Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

The invitations are complete and all have been mailed out! Soon the RSVP cards will come rolling in. With only 78 days left until the wedding, crunch time is finally upon us.

When deciding on invitations, Zac and I looked through a bunch of different pictures online on different invitation websites, but didn't really find anything that we liked. It seemed silly to spend a bunch of money on something we weren't excited about. In the end we decided just to make our own. We ordered some pocketfold invitations and envelopes from Cards and Pockets (read all about that here), and I got to work on designing the invitations, RSVP cards, and maps.

I'm no graphic expert and don't have extensive computer experience, so I used Microsoft Word to complete the task. (I did the same thing when I designed our save the dates.)

I took my time, and over the course of a few weeks I came up with something that I thought went really well with the vibe of our wedding. I ended up using 5 different fonts, three colors, a few heart shapes, and some lines and dashes. I made the invitation less formal by not using our last names and using a design that had a more casual, less traditional flow.

The next step was to create the matching RSVP cards. I incorporated the same fonts and colors that I used on the invitation. The important pieces of information that I needed to make sure appeared on the RSVP cards included:

- The date in which guests would need to RSVP by.

- The fact that our wedding is an adult only occasion. (Just in case guests did not read our blog post about plus ones and children.)

- A place for guests to include their name.

- The number of seats that we were allowing/reserving for each party.

- A place for guests to let us know how many of the reserved seats they would be needing.

- The address to our wedding website.

- And of course the most important detail, a place for guests to let us know whether or not they would be able to attend.

It took a little bit of manuevering but I finally figured out how to get the information squeezed onto the 3X4 cards without looking too crowded or jumbled.

I started to assemble the invitations and loved the way that they looked all together. I posted a picture of the RSVP card and the completed look (pictured below) on Pinterest, and the response was pretty nice. I had 8 people email me to ask if I could send them the template I used so that they could modify it for their own weddings. It was really flattering!

The next order of business was to create inserts with a map and directions to the venue. Though a lot of our guests live in the area, not everyone has been to Wolf Lakes Park, and we would hate for anyone to get lost or arrive late because we neglected to help them out with directions. Wolf Lakes was nice enough to include a map as well as a list of multiple routes in our package of information when we booked out date. This information made the task a lot easier on me. I created a sheet of inserts for each invitation.

One sheet for each invitation resulted in quite a stack of paper. It took me a little while until I was ready to sit down and tackle the task of cutting each of them to size for the nearly 100 invitations we were sending out.

Finally all was finished and the invitations were ready to be sealed, stamped, and addressed.

Since our envelopes were a dark, slate grey color, I realized that using a regular black or blue ink pen wasn't going to work. I picked up two white gel pens at Micheal's Craft Store for only $3. It was a good thing that I bought more than one. The first pen ran out of ink at around invitation #70. Between addressing the invitations and RSVP card return envelopes I think the first pen made it pretty far. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I spent Valentine's Day evening, sealing and stamping all of the invitations (94 in total!). [For a little bit I felt a little like Susan on Seinfeld!]

Now that the invitation business is complete, it's time to move on to other projects! This weekend is going to be a fun one. Amy's baby shower is tomorrow, and our little nephew, Grayson is having a Dr. Seuss themed first birthday on Sunday. I can't wait to share the details!

Post Valentine's Day Wrap Up

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day yesterday!

Zac and I decided to spend a casual afternoon together. Since we have less than 80 days left until the wedding (so exciting!!!) and with so much left to do it would be really silly to spend a bunch of money on expensive gifts, a fancy dinner, etc. Zac and I both work in restaurants so we normally work on this holiday. I was lucky enough to get the day off this year but Zac had a closing shift in the evening. Working in restaurants we know that its better to stay away from the craziness and we typically eat at home on Valentine's day, but yesterday we decided to get some lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant before getting some fun wedding related things done. At lunch Zac gave me this adorable card:

The next stop on our Valentine's Day afternoon plan was to Rogers Jewelry to pick out Zac's wedding band. While Zac tried on rings his smile got bigger and bigger. In the whole 6.5 years we've been together I've never seen Zac wear a ring. There were a couple that looked good on him but in the end we chose this one:

Zac loves it and is excited to wear it. As soon as we got in the car to leave Rogers, he opened the box and put the ring on. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that it wasn't fair that I've been able to wear my engagement ring for over a year now and he hasn't been able to show off a ring of his own. We decided that Valentine's day was his day to wear his ring. He took it off before he went to work but as soon as he got home at 10:30 pm he put it right back on because he still had 1.5 hours until the day was over. I thought it was the cutest thing ever. 

From Rogers Jewelry we headed to the post office. Our invitations are completely done (I'll be sharing the details later) and all they need are stamps to be sent out. We needed stamps for the RSVP card envelopes and we took a sample invitation with us to be weighed so that we knew what the postage would be to send the invitations out as well. The lady at the post office was very nice. After getting us a coil of stamps for the RSVP envelopes, she brought over a few selections of $0.65 stamps for us to choose from for the invitations. In the end we decided on a butterfly print. (It was much better than the cartoon dogs option.)

