Stationery / stationary

Okay, so the last post I wrote was well over a month ago. And what have I been up to during that time? Why did I neglect this blog yet again? *slaps wrist and looks dolefully at the floor*

Well, work got in the way as ever (and still is, grrr), so when I get a spare moment at home it's difficult to feel like writing when you just want to curl up on the sofa and watch episodes of Fringe. Plus the evil imp of indecision has been plaguing my mind yet again, and as a result it feels like progress has ground to a halt.

The wedding stationery is the best example I can give. Thanks to the job I do, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to design our invitations. I'm not a designer as such, though, so it doesn't come effortlessly to me. But I think I have a decent eye for good design, and I know my way around InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

That said, I rushed the first draft of our invites, more focused on the excitement of seeing the words in print than actually trying to craft a particular style. After that, the idea of our 1960s/Mad Men theme really took shape, and I realised that the invites didn't really reflect that very well.

(Not that anyone who gets these invitations will actually notice or care, of course! I'm realistic about that. At best, my closest family and friends may appreciate what I'm trying to do, which is good enough for me.)

So, after the nice-but-unimaginative first attempt, version two took the vaguely 1960s-style fonts I'd selected in v1 and added some proper styling and structure. They were a lot better, and were very nearly the final version. I took some inspiration, structure-wise, from this elegant design:

That was until, Googling for inspiration, I saw some gorgeous 1950s/1960s wedding stationery that played around with curvy frames and polka dots, really hammering home the era. (Though I preferred my fonts and layout.)

So version 3 began, in which I took the layout and typfaces of v2 but added a cute frame that I made and, yep, polka dots.

You'd think that would be enough. But noooooo.... Pesky interweb. You see, I'd been looking online for some inspiration for RSVP wording (something more quirky than 'Accepts with pleasure / Declines with regret') and came across a beautifully designed example. The rest of the invite wasn't right for us, but this one part seemed quite 1960s, but in a really cool, Mod style.

And so version 4 was born, sort of. I got as far as designing our RSVP in a similar-ish style before I realised that it totally clashed with what I'd done for v3 - so bad that there's no point even trying to merge the styles into a brand new version 5. They're just too different.

So now I'm stuck. Do I:

1. revert back to the stylish-but-kinda-plain version 2;
2. go for Kath-Kidson-cutsey version 3; or 
3. try to make all our stationery in the cool/Mod-style of version 4? 

Of course, it might help if I could decide which one I actually like best, but that imp of indecision keeps making me change my mind! And as long as that goes on, it feels like I'm getting nowhere.

I'll round this off with a saying (that I don't really agree with): "Good designers borrow. Great designers steal." In my situation, I'd add: "Pseudo designers should probably pay someone else to do it..."

P.S. The examples above are all from proper wedding stationery designers, so to give them their due credit, here are links to their websites: square, elegant invite • polka dot design • cool RSVP

Attack of the wedding zombies

Like the after-effects of a zombie bite, wedding planning has a horrible habit of taking over your brain.

There's always something to think about, to research, to decide on, to weigh up the costs of, and to wonder if it goes with the four hundred other things you're pondering.

I imagine this might be a particular feature of the stage of planning we're at right now, which is that the main things are ordered, booked or bought – namely venues, car, dresses and centrepieces.

But all the lovely little details that can occupy the mind – such as stationery, room decorations, jewellery, accessories – have yet to be sorted. And there is so much lovely stuff out there! My Pinterest boards are filling up and I seem to be no closer to deciding on anything.

Sometimes I wish we hadn't given ourselves a full year to plan this thing. I imagine there must be a certain liberation in a short engagement, where (money allowing) you can just make decisions, get stuff bought, and get married.

But, to be honest, I'm glad we didn't do that. Despite the current brain takeover situation, I've enjoyed having the time to really figure out what kind of style I want for the day. I say 'I' again, even though H2B has started to show a bit more interest at last. But that's mainly about practical things – he's really not arsed about the little details, which suits me fine actually!

That said, I did reach an overload point last month. It coincided with falling off the dieting wagon and a bit of relationship crap that needed sorting, and overall it left me feeling decidedly 'Meh...' about the whole planning thing. Hence the gap in blog entries.

