my arch-nemesis

these wedding invitations have become my arch-nemesis.
honestly, when you finally get yours in the mail please humor me by not throwing it out right away. maybe, if you really like me, you could possibly even laminate it in order to commemorate all my hard work. thank you in advance...

if you have been reading regularly you know that making these wedding invitations have not been my favorite aspect of wedding planning. after debating too long on whether or not to make them (apparently it takes months to get wedding invitations done - months that i no longer have) i was stuck with having to make them. originally i was definitely leaning towards making them but as the date became closer i started getting second thoughts until i had no other choice. so, now i am making them. at the time i figured, "i like crafts - how hard could it be?". apparently, way too hard.

i was actually really excited about making them after i bought some of those premade invitation kits from bridal magazines brides line in purple and ivory from michaels. they seemed perfect. all you have to do is print onto the precut cards the wording of your choice. i also really liked the fact that we can get matching thank you cards, place setting cards and programs if we wanted. i figured that i would be smart and take them to be printed professionally so they look absolutely perfect. turns was not a "smart idea" - instead, i wasted a good week trying to find a company that would print them for me. i visited / phoned over 15 companies and they all told me the same thing : "sorry, we are unable to print on any stationary that was not purchased from our location as it voids the warranty on our printers" (obviously i have heard that line a lot considering i now know it off by heart). so, apparently they are not going to look absolutely perfect and i am going to have to print them all out, individually, myself. obviously, i am not excited about this. the thing is, i bought 60 wedding invitations since i only need to send out 58. when i bought the invitations i had assumed that i would be getting them professionally printed so i didn't think the fact that i only had 2 extra would be a big deal. now that i have to print them myself only 2 "oopsie" invites is starting to reallllly make me nervous...

and, to top it all off, canada post has decided to go on strike as of thursday. so, worst case senario i will be FedExing everyone their invitations individually. how wonderful.

on a positive note, i have successfully ordered all my bridesmaids dresses. i went in last thursday with my last two bridesmaids to check out styles and thankfully, all of the girls agreed on the same dress: a strapless chiffon dress in amethyst, my favorite colour. i was a little frazzled when the lady at the bridal shop informed me that i only had one more week to place my order before it was considered a "rush order" - an order that costs an additional $25-50 dollars a dress. so, this weekend i got all my girls in to be measured and the dresses are officially ordered. just one more thing i can cross off my long "to-do list".

my new "rush order" status got me a little freaked out. i figured that four months was plenty of time to do the rest of my planning but i was wrong. apparently, four months is four seconds in wedding world so on friday night i decided that we needed to figure out jesse's attire as well as his groomsmen. jesse really wants to wear a grey suit while his groomsmen wear black. and just our luck, although they have tons of black tuxedo's to rent it is basically impossible to rent suits, especially grey ones. at first we figured that suits would be the best option since most 23-25 year old men own one. obviously, if you are in a trade, like jesse, you wouldn't, but all his groomsmen have jobs you would need a suit for. turns out that three out of his five groomsmen do not own a suit. i was beginning to panic. i really did not want the guys to be wearing tuxedos since a) it seemed like too formal attire for the ranche house and b) rentals seemed like a massive waste of money, but we also didn't want to make his groomsmen spent $300 - $400 on a suit simply for our wedding. thankfully, we found out about a buy-one-get-one-free sale that moore's is having in the next few weeks. this seemed to be the best option since the guys would be able to get a suit for $150-200 dollars instead of having to rent one for $150-180. hopefully, this will all work out but i will have to keep you posted....