@%#$#%@!!! (Or, Our DIY Invites)

As with many of our wedding decisions, the invites were easy to decide on. Obviously we were on a tight budget, so we figured we would do them ourselves. We did hit up a few bridal show vendors and also one invite store, but nothing just struck us me. I mean I really like pocket folds but with a printer, so not in our budget, at all. I'm also a big fan of simple, which didn't seem to be options in any of the 10-15 invitation books we saw. So like with many things we decided to go the DIY route. Again, that was easy peasy, I walked into Michael's and BAM, we found an invitation kit that was perfect. The BRIDES line at Michael's has some pretty great selections including our own invites:

(Source)

Pretty right? Seems pretty simple, the include a website to download the printing templates, so we figured it was an easy job. Right? Right. Wrong. So, so, so, sooooooo freaking wrong. We decided to play with these last week because the invites need to be assembled and sent out soon. In order to save us from screwing up the actual invites, I cut out card stock of the same size. It was a really good idea, because we screwed them up. Well, once we got them to actually print we screwed them up. My printer did not like this project. It took us over 3 hours to figure out how to make the stupid things actually come out of the printer with ink on them. Once we did, everything was off center. It was awful. I wanted to cry. I think I did. I know there was a lot of cursing, from both Mr. Tal and myself. We figured it out eventually and saved, saved, saved everything so that when this week came we could just pop open the templates and print them. Ha. Not so much.

We decided to start assembling last night just to get it out of the way, we were so confident that Mr. Tal suggested I do the invites while he cleaned. Hahaha. Within 5 minutes, I was ready to slam my computer into the wall. Nothing saved, we had to re-calibrate everything. After an hour and a half we figured it out and were on track. But take this as a lesson, once you figure out how to print your invitations, just do it and put them in a box until you are ready to assemble. It will save you a headache and some time. Without further ado, (cue drum roll) here are our invites:

They turned out really great, regardless of what a pain in the butt they were. Would I do my own invites again? In a heartbeat. Even though it was a pain we got to pick exactly what we wanted, at a price that cannot be beat, less than a dollar per invite. I'm really excited (but also kind of sad) to be mailing these puppies out soon. Yikes it's coming up quick.

Anyway, tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.