Thankfully, H2B and I sorted out our issues, and things are better than ever. I've made a shaky start back on the dieting journey (one stone down, two to go), and yes that wedding zombie mode is back.

But this time around I'm actually glad of it. This is (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I don't want to rush it.

I keep reading, whether in forums or blogs, about the post-wedding blues some brides get after the big day is over. I hope that's not the case for me, and married life is more than enough to put a smile on my face.

But either way I'm going to savour this. I'm planning the biggest and best party I could imagine for me and my mister, and I plan to enjoy every minute leading up to it, during and afterwards.

So bring on the Pinterest boards, the wedding blogs, the bridal forums and the countless Google searches. I only get to do this once, so I may as well make the most of it!

When in doubt...

I'm torn.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I consider myself as having pretty simple tastes. So my* choices for this wedding (now just under nine months away, eek!) have so far steered clear of fussy, frou-frou details.

*By the way, I'm giving up on 'we' unless it's actual reality. It's our wedding, we're getting married etc, but I am most definitely making the vast majority of decisions for the day. I'm realising that this is pretty typical, though I do wish my H2B would occasionally get even a teeny bit enthused about the likes of stationery and favours! But that's another blog post...

Going for the simple option has often also been dictated by our budget, which isn't tiny, but is less than half of the so-called national average.

For example, the first thing we bought for the wedding were some lovely glass pillar candle holders for the table centrepieces (in the Sainsbury's sale at £4 each – and I think they look a lot more expensive than that). From the beginning, I didn't want flowers: as soon as I totted up a realistic wedding budget, I didn't see the point of spending a chunk of it on something that would end up dead and thrown in a bin.

Lotus flower pillar candle holder (Sainsbury's)

So for each table, we will have this glass holder with an Ikea pillar candle (£1.50), popped on a mirror plate (£3.50) along with a few simple Ikea glass tea lights (£1). And I can sell a lot of it on eBay afterwards and make some money back.

That's just one example of many instances where we've opted for something less showy that also keeps costs down. No towering vases stuffed with exotic blooms and succulents for us...

However, as I said before I have become a little obsessed with looking at other wedding pics. And not just the perfect-world ones that appear on ruffledblog and stylemepretty. No, I'm also obsessing about real weddings now.

Last week, an old friend from school whom I've not seen in almost 20 years posted some pics from her wedding on Facebook, and I was immediately scouring them for every last detail: dress, bridesmaids' outfits, men's suits, car, church decorations and so on - purely to see whether our wedding choices are, well, better!

And, even worse, another friend from my home town - who I do actually keep in touch with - is getting married later this month, and there's a rather large part of my brain that is feverishly wondering what she will have as her centerpieces, if they're having favours, whether her dress will look ten times as expensive as mine, and - oh please no - have they booked a photobooth like we have?

But why do I care? All this is doing is making me second-guess all my/our decisions. Like those glass candle holders, which up until this week seemed like the perfect choice. But I'm now starting to fear that they will look small and ineffectual and like we haven't made an effort. I've been fretting over whether I went just a step too far in being practical, and maybe we should have blown a few hundred quid on some gorgeous bouquets in vases after all.

There is still a sane part of my brain, though. And it keeps telling me not to stress about stupid things that probably no one will notice anyway.

Well, apart from the photobooth. I reeeeeally hope they don't have a photobooth. I want ours to be the first wedding among our friends that has a photobooth, dammit! It's myyyyyy photobooooooth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's in a wordle...

I came across a fun website recently, wordle, which creates instant, customisable word clouds of a piece of text, RSS feed or blog. 

Here's mine for my blog so far (in our wedding colours, ha!). 

I'm slightly alarmed at the prominence of the word 'like' – seems a bit limp really! Mind you, I guess it's a good thing that the word 'panic' is relatively small. 

No surprise about the biggest word overall, of course: 'wedding'. Nor the second-biggest: 'dress'. I'll try this again in a few months' time, to see what I'm fussing over then...

