Amen!

Just go read it, especially if you're a fellow bride. Offbeat Bride writes a wonderful denouncement of the word "tacky"

Brides all over wedding websites worry that their nontraditional wedding will be "tacky." But this term is so meaningless because it's all about context. Just as I know I could never hold a 300 guest soiree in a ballroom downtown with 6 foot tall centerpieces and an all white cake and Canon in D to walk down the aisle...lots of brides do just that. Most of the weddings I play have most of those elements. And you know what? As much as my quartet will occasionally judge (we love silently judging the guests who wear too-short minidresses with spindly little stripper heels), we mostly celebrate what was beautiful: the bride beaming as she walks down the aisle, the groom tearing up during the vows.

I just wish I had given myself a little less grief when I was searching for my wedding dress and getting so upset because I felt like a "bad bride." The wedding industry is sneaky, and very very good at making you feel like you have to do things a certain way. This article is a reminder that nobody is a bad bride. If you want to cosplay at your wedding as elves from the Lord of the Rings, and have your wedding bands engraved with "One ring to rule them all...in holy matrimony," go for it. The people who love you will likely see these ideas as so unmistakably you, and they will love you all the more for expressing yourselves in your wedding planning.

Invite Suite: RSVP Cards

In deciding to design and print my own invites, I knew it would be a lot of work, but I didn't expect the process I have gone through (the countless hours, and I'm not even done yet!). Case in point: the RSVP cards. Just a simple little card with which to reply and tell us you're coming, right?

Well, you know me. I have about 3 different designs mocked up with multiple fonts. You have to play around to see what works (or, at least, I do, since I'm not a trained graphic designer and I need to see different combinations to know what will look best).

Here is one such version. This was the starting point, a vintage french soap label with the text removed.

Which I then took and made a "backside" which extended the open space for text:

Then I had to settle on RSVP wording. I don't want to simply have a "yes" and "no," so I looked up all sorts of different ways to word the card. Some were overly cutesy ("I'll be there with bells on" and "Can't make it, but heard there will be people wearing bells"), some were silly ("I'll be there come rain or come shine!" "Sorry, out of umbrellas and sunscreen.") and others were stupid (many of them). 

Since the wedding is so vintage themed, I wanted something classic without being boring, and a little elegant. I settled on using "in body" for yes and "in spirit" for no. I like it.

So, then it was time to play with fonts.

...And several versions later, it was getting frustrating. I then decided the images needed something even more visual, so I thought putting a little divider or image between the two sections would help:

They're definitely cute. But the diamond seems a little out of place with the rest of the image. So then I went for background images, which consisted of three steps:

1) Dig up my old letterpress image files from briarpress.org
2) Open them up individually in GIMP (freeware photoshop-type program), add an alpha channel, select all the white in the image, then clear to make a transparent background.
3) Add the transparent image as a new layer to the RSVP card, and edit the opacity of the image to make it lighter and put it behind the text.

The result of all this was that I ended up with two that I liked:

What do you think? I think both are pretty great, it's just tough deciding. Perhaps once the other pieces fall into place, one will look better with the other elements. 

I know it's weird to design such a small part of the paper goods first, but I was just drawn to this image and it screamed RSVP card to me for some reason. I couldn't tell you why. This isn't to say these are the RSVP cards, end of story. By the time the invites are done I might go with something completely different.

Note to all fellow brides: DIY IS HARD. Just so you know. I am undertaking all this because I am stubborn and it's a labor of love, but don't think it isn't insane of me.

A wedding letter...

I stumbled across this blog entry recently, which contains a letter from a "wedding graduate." She addresses the letter to her own wedding, and it's pretty hilarious (and also great perspective for those planning now).

Some favorite moments:

"Oh, I know your sneaky ways. I didn't even want a wedding. But you're so flashy flashy, and so 'everyone else is doing it' and the next thing we knew, we were sending out invitations. And then there was no turning back, and you just kept luring us deeper and deeper with your promises of happy families and cake. The cake was a clever ploy. Oh, you're good, wedding."


"Sure, maybe the further away you get, the more I like you. Maybe I can't actually find any photos from you where people don't have huge grins. Maybe eating nothing but cake and champagne is pretty rad. Maybe I really like wearing fancy silk dresses. But that's neither here nor there."


This was the type of bride I am going to be; a super-DIY type who wants to make just about everything (although I have no sewing skills, so I couldn't follow her on the whole making-her-own-dress escapade). It's good to remember to take a step back and just enjoy the process without letting it consume you. It's one day, people will enjoy it no matter what, and we'll end up married at the end of it.