My DIY Pride & Joy: The Programs

My favorite DIY project and the one I'm most proud of are my Programs.

I got a bid for programs from Daydreams, the stationary store who did my invites, for programs and it came out to about $700. I thought to myself, "I can do that for less". And I did. When it was all said and done, with paper, printing, and ribbon, it was about $100.

I designed the programs in Word using a mix of Honey Script and Century Gothic fonts. I had them printed up and cut at Kinkos. I used a blue cardstock for the cover and a ivory resume paper for the contents. We bound them together with two colors of orange ribbon.

Here are some shots of the inside of the program:

The contents were:

- Cover

- Page 1: Welcome

- Page 2 & 3: Wedding Party

- Page 4 & 5: Ceremony Program

- Page 6: Picture

- Page 7: Wedding Weekend Agenda

I admit it, I'm completely in love with my programs and way to proud of myself.

Message me if you want my template. :-)

DIY Projects - Escort Cards and Favors

Two of the biggest DIY projects that I undertook in the weeks leading up to the wedding were my the Escort Cards and Favors.

The Sunday before the Wedding I held a "Wine & Wedding Crafts" Party and with help from my Mom, Laurel, Pat, Sarah, Michelle, and Nikki we got a ton of wedding DIY stuff done. It was a great time and the products turned out great.

Escort Cards



The Escort Cards were 3 inch White Pencil Starfish With business card sied tags indicating the person's name and table. The turquoise or tangerine ribbon indicated their meal selection (crepes or salmon). I made the cards in Word using Honey Script font and had them printed on ivory cardstock at Kinkos. I really like the way they turned out!

Favors



Instead of favors we did donations to Alzheimer's Association and gave people a Sand dollar to signify that donation at their place setting.


The text read:
"A dollar for them, a dollar for you
For each of our wedding guests we've donated a dollar to Alzheimer's Association. We chose Alzheimer's Association in memory of Kirsten's Grandpa Jack and in support of Jonathan's Fraternity Philanthropy.
Thank you for being a part of our lives and for sharing our special day with us."

We also had these printed up at Kinkos and they looked beautiful on the cyan card stock. I bought the Sand Dollars from qualityshells.com and we tied the tags to them with raffia ribbon.

Invites Sent!

Just wanted to update everyone on my "Going Postal" post from yesterday. Today my invites went out, hand canceled and everything!

My Mom got a nice lady at the Midway US Post Office to hand cancel and send them! (Midway Address: 2535 Midway Drive, San Diego, CA 92138). Thank you, postal lady, for restoring my faith in government services!

And because I'm so happy, here is my happy happy engagement pic for you:

I'm about to Go Postal

I originally intended to send the wedding invitations out LAST weekend. That was until the Long Beach post office would not hand-cancel them.

For those of you who've never had the pleasure of sending out bulky party invites this is what hand-cancelling is. Canceling is the ink-stamp used by the Post Office to note that a postage-stamp has been used. Typically this is applied by a machine at the Post Office that may be rough on your envelope, but hand stamping prevents this damage.

Basically the wedding invitation is thick and if it goes through the machine, it the invitation is likely to get mangled.

I want them to look like this nice hand canceled sample:



Well anyways, today my Mom took the invitations to the Jamul post office who would not hand cancel them and then to downtown San Diego post office only to find that they won't hand cancel on Mondays (and they will only do 25 invites at a time). Mother effer, I'm going postal!

Each post office has a blah blah blah reason about why they can't/won't do it. And I'm not the only bride to have this problem! Not to be mean, but I think the Postal Service is just lazy. I can't see any other reason why they won't do this. I mean, how long could this possibly take? It would take about 3 seconds an invite, for 100 invites, for a whopping 5 minutes total spent. C'mon Mr. Postman, just hand-cancel my invite, please!

Wedding Invitations

The Wedding invitations are done and ready to be mailed out in a couple of weeks! I assembled them with my Matron of Honor, Laurel and my lifelong friend, Sarah. Thanks girs!

I think the invitations are so pretty and really set the tone for the beachy-chic affair. Take a look...

Invitations

Invitations... apparently they "set the tone" for the entire event. I thought I didn't care very much about what the invites look liked until I walked into DayDreams and saw all of the beautiful colors, styles, and embellishments!

I choose a pocket fold style in matte turquoise, light metallic tangerine, and matte ecru. And the crowning touch... a metallic Starfish. So pretty!

None of these are my invite -- but you get the idea...

Engagement Annoucement

As someone who has never subscribed to a daily (or even weekly) newspaper, I can't help but feel that newspaper Engagement Announcements are antiquated in the digital age. Maybe they are, or maybe I think this because I'm a big city Los Angelino, and if I lived in smaller town I'd think Engagement Announcements were a bigger deal.

Internet Engagement Announcements don't seem to make any more sense, but regardless, I submitted our Engagement Announcement to San Diego Style Weddings (online) and they posted it! http://www.sandiegostyleweddings.com/engagements_2006.asp