It is less than a year to our wedding now and we have started making some progress.
Invitations
After the lovely job Bridesign did for us on the Engagement party invites we used them again for our Save the Dates. Saving multiple versions of Save the Dates, Chris and I realized the acronym might not be entirely appropriate for the event ;)
I did electronic engagement party invites as I wanted to keep it low key but definitely want printed for the rest. I realize now, 5 days before I want to give them out, I may have left the printing a little late. I want them to be postcard sized with magnets at the back so they can be put onto the fridge and our loved up faces will stare at the guest for the next 11.5 months.
For the printing I am using Minute Man Press in Fourways, for the magnetic strip to apply to the back of the card I have used Scrap-a-Doodles online store that uses Fastway couriers to deliver overnight and I am currently panicked about finding suitable envelopes, hopefully PNA will have.
With the handing out of invitations it is time for the part every betrothed couple dreads, the awkward conversations......
Awkward Conversations
I must warn you, these conversations will happen at any minute and they range for a variety of topics. The two major ones are
1) Who is and who isn't part of your bridal party. Some people are very polite about this and even seem surprised when you ask them, others have already written their speech and you have to decide to either politely turn them down or include them anyway to stop a fight.
2) Who is and isn't attending. With a guest list of 60-70 people we have had to be very strict on who we are inviting. This has been narrowed down to immediate family and close friends. We have even reserved giving engagement party invites to guests we are just 60-70% sure we want attending as you can't not follow this with a wedding invite and can also choose to extend a wedding invite to guests that weren't at the engagement party. The awkardness around this topic can arise at any time. In a work meeting when a colleague assumes they are attending, around the fire when a close friends friends assume they are invited by proxy and on social media where people believe knowing your are getting married is an invite.
There is no magic way to tackle these conversations, they are always going to be uncomfortable and sometimes you need to bring out the big guns (thank goodness for mums :) )
Websites
With the plethora of wedding websites it was quite hard to know which one to go with. We went with www.theknot.com. This website has great themes, is free and really guides you in what to put up. The downside is it is American and keeps telling me none of my zipcodes are accurate.
That said it is a great way for your guests to interact with you before the wedding and makes the actual invitation a bit easier as you don't need to try and fit every piece of information in. For the non-technologically-enable guests a brief phone call will work wonders, thanks to mum again for this :)
The pictures of you and little blurbs about your bridal party and venue create some excitement before the big day, at least for the bride.....
With the year wrapping up and our engagement party on Saturday we aren't planning to tackle much more this year but I'm sure I will still have some stories to tell.
Lots of love
The Maczar bride
