for your tears of joy: stds part 4 (one more detail)

One last detail that was a pain in my butt were these home reception tags that I put only on the stds being sent to my side of the family and those local to the Pennsylvania/New Jersey area.


It was one problem after another with these things. I decided to get a circle cutter rather than a circle punch so that I would be able to cut different sized circles with just one tool. Well, if you're thinking about buying the Fiskars circle cutter (because it is the best rated) - don't do it. It has issues (or maybe I'm the one with issues) cutting circles under 2 inches in diameter. No matter how hard I tried, it gave my circles rat tails.



I ended up returning it for the Martha Stewart circle cutter and the Fiskars 2 inch squeeze punch, which is what I ended up using. Even though I told myself that I would return the Martha Stewart cutter if I didn't use it, I kept it anyway. It's a Michael's/craft store curse, I tell you. Anything I ever buy with the intent to return it if it's not used never happens because I tell myself that there will always be another craft project. Luckily, I already have some ideas.


So after purchasing my circle cutters, I made a quick stop at the office supply store to see if they had any circle labels. My original plan was to use the circle cutter to cut a 2 inch circle out of craft paper and then a 1.5 inch circle out of the full page label paper I already have. Circle labels sounded much easier, though. And what do you know? The only size they had was the exact size I needed. I went home, downloaded the template, made my design and pressed print. And this happened.


After fussing with it for an hour or so and wasting a few pages of (expensive) label paper, I decided to just delete the black outline from my design. Not ideal, but doable. Again, no one would notice or care but me.


It all turned out okay in the end. And even though I have more supplies than I know what to do with, I'm sure Michael's hasn't seen the last of me.

Did you accumulate a lot of extra craft supplies during wedding planning?

Read all about our save the dates here:

Part 1 (envelopes)
Part 2 (envelope liners)
Part 3 (handkerchiefs)

for your tears of joy: stds part 3 (the full reveal)

I am so very excited to finally show you our save the dates in all their glory!





These were just a few of my favorites. And, yes, I took a photograph of every single hankie. It eased my separation anxiety. Whatever works, right?

My mom found this one in the parking lot of her doctor's office

I told you all about how I almost freaked out when my dad told me he was going to use a letter opener. Well my possessiveness didn't stop there. I was thisclose to including some sort of instructions with our stds. It would have told guests how to open the envelope, some of the things they could do with the hankie (bring to the wedding for their tears of joy, wear as a pocket square, etc.) and, most importantly, that if they didn't want to keep the hankie to give it back to me instead of throwing it away. AHH, can you even imagine?! The thought of one of these at the bottom of a landfill makes me want to cry. But, I'm a reasonable (and somewhat sane) person and I know that including something like that would have been inexcusably rude. So I didn't. But I thought about it. And now they're out there and I have no more control. The good thing, though, is that we've received some great feedback from a few of our guests!

Did you become possessive of (or obsessed with) any of your wedding projects?

Read all about our save the dates here:

Part 1 (envelopes)
Part 2 (envelope liners)
Part 4 (reception tags)

for your tears of joy: stds part 2

See part 1 here. I think just about everyone should have received their save the dates by this point. Except for my uncle, so I guess that one got lost in the mail somewhere? Anywho. This is the view that most of our guests saw once they opened up their stds:


I say most because, unfortunately, Michael's didn't have enough paper doilies for me to make liners for all 100+ envelopes. Which brings me back to tip #1 - Figure out your entire project before mass producing! If I would have done this, I would have had plenty of time to gather all of my materials and order anything, if necessary.

After casually looking through the scrapbook paper at Michael's and Hobby Lobby early on and not seeing anything that would work as a liner, I resigned myself to not having them. Then inspiration struck in the decoupage aisle the weekend before my "due date" and I found these square paper doilies that fit perfectly in my envelopes! It was fate, I tell you. Not to mention, another thing added on to my list of last-second-things-to-accomplish-before-getting-these-in-the-mail. Luckily they were pretty easy and I got it done the Friday night before while hanging out with my good friends Stacy and Clinton.








