Today's find was from my wedding. Whenever I tell people I got married in Las Vegas, they assume it means it was quick and lonely. Not so much. We actually had an awesome wedding surrounded by both Erik's entire family and my entire family, as well as many of our close friends. We kept our guest list small, and we were incredibly lucky to have had 40 people show up to celebrate with us.
The big reason I chose Vegas was because of how low stress and high on fun it'd be. I also knew I could keep it quite inexpensive. We found the perfect place to do it, and we had to actually have very little input on the way that the wedding would work. Aside from a few minor glitches and disappointments, we were so thrilled; we knew these small things were so unsubstantial and insignificant, and really, quite funny looking back.
Something that drove me nuts the entire time of planning was finding the right invitations. As much as I love my friends and family, there was no way I was spending $20 on invitations for each one of them, especially when I thought they all looked tacky, ugly, boring, or like every other wedding invite I had ever seen.
I decided to make my own.
After debating for eons about whether or not to send a "save the date" invite, we decided to go for it simply because we were having a wedding outside of our home states. Plus, we were getting married on a Thursday evening (hello, discount and hello people needing only to take 2 days off work to enjoy a 4-day weekend in Vegas!) so we wanted to give people plenty of time.
Our wedding colors were red and black. Not coincidentally also the colors of playing cards. We added a honey colored yellow, too, to make it less stark and more weddingesque, I suppose.
With the help of one of my bridesmaids, a few hours, and a few trips to local crafteries, I made the perfect save-the-date cards myself. They were small, and we included magnets on the back. The total cost to do it myself was SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than paying for tacky ones.
Since those were so well received, I decided to go ahead and do the actual wedding invitations myself, as well. After a little bit of drama on the paper -- I had chosen a different design but could not acquire enough of the apparently retired style -- I was able to find something that spoke well to what we were all about in this wedding -- fun. Everyone invited received one of these pretty pups except for our wedding party. I don't have any remaining pictures of what theirs looked like, but the background paper was not the same, and it was instead bright blue with cowboys all over. I was moving to Texas and all.
It's funny now that a lot more of my friends have been getting married or have been planning weddings. I continue to tell them that it's truly not worth going into debt over nor is it worth choosing to do something stressful. My wedding was incredible because I spent so little time worrying about it or planning out how it could be perfect. We didn't even have a place for dinner figured out until a couple of weeks beforehand, and we told all of our guests about it about a week before they left. Everyone had the opportunity to go, have a mini vacation, and only had two commitments to attend. Sure, we did a lot of other things but none of it was scheduled; my bridesmaids and I were swimming in the hotel pool just a couple hours before the ceremony and honestly, who cared that I didn't spend hours on my makeup or hair? No one would remember that anyway.
I often think about how I'd love to go into business making invitations. There's an abundance of ugly and expensive out there when there really needn't be. I think I'm an exception, though. I think most people have a dream and an image and they can buy it. Me? My memories are in the fact I got to do it ALL myself and make it entirely my own. I hope some day someone wants me to help them do it, too.
(I assure you my invites were not this crooked. This is thanks to the marvels of technology and my desire to scan and edit photos quickly rather than accurately).
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