Six Months to Go...

With a little bit less than six months to go, most of the bookings are done. We are starting to move on to figuring out the minute details of the big day. It's no secret that wedding planning can be stressful. So to keep this blog true to life, I'll be talking about what I retrospectively call "The Six Months Meltdown."

It all began with the invitations. Since my mom will be coming back from the Philippines in December, she wanted to pick up the printed invitations by the end of November. Around mid-November, I emailed my contact, let's call him KC, with Printed Matter so we can get the ball rolling with the invitation design. As you may recall, D and I had worked on an invitation mock up back in July. I sent a copy of the image to KC along with pertinent information for the big day. We wanted to include a map in our invitations so I sent him a Google map link as well. After all, they're located in the Philippines and are unfamiliar with Richmond. Here are the mock ups I received from KC on November 12:

our mock up


mock ups from Printed Matter

I had thought he would take our design and make his own. Maybe I shouldn't have made that assumption. But at the very least I thought he would make his own map, like I've seen in other samples, instead of doing a screen shot copy and paste! The fonts don't even match! As you can imagine, I was not happy about this. I thought about writing a scathing email, but decided against it. I'm too "nice" to do something like that. Furthermore, I worried he'll botch the job. D and I decided to move on in a positive manner and offer to design our invitations ourselves. Luckily, this option was possible.

Speaking of D, he wasn't impressed with Printed Matter's design either but wasn't as upset or stressed out as I was. Whenever he sees me stressed out, he tells me not to stress out. When this doesn't work, which it doesn't 80% of the time, then he gets stressed out. It is a vicious and ugly cycle. I'm reminded of my co-worker's joking words, "Don't get married! Don't do it!" Anyway, just like with any other issue we may have, we talk through it and work through it. So, worry not; the wedding is still on. At least now, I feel as if I'm more informed having had a small taste of "for better or for worse."

Anyway, back to the invitations and on to the denouement of our lil' story. D and I diligently worked on our invitations. We created two 6"x6" images - one for the main card, another for the map, one 2"x3.5" RSVP card, and one 2"x1.75" seal. We submitted our design to KC, who printed them out. My mom picked them up around the last week of November. She also ordered some additional copies, minus the map card, for some of our relatives in the Philippines to have. A couple of weeks ago, our invitations arrived in Canada as my mom's carry on luggage.

The verdict? They look good! Admittedly my perfectionist side whispers, "Maybe we could've added this or that." Then I think about how a couple of geeks, who do not have a background in graphic design but do have a love for Photoshop and each other, produced a set of invitations. That fact makes everything a-okay :) So, you may be thinking when you get to see these invitations? The answer is: when we finalize the guest list and distribute the invitations. When will that be? Not anytime soon, maybe February.

Finally, I want to take a second to recognize D for his hard work with our invitations. He had a couple of late nights tediously converting the side flower image to a vector image. That way, the image won't pixelate regardless of its size. In addition to that, he helped me convert the image to TIF format, zipped them, and uploaded them to our website for KC to download. He had to do that process multiple times because on more than one occasion, I asked him to shift something by 5 pixels. Yes, I am a control freak. Thank you D <3