Stinkerpants

DIY Calligraphy and Stamp Disasters!

June 1, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects • Stationery

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Hi everybody! Today is a momentous day! Our invitations are finally going out!! Although I don’t want to post them here until our guests have received them (think end of this week), I thought I’d share the DIY pseudo-calligraphy I did (some of you seemed interested) and our adventures with stamps. Now, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone actually notices either of these two things, but we brides certainly do. So here we go.

First off, the calligraphy. I decided I wanted to get all fancy-pants, so I got a calligraphy pen and decided to try my hand at calligraphy. What did I discover? I suck at it. I can’t make all the little swirls and swooshes look good. Instead, I look like I am trying to be pretentious. So instead of addressing the envelopes using fancy calligraphy, I did two things: First, I just used the calligraphy pen with my regular handwriting. Then I added the one fancy pants calligraphy thing I really like, which is the spacing-out-of-the-zip-code (more on this in a moment).

Here is one of my envelopes:

Not all of my envelopes look like this, however. As some of you know, I like to be a Prepared Puff. I like to get things done as far ahead of time as possible, so as to reduce time-crunch induced stress. Thus, I have been addressing envelopes for a couple of months now. One of my earlier envelopes does not have the spaced-out zip code:

And one more…

How many of you have this issue? We have a couple that will be married in one month–after we send out our invitations, but before our wedding. So how does one address their envelope? I decided to address it to “the future Mr. and Mrs.”

As you may notice, I addressed this envelope to Mrs. Rachel and Mr. Nick Lastname. This was a decision I made long before I started addressing envelopes. I am totally opposed to the idea of the woman disappearing into her husband (ie, Mr. and Mrs. Nick Lastname), so this is what I came up with. Sometimes I put the woman’s name first, sometimes I put her name last. I totally don’t care how many etiquette rules I broke! 

Okay, now moving on to the Stamp Issues. Well, they’re actually Post Office Issues, not just stamp issues. In order to keep our postage at 59 cents, I have redesigned our invitations THREE TIMES. I know every regulation like the back of my hand, and the postage situation really stresses me out because every time I go to the post office, I am told something different. Now, onto my long-ass story.

Our post office makes me miserable. I dread going there. It always takes at least a half an hour to get through the line, and once you get to the front, you are either faced with Lady Who Hates Life or Guy Who Doesn’t Mail Anything The Right Way. Lucky for me, the past three times I have gotten Lady Who Hates Life, who clearly hates weddings and wants me to have to mail all of my invitations parcel post.

Last week I went in to have them weigh the final invitation with the letterpress. Lady Who Hates Life set my invitation on the scale. I see that it weighs just under two ounces (thus, 59 cents). She looks at me and says, “why did you write the zip code like that?” I replied, “It’s calligraphy, they write it like that.” She tells me that the machines will not be able to read the envelope with a zip code like that, and I can’t mail it. I know that she is full of it–every time I go in there, she tells me something different which would require me to re-do all of my invitations.

Inevitably I go to USPS.com and find out that she is wrong. However, I also know that she is wrong about the zip code because I just received an invitation written like that (and don’t worry, I already tested it and the envelope got to its destination just fine). So I again ask her how much it will cost to mail my envelope, and she says, “$1.59.” There is absolutely no way that this envelope needs to be mailed parcel post, which is the price she was quoting me (I could see it on the screen). I asked her why it needed to be mailed parcel post, and she said, “because it’s too thick.” I made her put it through their little plastic slot thing that determines how thick is too thick, and despite her trying to hold it every which way to keep it from falling directly through the slot, it fell straight through. I asked her again how much it would cost to mail it, and she reluctantly said, “59 cents.” Then she gave me a look of death.

Her look of death haunted me. I was nervous about mailing them. What if she somehow was right? So I decided to get a second opinion. While I was visiting my parents in Oregon, I went to their local mail depot (not actually a post office). The two people there spent 15 minutes deliberating and ended up telling me they would be 96 cents each. I totally knew that was wrong, because their explanation made no logical sense, but Momma Puff bought the $1 stamps anyway. We drove by a real post office on the way to our next destination, and I made Momma Puff stop. This time, we got a very well-informed, nice postal worker who explained exactly why my invitations would cost only 59 cents to mail. However, we had all of these $1 stamps, and for some reason she wouldn’t return them.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with postage that looks like this:

It’s not pretty, it’s not custom, and it cost $35 more for all of our postage than it should have. But you know what? I’m over it. I’m too sick of stamps to try to return them to the post office and get the right amount, and I’m convinced no one notices stamps anyway.

The one thing that does still bother me (I have to admit it) is the fact that we went to three different post offices and got three different answers. I do not understand how something like this can be so subjective! Shouldn’t it be easier than this?!

I wish I had some sort of solution for you guys. My only suggestion would be this: go to as many postal employees as it takes until you get the answer you want to hear (provided you actually know the regulations and know that you’re right). 