These liners really ended up being that extra little something that our stds needed. And, of course, it made me hate sending out the "naked" envelopes - even though I know our guests wouldn't miss what they didn't know anything about. Then, when my dad told me that he almost opened theirs with a letter opener....aaak! I freaked out a tiny, little bit. I need to work on not being such a control freak/perfectionist.

Are you a follower of tip #1 when working on projects? Or do you just create and gather supplies as you go along?

Read all about our save the dates here:

Part 1 (envelopes)
Part 3 (handkerchiefs)
Part 4 (reception tags)

for your tears of joy: stds part 1

Our guests are starting to receive our save the dates!! I'm kind of impressed with the postal service - they were sent out Thursday afternoon and by Saturday they had already reached people in North Carolina, Florida and West Virginia. BUT. Not everyone has theirs yet, so I still can't do a full recap. However, I can start with the envelope since that won't reveal too much (and they aren't much of a surprise anyway due to this post). I'll work my way in from there, once they've all been received.


Our envelopes were Kraft paper, which I purchased from Paper Presentation. As much as I love Paper-Source, I'm not a fan of their Kraft paper and their prices were much higher. The Love sticker was a last second addition once I started sealing the envelopes and realized that some of them wouldn't stay closed. This was even after I started using my super-duper strength glue stick to seal them instead of just a damp sponge. I was worried that some would come open while making their way through the mail, and I already had sticker paper, so it was an easy fix.

This brings me to tip #1: Figure out your ENTIRE suite before you begin mass producing. It will save you time and possible frustration. If I had done this, I would have known far enough in advance that the envelopes didn't seal very well (not because of the actual envelopes, but because our stds were "puffy"). I would have been able to get my extra supplies far enough in advance, as well as the extra design work completed, instead of running around like a crazy person the weekend before I wanted to get them in the mail.

tip #2: Some mistakes are more expensive than others. For our Love labels, I downloaded a 2 inch round label template for the design and printed them on full sticker paper. When I went to cut them out with my 2 inch circle punch I noticed that I wasn't able to get a cut without part of the gray outline showing. So I hopped back on my computer, fixed the problem and printed out 5 copies for our 100 stds. Well, do you know what happens when you're cocky and confident that you fixed the problem and print 5 copies instead of only 1 to test your work? You waste 5 copies (and $$ - label paper is expensive!). So do as I say, not as I do and TEST YOUR WORK. Even if you are absolutely, positively sure that you did everything correctly - TEST YOUR WORK.

Did you learn any useful tips while working on your save the dates and/or invitations?

Read all about our save the dates here:

Part 2 (envelope liners)
Part 3 (handkerchiefs)
Part 4 (reception tags)

the final bm dress colors

I kind of left you all hanging with regard to the final bridesmaid dress decision. What colors did we choose? Well after much deliberation - yes, I fedex overnighted the swatches to my mom in Pennsylvania because I have a hard time making up my own mind without her input - we decided on these beautiful shades of blue:

Powder Blue, Tiffany Blue, Mist, Paradise and Pond
(this photo shows the colors more true to life than the ones shown below, fyi)

MOH Ashley - LulaKate Pearl (as shown) in Powder Blue

MOH Sam - LulaKate Angela (as shown) in Tiffany Blue

BM Emily - LulaKate Pam (with straight skirt) in Mist

BM Katie - LulaKate Gina (with straight skirt) in Paradise, which is the color of the dress she has on

BM Becca - LulaKate Pearl (with box pleat skirt) in Pond

I'm really excited about the choices we made and think the different shades flow nicely together. I can't wait to see what they all look like on the day of the wedding!

Do you ever have a hard time making decisions on your own? Is there one person's input that you rely on more than anyone else's?

mail merge tutorial

Setting Up Your Spreadsheet

This will be the most involved process, for sure. If you're organized/Type A/OCD/anal/(whatever word you deem appropriate here), like me, then chances are you already have a spreadsheet set up for your guest list. Perfect! It will probably only take a few tweaks to be mail merge ready. I'll start from scratch, though, to make things simple.

