For those of you who don’t know me or can’t tell from pictures, I am a small human being. I’m about 5’2”/5’3,” and I weigh just over 100 pounds. I’m “fun size.” I have a hard time shopping at a lot of stores; at some retailers their XS’s or 0’s are too big for me. So, when it came to dress shopping, I had a lot of things to keep in mind.
I went into my dress search with a pretty distinct vision. I’d like to think that I know how to dress myself properly, and that when it came to shopping for dresses, I’d be no different.
I knew for certain that I had to stray away from dresses with “poof,” as they would completely swallow me alive. They aren’t my style anyway. Besides, I am confident about my body, so I did want to find a gown that showed off my figure!
Another thing I was sure of? Lace. There is just something so romantic about lace, and it is timeless. I just had to have a dress made of lace.
Finally, I knew that I wanted a sweetheart neckline if possible. I’m not ashamed to admit it; I am pretty much flat as a pancake up top…which I actually LIKE (gasp! What?!?! I know, who would think?). However, when it comes to clothing with strapless necklines, I start to look like a washboard. Not the most attractive thing you’ve ever seen.
So, what were my original dress inspirations? I sourced them all from The Knot:
Raidis by Pronovias
I love the flowy nature of the dress…the babydoll shape would possibly be a good look on me.
Rocha by Monique Lhuillier
Sigh. Doesn’t need words.
Gwenyth by Renella De Fina Couture
This is one of the closest images to what I was going for in my overall look. Yum.
And then, I happened to come across Cymbeline, and I fell in love with some of the dresses…most notably Agadir…
The halter wasn’t what I originally wanted, but the dress was just so gorgeous…I wanted very very badly to at least try it on…
As for my budget? Honestly, I was trying to keep the dress itself around $1,000 or less. Did I succeed? Time will tell…
So…I had my inspiration and my price requirements…then it was on to the stores to make my dreams into reality!
I promise, this is the final post about my Save the Date’s!
I know that I already lamented about our printer problems, but there are a few things that we learned with our Save the Date process that I’d like to mention…because if I could do it all over again, I would change a few things! Perhaps you will be smarter than me, and potentially learn from my mistakes? If you missed them, here is Part 1 and Part 2
*First, make sure you are using a computer that isn’t going to freak out on you when you’re printing. I did get a few questions/comments about why I didn’t just do a mail merge. Yes, that seems like that would have been the good plan to implement. Whoops. However, my computer is touchy, and recently it has been freezing up at the drop of a hat…probably because I have used up almost all of my memory. Which reminds me, I need to clean out my computer. So aggravating. Anyway, use MAIL MERGE if you can!
*Secondly, I would make sure that my magnets/Save the Date’s included the city where the wedding is taking place. Since our current address is in Virginia, and the wedding is in Florida, I didn’t realize that it would cause confusion! Someone called my parents and asked if the wedding is in California! I am really not sure why they thought that…perhaps the VA looked like CA to them???
*Third, I would be certain that we sign both our first and last names in the cards for guests who don’t know us well! This wasn’t a problem for most of our guests, as most of the guest list was aware they were receiving a card in the first place, but there were a few of my dad’s coworkers who had no clue who “Katie and Justin” were. D’oh! I feel incredibly dumb.
*Last, but not least, we would make sure my mom checked the glue dot package before sticking them to the magnets/cards. As we were doing it, I thought to myself that the glue dots felt pretty strong, but we kept going anyway. When I got home over Thanksgiving, I asked my mom if she still had the package the dots came in (she has just given me the roll). Sure enough, on the package the box was not marked “light tack,” or “medium tack,” but SUPER HIGH TACK! Well, no wonder people were having a hard time taking the magnet out of the card…sorry everyone!
All in all, I’m glad that we were able to see what problems arose while creating our Save the Date’s…I’m thinking of it as a practice run for the invites, and I am hoping that we won’t run into similar problems with those!
Did you learn some important things while creating your invites/Save the Date’s? Any good tips to share to keep people sane?
Ok, so in Part 1, the drama ensued. Thankfully, we were able to get ourselves out of the address-label weeds and work out a system.
Now, I’ll show you what these bad boys looked like!
Here is our little setup: my trusty google doc spreadsheet with addresses (yes, they are color coded in blue for Justin’s guests, and pink for mine…), the magnets, glue dots, the cards and envelopes (clearly), and the ink pad/stamp.
I printed the envelopes while Justin attached a glue dot to the back of the magnet and placed it inside the card.
I painstakingly placed each adorable little bird stamp in the left corner of the address. I broke down and decided to put the custom stamp on hold for the moment, and when I went to Michael’s one day…this bird stamp was waiting there for me!
I may have had a glass of wine or two during the process…
And…here you have it folks! A little peek at the finished product…I’m so glad that they are complete!
The next day, Justin and I headed to the post office to drop them off…so sad (yet relieved) to see them go!
See ya, Save the Date's...
Were you relieved when you got your Save the Date’s out?
I may or may not have implied that there was a bit of stress involved with putting together our Save the Date’s…
Don’t worry, it all turned out fine! I just like to be dramatic. You see, this is how it went down (2 weeks ago…):
On Thursday, Justin and I picked up some clear Avery labels…return address and 2"x4” shipping labels. For convenience’s sake, I had determined that we’d just print sheets of address labels with pretty font. I found a great font and downloaded it for FREE on Fontspace.com. Done and done.
Not so much.
To make a long story short, the instructions on the labels say to print a test sheet before printing on the actual labels. Easy enough, right? We put a test sheet in the printer…the labels looked perfect when we held them up against the real deal. Ok, we’re good to go. However, when we put the label sheet in the printer, they came out COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. What the…
At first, I figured I must have hit something on my keyboard and it was my fault. So, we tried another test sheet. It looked perfect…again. So, we put in the real sheet again. And, guess what? It came out wrong…AGAIN!
I walked away for the night, and poured myself a glass of wine. I was frustrated.
Fast forward to Friday night. It was time to tackle the labels again. We went through the same process…and ruined three more sheets of labels. Cursing may or may not have been involved. I started pulling at my hair. Justin immediately tells me to get the heck out of the room before I smash my computer into pieces.
I took my frustrations out on the labels instead...
So then, I took a breath, and then frantically began to scroll through the template options on my computer…and thanked my lucky stars that they had the right size of envelope included. We tested the printer on one of our precious envelopes (we have 93 to send, out of 100 in the package…so we can’t make many mistakes!)…it looked great.
Insert sigh of relief. This can work…
Except for the fact that we now have to print every single envelope one…at…a…time.
We opened a bottle of wine (sensing a trend???) and got to work. Justin assembled the cards, I typed addresses and printed the envelopes.
More than four hours later, we were done! Well, 2/3 of the way done at least. I’m still missing a few addresses…
Want to see them? Well, too bad! I am going to keep you in suspense for Part 2 for the big reveal!
Did you have any frustration involved in making Save the Date’s or invitations?
