Invites (almost) done!

There are times that I really wish my MOH was in town. My MOH is my best friend and she is away doing her masters. Anyways, putting these things together makes me really wish she was here because I just needed the help. I don't have regular girlfriends in my life that I see all the time, that a day putting these together would have been fine. I see my closest girlfriends, once or twice a month, and we have a nice dinner and talk because we have so much to catch up on. Anyways, it would have been nice to have had some help. I guess that's why R has been pitching in so much to finish these:

First thing in the morning, still wearing his pag-bahay, cutting.

First a shot of the expensive decorative paper:

Oh la la.

And la piece de la resistance, a completed set!

And here are the rest of the pieces also:

I also made mailing and address labels for the chocolate envelopes...but I didn't take a picture yet. Anyways, now to put the rest together!

Wandering Minds...New Ideas?

The invitations are taking a little longer to put together. I guess, because there's so many detailed steps:
- print the invitations
- cut the invitations
- round the corners of the invitations, decorative paper and back layer
- print the note card
- cut the note card
- cut the note card back layer
- round the corners of the note and the back layer
- glue the decorative paper to the back layer
- glue the invitation
- glue the note card to its back layer
- print the address labels
- attach to the envelopes
- punch the belly band attachment
- take the band photo
- print the belly band photo
- cut the photo
- cut the ribbon
- create the belly band

Some things that I didn't cross out are half done, but the majority... isn't. I'm home from work today because I had some minor surgery, and had planned to do some of the work, however, I underestimated how much roller adhesive I needed. I bought 1 with 4 refills, and used it all on attaching the decorative paper to the back layer. I did do about 15 complete invitations - attaching the invitation to the decorative and back layer, but I do not have enough roller to do any more. So we will have to wait until Sunday, when I can go visit Michael's, again.


Anyways, without much to do or anyone to discuss the wedding with, I found a website called Best Wedding Destination and have been looking at the forum for DIY ideas, and reading some other people's threads. One of the threads I found talked about centre pieces, and although I had some ideas on what I wanted to do, I'm thinking of something else now.

This is what I was thinking at first:

A mix of white and green flowers, likely something native to the Philippines like the Sampaguita and Dama de Noche.

With the flowers, some interesting wood pieces and candles, to highlight the browns and native crafts.

And this is what I am thinking of adding this large palm center piece:

Or maybe...I can do some tables the large tall centre piece, while others with short? So I guess, because I'm in a place where I can't do much, than my mind is wandering and thinking of some new ideas. Wonder what R will thing?

The begining of my DIY

R and I had our paper date at The Paper Place and I picked up some good paper to do some of our tests on. We decided to do a decorative paper layer after looking at some of the amazing Japanese paper.
Here's what we picked up:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but we picked up two types of 5 x 7 types, a chocolate and a bronze (a metallic paper), we have four different types of decorative paper to try out, and we settled on a cream coloured linen paper. Linen paper has textured lines that go across from it. So we plan to print the invitation on the cream paper, then have two layers under, with the dark brown as the bottom layer.

I also bought a paper punch out that will round the corners of our paper.

I also just had lunch with my friend G, who is also getting married. Man, bride dates are awesome for exchanging ideas! She told me about a place in Markham called Paperland, which has an unfortunately horrible website (which she warned me about), but apparently a good selection and at dirt cheap. So maybe we will go to this other place and find the linen paper and the chocolate paper for cheap, and get the fancy decorative Japanese paper from paper place.

I'm sooo excited. Drooollll... dreaming of DIY.

Inspiration

So building a theme for a wedding is really tiring and difficult to describe in words. I got really lucky as one of my closest friends, former roommate, and to throw in some more goodness 2006-2007 President of the Students Administrative Council at the University of Toronto, and 2007-2008 Ontario Chair for the Canadian Federation of Students, representing over 700,000 students, has volunteered to make my e-vite and paper invitations! I am so happy she volunteered (I didn't even ask her...well, not really), and I know she may not be able to come to the wedding but having her be a part of it, makes me smile inside.

But to describe what I wanted to her was a challenge. I wrote as much as I could, pulled different pictures of sample invitations, colour pallets, Filipinana themed items, pictures of barongs, even tribal tattoos. I hope she's got an idea of what we want now.

I came to the realization, that this is going to be a future endeavor : constantly trying to describe my theme and look. So how else do you mitigate this need? You make an inspiration board!
(I'm sure you didn't see that coming)

Board number one encompasses everything right now. What do you think? Do you have a better idea of where we're going with this now?

While looking for everything I needed to send her, I went through lots of DIY wedding blog sites and have become really excited at that prospects of printing and embellishing invitations on my own. I actually went to visit Michel's to get some ideas of tools and jewels and ribbon. The paper I need isn't there but I did find a super cool paper place in Toronto to go check out. I suggest to everyone to do your invitations yourself. Even if you can't design, you could get something printed flat from a cool site like Wedding Paper Divas and soope it up yourself. They even have a blog to show you how. I'm so excited, I ended up getting things for scrapbooking and got crafty on some pages for Isabela's scrapbook.