1. Create a new spreadsheet in your program of choice - we already know that my heart belongs to google docs, but since the majority of people are more comfortable with excel, I'm going to use that. I like to adjust my page setup to landscape and zoom in so I don't have to squint.

(click on any of the photos to see a larger image)

2. Set up your columns - the way you set this up depends on how you want your envelopes to look. For me, I wanted them to be in the following format:

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blow
1234 Main Street
New York, New York
10010

Therefore, my columns were like so:


Title - for Mr. and Mrs. or Miss or Ms. or Dr., etcetera
First
Last
Other - I set this up for those envelopes that had a recipient name on a second line. For instance, two friends who are engaged and living together but not yet married or for children. Write this in exactly as you want it on the envelope.
Address 1 - for the street address
Address 2 - for apartment numbers
City
State - determine whether you want the full name or just an abbreviation
Zip

3. Fill in your data!


Prepping Your Word Document

The next step in this process is creating a mail merge template in Word. Unfortunately, Google Docs doesn't have a mail merge option (boo), so if you created your spreadsheet there you can just download it onto your computer, which we will need later.

1. Open up a new document in Word

2. Adjust your settings - since the default is set to 8.5 x 11, we need to make some adjustments to accommodate an envelope. I'm going to use the measurements for an A7 (5.25 x 7.25) envelope since those seem to be fairly common in the wedding world.

a. Go to "File" and click on "Page Setup"
b. Click the drop down arrow next to "Paper Size" and select "Manage Custom Sizes"



c. Change the name of your custom size by clicking once on the name listed. It should say untitled. If not, click the plus sign to add a custom size.
d. Change the Page Size to 7.25 width and 5.25 height (or whatever size your envelope is)
e. Change the Printer Margins if you need to. I set mine to 0.25 on each side (but you can leave them on the default settings if you want).
f. Click "OK" and then "OK" again.

You should now have a document that looks like this:


3. Adjust your vertical alignment


a. Go to "Format" and click on "Document"
b. Click on "Layout" (at the top)
c. Click the drop down arrow next to "Vertical Alignment" and select "Bottom"
d. Click "OK"

4. Adjust your horizontal alignment


a. Make sure your Toolbox is open
b. Under "Alignment and Spacing" choose "Align Center"

Creating a Mail Merge Template

This next part might get a little tricky.

1. Go to "Tools" and click on "Mail Merge Manager"


2. A new "toolbox" should pop up somewhere. Under "Select Document Type" click on "Create New" and then "Form Letters" (You might notice that there is an "Envelopes" option - don't click on this or your formatting will get screwed up)


3. Under "Select Recipients List" click "Get List" then "Open Data Source"


4. Navigate to your saved Excel spreadsheet and click "Open" (a warning might pop up, just click "OK")


5. If another dialogue box pops up, like the one below, select "Entire Workbook" from the drop down menu and click "OK"


6. You should now see the column titles you created earlier under "Insert Placeholders." Drag these into your document one by one to set up your template, placing spaces and commas where needed


7. Now that you have the basic template, you can customize the font, size, color, etcetera


8. Almost there! Before you actually perform the mail merge, you can first preview to make sure everything is set up correctly. Click the "View Merged Data" button under "Preview Results" and use the red arrows to scroll through your data.


9. Now for some magic. If everything looks good, click on "Merge to New Document" under "Complete Merge"


10. And Voila! All of your envelopes are in one document, ready to print.


Now, if you only have five or ten addresses, it would probably be quicker just to copy and paste or re-type these into Word. For our save the dates, though, I had over 100 envelopes to print so this was definitely a time saver (especially since I already had a spreadsheet)! Also, if you want to do labels instead of printing directly onto the envelopes, you can do that through mail merge too! Just let me know if you want a separate tutorial on that.