anoisette

So we made the trek down to the Making Memories with Scrapbooking store and although it was far it was totally worth it. They have such an amazing selection and we were able to find a nice card stock to mount our save the date magnets on. The best part was that since it’s my birthday month, I got 25% off my purchase. It was also great to check out all the wonderfully creative cards and wedding invitation samples they had throughout the store. They have a wedding invitations class coming up soon and if it weren’t so far I’d really consider going.

The magnets came in the mail today, so I guess it only took 2 weeks when I was expecting them to take 3. That’s not bad. The quality is ok. I’m really picky about printing though but I guess for the price I can’t complain. So as long as I don’t start getting mystery charges on my credit card I’ll have to say VistaPrint isn’t all that bad.

Now I am researching printers because I decided I don’t want to address all of these Save the Date envelopes by hand. Besides, we’ve been meaning to get a printer anyway because every so often we’ll need to print something at home and it’s annoying to have to take it out and do it somewhere else.

I also want to buy some cardstock to mount the magnets on, but I don’t really know where to find nice paper in Vancouver. I checked the Staples website but their cardstock colors are so blah. There’s always Michael’s but the locations here are far out in the burbs. A google search turned up this place called Making Memories with Scrapbooking, it’s also kind of far but looks very paperlicous. Looks like I’m going to have a busy week-end because I’d really like to get these all stuffed and ready to send out by Monday.

My goal for January was to get the Save the Dates made. While they are technically not yet made, they are out of my hands.

I ended up going for magnets from VistaPrint. I was extremely hesitant to use VistaPrint because there are tons and tons and tons of horrible reviews about them (just do a quick Google search and you’ll see), BUT one of my coworkers has used them a few times and had no complaints or mystery charges on her credit card so I decided to give it a go. Said coworker also hooked me up with an email promotion she had received for free magnets, so that was my starting point.

All I have to say though is that VistaPrint sure works hard to make a buck and does leave a bad taste. For example I was hemming and hawing over whether to order 50 or 100 magnets, it was $8 for 50 and $26 for 100 (which makes no sense whatsoever), in the end because of their funny ’shipping/processing’ charges ($8 for 50, $9 for 100), I got confused and figured I would just get the 100 and have it over and done with. Although now that I’m sitting down and doing the math I see that it would have been cheaper to order 2 sets of 50. Oooops.

To add insult, as soon as my order was sent through (point of no return because they claim the millisecond you hit that button the order is sent to their production system, making changes or cancellations impossible) I got an offer for another 100 magnets for only $13 with no ’shipping’ charges! Makes me wonder if something similar would have happened if I had just ordered 50 to begin with and tacked another 50 on for a discounted price. I could have really saved! I’m already having buyers remorse and haven’t even seen the goods!

Has anyone else had any experiences ordering from VistaPrint?

Spent all day working on a website for the wedding. Now that it’s actually happening This Year I really ought to get crackin. Found this Wedding website wiki page over at Wedding Bee a very good starting point.

I ended up throwing together a simpel site using wordpress. I’ll post about the whats and hows soon.

I like the simple charm of these Felix Doolittle wedding invitations. A simple illustration that is repeated throughout the event ties everything together quite nicely. I am still strongly considering a blueberry wedding theme and they have a very cute blueberry option.

Having more fun with Polyvore.

The more I think about it the more I like the blueberries thing. The wedding will be in early August which is right when blueberries are plentiful in the Lower Mainland.

Found an inspiring new blog today, a $10,000 wedding. Despite one’s best intentions it really is so easy to get wrapped up in the whole machine so it’ll be good for a change to get a different perspective! Keeping our wedding under 10K was the original goal, but I got really discouraged the more I ventured into the actual planning.

On the topic of keeping it real, the blog Stupid Wedding Crap rocks and reading it is a breath of fresh air! This about sums up exactly how I’ve been feeling:

Lately a lot of people have been asking me if I’m excited to get married when they actually mean ‘Are you excited to have a wedding?’ You see, I’m completely psyched about getting married. I’m looking forward to making a public commitment to the man that I’ve loved for the past 5 years and will love for the rest of my life. I am not excited about the following:

• Finding a location
• Picking a date that doesn’t interfere with everyone else’s lives
• Choosing flowers
• Finding a dress
• Asking my friend Lily to be my maid of honor
  Done! I totally cried. It was great.
• Other wedding stuff I can’t bear to imagine

From the post Tractor & Cow Wedding Cake Topper

Amen! In fact during my very painful venue search which I conducted while dragging my feet and accompanied with copious amounts of whining to any of my friends who would listen one of them actually said to me “You don’t actually want to have a wedding, do you?” A very insightful friend that one is. But thanks to the mom who took matters into her own hands by booking a flight out here to kick my butt in gear and get the deal sealed, a venue was secured for next summer. So now there is no turning back. And I need to re-focus and re-visit how to make this work on a modest budget.

I’m not much good at magazine clipping, namely because I just don’t buy the magazines. But I think Polyvore is going to make it very easy for me to save images I see online that I like. And then I can make inspirations boards like this one.

Right after I posted this, I realized that the colors kind of match my blog… Can you tell I like green much?

Vanvows said it perfectly, it IS hard to find a wedding photographer you like AND can afford when photography is your hobby. I’m having an extra hard time because neither my or the boy’s parentals feel that spending for a professional photographer is worth it. My dad likes to remind me what lovely lenses I could buy for the money we’d have to spend to get a decent photographer. And while that’s true, I still think having a professional photographer would be really nice but also it’s not really in the budget. And if I do go ‘cheap’ and compromise do I still want to be spending over 1K on very limited coverage and service? Tough decisions indeed.

I only just noticed that Wedding bee conveniently lets you view blog posts by cities! I clicked on Vancouver and found the same day edit of idovancouver’s StillMotion video. Gorgeous! I love that it was set to a Death Cab song… but really it was just amazing to get to see the culmination of all the blog posts I’ve followed on her blog. I’ve just been so impressed by the thought and research she seems to have put into every aspect of her special day and being able to see a snippet of it artfully constructed by the talented folks at StillMotion was really really cool!