Going Underground and Coming Back Out

It's been forever since I posted, and that's because I've been up to my eyeballs in wedding lists and invitation creation. Notice I didn't say invitation selection... I said invitation creation. You see, I had a Martha Stewart moment and decided like many destination wedding brides, I would do a less formal cutesy invitation. I found my idea on my favorite wedding forum ever: The Best Destination Wedding Forum. It has every idea, suggestion or crtitique you could ever ask for if you are a DW bride. It also has a ton of useful information if you are looking for ideas for a traditional wedding or honeymoon. All the DW brides on the forum are all about boarding pass invitations for DW weddings. I saw them and thought they were super-cute. I read that they were easy to make, (liars!) and so I started playing around with templates.

Fast forward a full month... and here I am. We have now created 325 triple-card boarding pass invitations. That's 975 boarding pass shapes that had to be cut out. That's about 15 hours of design, re-design and fretting over the final design. That's 2 runs to Staples for color cardstock printing. That's hours of discussion about whether said BP invites needed to have a little BP jacket to rest within. That's 3 runs to Archivers to buy little paper flowers for spicing up the boarding pass jackets. That's spray-painting those little flowers because they weren't the right color. That's backtracking and wondering if spending more money to order something not as cute online would be worth it. That's worrying over the letter that has to be enclosed with the BP invites that reads like a short novel. That's a few knotted necks, carpal tunnel attacks and foul-language fits. That's countless hours of cutting, pasting, folding, and fussing over these invitations, and... it was worth 100% of the blood, sweat and tears. My mom and one of my good friends were key in getting them done, and now all I have to do is print the envelopes, stuff them, stamp them, and send them off.

I promise to post a photo of them once they go out in the mail, but I do have to say I'm pretty proud of the way they turned out. It's a good sign when the professional printers at Staples think that they're better than anything their company offers. Or when other people having things printed gather around you to ooh and ahh. I've had a few people tell me I should start designing these as a small side business. So I feel pretty confident that my guests will like them... and if not, then they can use them to line their kitty's litter box - no hard feelings. Ok. That's a lie. That would cause some hard feelings, and a lot of bitterness. Yet, what I truly feel bad about is that my mother did so much paper cutting that she no longer has the use of her right hand. But a gnarled claw in a bedazzled sling will look awesome with her mother of the bride dress, don't ya think? Till next time...