And thats because the past weeks I've been working on the BIGGEST DIY project... ever.
This project started as something small and simple, a way to save money, and has turned into a monster undertaking.
Le sigh... I'm about 20 minutes away from going to pick up the invitations from the printer, and I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I can honestly say that our best man, Kris, and been aaaamazing in this whole processes. Kris is a Graphic Designer who also did our Save-The-Dates. Without his time and hard work we wouldn't have our very special and one-of-a-kind invitations.
I've learned a lot through this project - and I'd love to spend a few minutes sharing my new knowledge about DIY invitations.
#1. It's never as easy as it looks.
I found some inspiration invitations on minted.com. The invitations actually looked pretty simple in design, but cute, something that fit what I was looking for. When we had went to Kris and asked him to design something based off the inspiration invitations I had no idea how difficult it would be to make these no-hassle invitations. Probably close to 48 hours of design time later, and a hand drawn font by our designer - our invitations were getting close to what we wanted.
#2. Printers suck.
The wonderful store Paper Source offered a multitude of paper sizes in every color of the rainbow, including a 5X7 invitation and a 4x6 size, perfect for an RSVP card. What the store doesn't tell you is that no printer (Super Print, Kinkos, etc) can print on paper smaller than 8 1/2 x 11. Well, I take that back, Super Print was able to print on the smaller size, but they would charge $50 in set up for each run because they had to put it through the printing press. We had a total of 7 different images to be printed - which means in set up fees alone, before copies, the printing would be upwards of $300.
My new favorite store, Paper Source, is awesome, but it's also 30 some miles away from my apartment so getting there is a little bit of a hike. All in all, I had to put about 200 miles on my car going back and forth between the store (3 trips), and one emergency trip that I called my mom on. Again, thanks to the wonderful Kris, he suggested making a final trip to Paper Source to return the pre-cut paper, getting the same paper in 8 1/2 x 11, and having the printer cut it. (For about $350 LESS than what I was quoted).
#3 You can never estimate enough cushion time.
One of my jobs and work it to put together the budget and projections for all of the marketing projects. With all these projections, I over estimate their expense just a little in case anything happens and we need to do a second run or make changes late in the game. It winds up working out really well, because most of the time the projects are right under projections and we are under budget in our expenses.
Sadly, I'm don't have the same skills when it comes to projecting time. I thought that design and printing would take about 3 weeks. In looking back through my e-mail, my first invitation-related e-mail to Kris was May 5th. This project has now been 7 weeks in the making... no wonder I haven't been blogging lately!
and finally, #4. Just because another bride has it, doesn't mean you have to.
Wax Seals, embossed print, Moo Cards, Ribbon Belly Bands. I did SO much research that I was over stimulated on invitation ideas. I wanted them all. I'm happy to report I have pretty much everything I wanted (well, not embossed invitations, those were clearly out of my budget) - it just took a whole crap load of time and effort.
I'm going to have the invitations in the mail Wednesday. Well... I say that tonight, but if I learned anything through this, they will probably be in the mail Saturday. Lots of assembling lie ahead. Pictures coming soon!!
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