Wedding envy

Okay, first a wee update. My dress dramas are, just about, done with. After a lot of thought, web research and changing my mind one way and back again, I decided to stick with dress number 1.

I won't bore you with the details, but essentially I weighed up the pros and cons, and dress number 1 won out. Plus – and this is what swung it – my H2B said I can sell it on eBay if I don't love it and buy a 'proper' bridal-shop dress, budget be damned. Ha, easy to say now, darling man. I wonder if you'll be as generous-spirited when the time comes?

So the dress is ordered and I'll know whether it was the right decision in a couple of months. One thing the whole experience has taught me, though, is to chill the heck out! This wedding is still over nine months away, and I'll drive myself insane if I freak out like that over every little thing that could go wrong. As long as me and my mister end up married at the end of the day, then it'll all be all right, right?

That attempt at sanguinity, however, doesn't stop me from obsessing over all the details of the day. Obsessing in a good way, mostly. My Pinterest boards are filling up with gorgeous wedding-y pics and I'm even acquiring a few followers (yay me!).

And I'm now no longer a wedding forum lurker - in fact, I'm a bit of a regular on one particular board. I joined a wedding weight loss thread, and it's been pretty inspiring. I am now a reasonably adept Zumba-er and am also seven days into the 30-Day Shred DVD (my own personal hell-in-my-living-room, but hopefully worth it!).

So, update out of the way, and back to the real subject of this post: wedding envy.

As I'm sure many other engaged ladies have experienced, wedding planning is like being a little kid faced with a wall of pic 'n' mix and just one small cup to fill. There is so much choice! Colour schemes, themes – picking just one style for the day can seem impossible.

Actually, it was pretty easy at first: the navy and silver colours were established early on, thanks to the reception chairs. (I ain't ashamed to admit it.) And, as I mentioned in my last post, the styling has emerged as being quite '60s: the bridesmaid dresses are very Audrey Hepburn…

Alfred Sung, D448, in midnight

… the stationery typography is kind of Bewitched (the '60s TV series, not the denim-clad girl group), the wedding car we have our eye on is a 1960s Daimler, and while my wedding dress isn't strictly '60s, it could definitely be styled that way. It's all falling into place.

So we have our 'theme'. Great, I can relax, right? But nooooooo…  You see, ever since wedding fever took hold of me, I've developed a ceaseless appetite for looking at photos of other weddings. And it's putting my brain into overload.

I'll be honest: call me a snob, but the pouffy dress and pink shiny bridesmaids thing doesn't do much for me. Instead, I'm all about those simple yet impeccably detailed weddings that feature on the likes of ruffledblog. Think vintage lace bridal gowns, messy side buns pinned with roses, powder-blue chiffon bridesmaid dresses, wildflower bouquets, adorable, hand-made wedding favours, a photogenic bride and groom holding hands and looking wistful in a meadow…. You get the picture.

And every time I look at one of these perfect weddings, I'm like that Little Britain character: "I want that one!" It doesn't matter that it wouldn't 'go' with everything else we've decided on for our wedding, or if it's way beyond our budget. For a few moments, I get all green-eyed monster-ish and wish that our wedding reception wasn't in a hotel, but instead in a Midsummer Night's Dream-esque woodland, or that the invitations weren't smart pocketfolds but instead lovingly crafted out of antique maps and doilies.

Okay, it's completely irrational. Everyone has their own tastes. But the thing is, I've never been very good at accessorising. I've always envied the kind of women who, like my best friend (and maid of honour), can throw together a seemingly random selection of layers, scarves and jewellery and look fabulous. Me, I'd look like a walking jumble sale.

And I suppose it's the same for weddings. I know I have decent, simple tastes – my H2B is the same – and navy and silver with the odd '60s detail should look quite classy. But part of me longs to be the kind of bride-to-be who can gather an assortment of seemingly random yet beautiful details and create the perfect vintage-style wedding.

So going back to that kid-in-a-sweetshop metaphor... I guess I'll have to make do with my simple pic 'n' mix cup, and try not to get too distracted by the delicious-looking bon bons or frosted sherbert pips. This wedding will still be yummy, and – for better or for worse – very 'us'.