ball rolling so quickly I would be in much, much better shape right now...



This past week's been a productive one though. (Thank god.) I met my father, caterer (Chef Rossi), her head planner, and Darius (the wonderful event planner at Landmark on the Park) at the venue and we hashed out all the details of the reception, from extra tables that needed ordering to the exact timeline for the big day. I also met with Margot at
Classic Party Rentals and placed an initial order for all the linens, flatware, glassware and accoutrements we're going to need. I ended up going mostly no-frills with all of that, because, well, who really notices a boring fork?

And I'm proud to announce that after what felt like months and months of prep work, we finally got our invitations out! And only about a half-week behind schedule. John was a total saint and did the designs himself. It took awhile to get the wording and overall design just right, but I really love the way they turned out. (See above for a photo.) We ended up printing the invitations black on white and affixing them to a nice piece of olive-green card stock with a little doodad known as a "scrapbooking snap". We are now scrapbooking masters, by the way, which I can honestly say we never thought we'd be. The card you see on top above is actually the RSVP postcard; we also included directions and parking info.

Having now mastered the art of DIY invitations, I would strongly caution likeminded couples to keep their sanity levels in mind before taking on such a project. We did end up having fun with it, but after several incredibly late, cranky nights and many tedious trips back to the arts-and-crafts store, I'm not entirely sure this was this was the best way to go. We did save money -I think the total for 140 invites was less than $300, and that's including all the postage ($75) and the somewhat unnecessary ribbons) - but it was pretty tough. Live and learn!

By the way, anyone pondering the possibility of registering for a Wii (or a similarly juvenile fantasy objet) should check out my post on the topic from a few weeks back. There's a lively debate going on in the comments...