By the time we were done with the post office, Zac and I had just enough time to snuggle and watch a movie before he had to go to work. When Zac left, I got to work on our wedding invitations. It took me an hour and a half to stamp each rsvp card, stuff the invitations, and stamp and seal each envelope. I felt quite accomplished when it was all over.

It's exciting to see all of those invitations ready to be mailed out. It means that our wedding day is getting closer and what could be more exciting than that?! Pretty soon the RSVP cards will be coming in! I love getting mail, and hearing back from our guests will be the best mail, ever!

To celebrate my accomplishment, I snuggled on the couch with my little Valentine, Jim, had a fire roaring in the fireplace, enjoyed a glass of champagne, and caught up on The Bachelor.

It was a fantastic Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day - Love, Jim

Happy Valentines's Day!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day today! Zac and I are going to be spending the afternoon together, looking at rings for the mister, getting lunch, and sending out our wedding invitations. :)

We aren't the only ones celebrating this lovey dovey holiday. Our own Mr. Jim has sent out a few Valentine's Day cards to some of his puppy friends (all ladies of course). He thinks he's quite the ladies' man. Here is one of his girls, Molly Monroe.

Isn't she quite the cutie? Jim thought so, too. He sent her this little card to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day.

Oh puppy love!

Thank You Luke And Leena!

Over the years we've met some great people through work and school and now Zac and I are pretty blessed to have a group of amazing friends. Now that we're a little older we have some fantastic couples to hang out with, too. One of these couples is Luke and Leena. Here they are with their first, goreous, little baby, Layla.

In case you didn't get enough cuteness with the picture above, here's another shot of Layla. I just can't get enough of her!

Zac and I have had the pleasure of having dinner dates with Leena and Luke on a few occasions. Leena is quite the hostess, who makes delicious meals. Zac and I always have a good time with those two.

Early last month, Leena was excited to tell me that the wedding gift she and Luke had ordered for Zac and I had arrived early. She was too anxious to wait another four months to give it to us, so the couple invited us over for dinner and dessert.

After a lovely dinner, Leena brought this adorable brownie dessert with a sweet icing message:

Not only was the dessert thoughtful, it was yummy, too.

Zac and I were blown away with the gift that we unwrapped that night. The first surprise was a set of luggage tags. Having just booked our honeymoon (which I'll tell you all about later) we couldn't have been more excited to see those little tags. I can't waitto use them!

Then came the big surprise, which literally left me speechless for a little bit. We tore away the wrapping paper (with a little help from baby Layla) to reveal a six bottle wine refrigerator!

I am in love! It's an amazing addition to our household appliances. We put it right next to Zac's kegerator on our bar counter. It was such an amazing gift, and Zac and I can't thank Luke and Leena enough!

We love you guys!

1 Year Anniversary

January 14th was the one year anniversary of the day that Zac proposed. I can't believe that a year has gone by so quickly. Zac and I definitely wanted to celebrate the occasion, so we headed out for a champagne breakfast that morning before I had to go to work.

While I was at work, Zac and I texted one another and discussed what we thought we should do to celebrate. We decided that it would only be fitting to get P.F. Changs takeout and have a candle lit dinner like we had done that same day just one year earlier.

After I got off work, I came home and had a chance to relax. Zac told me to hang out in our room because he was preparing a surprise downstairs and he didn't want me to see it just yet. After a while we headed out to pick up dinner and dessert.

When we got home, Zac had me wait in the car for a few minutes so he could finish setting up the surprise. When I was finally allowed to come into the house, I was greeted by candles and a beautifully set dining room table.

As beautiful as the table was, I had no idea that it wasn't the real surprise. In reality it turned out to be a decoy dinner table. Zac started to get the food plated and as we were about to sit down to dinner we headed into the garage instead. There in the same place that Zac got down on one knee was a table set for two. The floor of the garage was covered in white balloons and there were candles everywhere.

Zac had soft music playing in the background and the room was decorated with our wedding colors. It was the sweetest thing!

It was the most perfect way to spend our proposal anniversary together.

Blogging Hiatus Over

A BIG apology to all of my readers out there (if I even still have any left!). I'm sure you've all noticed that I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus and I am happy to announce that it is finally over. During the holiday season I decided to let blogging and wedding projects take a backseat so that I could enjoy the time with my family.

At the beginning of the new year it was time to start getting into gear, get projects done, and start blogging again. Unfortunately my computer didn't agree with me. My laptop is a little older and my hard drive was giving me some serious problems. Thankfully, my older brother Michael is a genius when it comes to computers and he was able to fix the problem. Now that I have my computer back, it's time to catch up with all of you readers!

Look forward to a bunch of new posts coming in the next few weeks. There are a lot of things coming up that I can't wait to share!