Mini Menus

May 31, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of a conundrum: I couldn’t figure out whether or not to have menus. After reading everyone’s comments, I decided that I would do menus, but only if it were as simple as humanly possible, didn’t stress me out, and didn’t disrupt my very simple looking place setting. Here’s what I came up with:

You might be wondering where the circle of dots come from. I promise that I didn’t just throw them in there for the heck of it–these match our invitations, which you will be seeing in a couple of weeks.

Now, you can’t tell from these pictures how small these little guys are. They’re pretty small. I made them so that they will fit directly underneath the favor box, so as not to obstruct the table setting:

And the view from the top:

Waalaa! Totally simple, effective, and it didn’t even take me one episode of Law & Order! Works for me. :) I’m feeling pretty good about our wedding plans, right now. I am almost completely done with my DIY list. Here’s what’s left:

Memory Boxes
–print our family’s photos, get trinkets
Table Indicators
–Figure out how many more drawings I really need
–Design more drawings
–Make more sandwich boards (on BeeTV!)
–Write blurbs for under drawings
–Print out and attach to sandwich boards
Guestbook
–design, get supplies, assemble
Rehearsal Dinner Invites
–Design and have printed
Invitations, Out by June 2nd
–Customized stamp on invitation
–put whole thing together and put in envelopes

Not too bad!! I’m not feeling stressed about any of it.

The Photo Album, revealed

May 28, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Celebrating Memories • DIY Projects

I didn’t think anything could possibly take away from the excitement of finally getting my letterpressed invitations back from the printer.

And, just to show how proud I am of my sealed invites, my stack:

You guys will get to see the full invite after my guests start to receive them!

I unshot myself!

May 22, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Remember how I wanted to do little memory boxes on the tables, but Mr. Cream Puff and Momma Cream Puff shot me down? Well, I have decided to ignore them. This is a great freaking idea, and I am going to do it anyway. Instead of putting them on the tables, though, we’re going to put them on the standing cocktail tables–and we’re only doing three of them. They will all have different pictures & trinkets inside. Awhile back, I took some cigar boxes and covered them in colored paper. I’m not 100% sold on them–there are some bubbles in the paper, and it doesn’t really look all that perfect, but I think I’ll probably just let that go and stick with what I’ve got (unless, of course, they end up looking tacky on the colored cocktail table linens we may end up with–then I’ll just get plain wooden boxes and not decorate them). The only people who will probably notice the bubbles in the paper, though, are my buddies at Paper Source!

And here’s one of them, opened:

Once I showed Mr. Cream Puff the final product, he agreed it was a good idea. I definitely think that it’s better to have only three boxes, rather than one on each table.

So far I only have pictures from Mr. Cream Puff’s family. I’m going up to see my parents for a week this weekend, so I’ll be getting our family photos then. I also plan to get a few trinkets from childhood to put in there, too, just to make it more interesting. Also, just a note: these aren’t our original family photos–I made color copies onto photo paper on our printer-scanner-copier. They turned out really well!

Bar Menus and Signature Cocktails

May 21, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects • Drawings • Reception • Stationery

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

From the beginning, I’ve thought about making signature cocktails for our wedding. This is a pretty trendy thing right now, but for good reason: it’s fun and it saves money, because you can serve hard alcohol, but you don’t have to have an entire open bar.

I was first inspired by bar menus I found various knot bios. They all seemed to be variants of the same thing: “Something Old” (gin and tonic), “Something New” (crantini), “Something Borrowed” (something from the couple’s past), “Something Blue” (Electric Lemonade). I knew I wanted to do something different, so Mr. Cream Puff and I had a brainstorming session. We toyed around with giving them a San Francisco theme (“San Francisco Bay Breeze”), but in the end decided to name all of the drinks after our pets, who aren’t included in the wedding in any other way. Here is my completed bar menu, which is being printed as we speak through Vista Print as oversized postcards:

I am super excited about these. My parents both think they are cheesy and cutesy, but I totally don’t care, and neither does Mr. Cream Puff. We think they’re cute. So what if we’re a little bit obsessed with our kids? We can’t help it: they are wonderful.

As for how we decided on our signature cocktails? The three cocktails are the Lemon Drop, the Vodka Martini and the Appletini. Originally I wanted very brightly colored signature cocktails, to go with our colorful wedding. Then we started thinking about the cost of brightly colored drinks (which usually have added liqueurs to create the color) and decided to go a different direction. All three of these cocktails have a vodka base and very few added ingredients. This minimizes the amount of alcohol we have to buy and simplifies what the bartender has to do. If you’re searching for cocktail recipes, check out Web Tender and Cocktail Times. These websites both allow you to search by type of alcohol.

So we had three cocktails and five pets. What to do? Well, we knew we’d be serving Fat Tire, and somehow connecting that to Yorkey’s 20lb cat was a no-brainer. All that was left was little Elvis Purrsley. We thought about adding an alcoholic drink named for Elvis Presley, but then I realized it would be cuter to give him a kids’ drink. Thus, the Roy Rogers (which is basically the boy version of the Shirley Temple).

For those of you who don’t have pets or agree with my parents on this one, here are a couple of different menus I’ve found in various places:

This one (this is my favorite design), from knottie h.lo:

Here’s one from knottie k-haus:

And this one, from knottie pixelvixen: