Hair Inspiration II

Happy Friday to all..Here is some early morning inspiration for hair that we adore. We love the casual curls that still manage to be classy and stylish. Thank you to Linda Chaja Phtography and the beautiful bride for sharing this beautiful-do!

Perfect Moment XIX

I'm loving this perfect moment! Taking the time to center yourself during your wedding day is a must. I love that the photographer caught this bride while she was praying. Such a beautiful moment on a wedding day.

image via Anna Kuperberg

Escort Card Tip of the Day

To piggyback off of S's excellent escort card advice, (how beautiful were her candy apple masterpieces?!? SO worth the work :) I wanted to share an easy way to personalize escort cards that guests seem to love. My first tip is when possible, always find out the guests name. Go the extra mile even if your family and friend returned the RSVP card with the "And Guest" to find out who they are bringing. Adding their name to the RSVP card offers a very personal feel. Take the time to email, text or call your friend and family to ask who is going to be sharing the day with you all. This will help the "guest" feel at ease from the moment they walk in the door. It also becomes extremely helpful for you and your fiance when writing thank you cards!

Another simple, but extremely appreciated tip, is to acknowledge the other soon to be brides out there. Nothing is more exciting then attending a wedding when you are planning one and the excitement and love felt during the wedding is multiplied by 100 when you are thinking of your own day. My sister chose to acknowledge those people by labeling their place cards ..."The soon to be Mr and Mrs____." I followed suite with this advice and all of my engaged family and friends loved the personal touch. It also increased their excitement of their upcoming nuptials. I had one cousin tell me she kept the escort card on her fridge until they got married!

Place Cards

After I did the envelope printing I figured printing place cards would be no problem. I mean, I just did about 700 envelopes, 200 place cards, cake walk. You see where this is going right? Yeah, nowhere good.

I ordered the seating cards in cream and brown metallic paper from here. The place cards I ordered were supposed to come with a template, but the template was actually just a piece of paper that told you what size the place cards should be set up, but they did not take into account the margins between each place card. Serious PAIN!! I spent one night on the phone with customer service and had no luck. Basically, I was on my own.

However, I did just look at the downloadable template they have on their site now and it would work perfectly. Making this process seriously 10 times easier now. Honestly, it took me about 4 nights to figure it out. Four night about a month before your wedding is a TON. There were tears (everybody that knew me), there was blood (mine), there were curse words (mine), and I almost gave up and had my mom handwrite them, but I persevered and finally had 200 place cards printed.

Once I had a working template I was able to use mail merge on Microsoft Word to get my very very HANDY excel sheet. I had a column for inner envelope which is also the same as place cards.

After I had them all printed out I (with the help of my mom) started gluing them to the larger pieces of brown metallic paper that I cut out. I used this tape because I hate glue. I also used a paper cuter for this project to make sure all the brown pieces of paper were the same size ( I started cutting paper about 6 months before the wedding, it was an easy mindless task to do during the lull in planning).

Two days before the wedding my caramel apples came in huge boxes. I ordered my apples and the individual plastic bags from here could not have been happier with them. The apples came in boxes of three and three days before the wedding we started packaging them up. I had about four people helping at any given time and they took about 2 hours to complete. I used red ribbon to tie them up. I also found these brown little jewels at Michaels a few weeks before the wedding and was feeling extra crafty and added them.

After the actual printing fiasco making the place cards was one of my favorite tasks. It was the ONLY task that waited until last minute(due the perishable nature of the apples), but it was well worth it.

If you are printing place cards I would give yourself some time for perfecting the process. Don't wait until the month before just because you want to wait for the final guest list. There are people that you know will be there like you, practice with those names so that you are all set to go when you start getting the RSVP cards.

all images via Anthony Vazquez

Perfect Moment XVIII

image via Jose Villa

I couldn't help but share this perfect moment. It's not from a wedding, but it is more than perfect. Married for 60 years.

Jose Villa you just may be the sweetest photographer I've come across. His website is just jam packed with the most beautiful moments.

Addressing Invitations

One of my wishlist requests was envelope calligraphy by Laura Hooper. Her work is seriously beautiful!! However, towards the end of wedding planning my budget was stretched thin and I had to delegate funds elsewhere. I decided that hiring someone to do computer calligraphy made no sense. My reasoning was I have a computer and a pretty good printer, I can handle it. I also printed my save the date envelopes so I did have some (albeit) limited experience.

Here is how I did it;

5 months before the wedding: I made sure my excel sheet was free of errors. I missed a few which caused me to go back and fix after printing ( Lesson learned- order extra envelopes). I then did a basic mail merge to two separate documents, inner and outer envelope. I also perfected the color I wanted to use. I used a dark brown instead of black due to the fact that my invites were dark brown and dark red. I downloaded the font from my invitations. I used this website, but there are many many others.

4 months before the wedding: My husband (then fiance) made envelope templates. I had him cut out about 30 pieces of paper that were the exact size of the envelopes so I could figure out how to feed the envelopes, how I wanted it centered. This was a great idea because it probably saved us from ordering even more envelopes.

After I "mastered" the technique, I started printing the outer envelopes. I printed them in alphabetical order and did it one at a time. For some reason my printer had issues with multiple envelopes. If you have lined envelopes be prepared for this issue. It took some time, but I hand fed each one. It took me about 2 evenings to do it. I kept them in alphabetical order in a box.

I then did the inner envelopes. My printer let me do about 10 at a time which saved me time and I did the inner envelopes in one evening.

This process caused me to pull out about half my hair (good thing I have lots of hair). For some reason I had a huge smearing issue that only happened with the outer envelopes (again, I think it had to do with the thickness). I tried everything from cleaning the heads between each print, manually wiping the ink compartment. In the end I could not figure it out, but it only happened sporadically which didn't actually cause huge issues besides for making me slightly insane.

After I had everything printed and in order my mom, sister, mother in law, and I started stuffing. We had a good system going. My sister numbered the invitation with an invisible ink pen, my mom put the invite in the first envelope. I stuffed them in the outer envelope and checked it against the list to make sure the inner and outer envelope matched, and my mother in law sealed and stamped them. It took us about 5 hours to do the entire thing. We did it the evening after my bridal shower.

3 months before the wedding: Everything got mailed out! My mom actually took them to the post office and had them hand stamp each envelope, she wanted them out of her house because they were sprawled out all over her dinning room table, ha.

The printing was mostly a one person job especially since I am pretty crazy and really need everything to perfect. I realized if I had someone helping me I would have made them crazy. The stuffing was made so much easier and more fun by the help of others!

In the end I had to order more envelopes because of the ink smearing issue, but the total for printing 315 invitations was about 60 dollars including ink. I would say DO IT if you already have a printer and some patience. It saved us a ton of money (especially since I had so many invitations).

Confession: I actually thought my mom would hand address the invitations because she has fantastic handwriting, but due to the fact that I am a perfectionist after a few envelopes I decided I really wanted the precision of exactly the same writing on each invite. However, my mother had a great point at the time that I wasn't hearing. Only a few household really get more than one invitation so by in large no one really knows what everyone else's invitation looks like. Furthermore, it isn't a detail most people even notice. However, at the time this advice was lost on my OCD bride brain.

So tell me how did you address your invitations?

Perfect Moment XVII

This perfect moment comes from Brett Matthews. I love these guys (and girls). They take fantastic pictures and this perfect moment is just what everyone needs to brighten up their Monday morning.