The Clownfish Invitations: Designing & Printing Process

After I gathered all the invitation inspiration I needed and was confident in the direction I wanted to go in, I got to work within iScrapbook and started to create out wedding invites! Like I've mentioned before, iScrapbook is a dumbed-down version of Photoshop, which is perfect for me, the gal who doesn't know too much about graphic design. I've had iScrapbook downloaded on my Mac for years (confession: I'm a closet digital scrapbooker) so I knew my way around the program fairly well and was familiar with how the program worked. I knew I needed some pretty watercolor flower graphics, and started the search for ones that weren't too expensive but also gave me the "look" I was going for.

Does this make me look incredibly lame yet?

One I found the perfect clip-art flowers, I got to work within iScrapbook and started layering, resizing, and (slightly) altering the color of the flowers and leaves. This process took about an hour from start to finish, once I figure out how I wanted the flowers arranged around the border. I started laying the floral graphics on the bottom of the invitation first, and eventually made my way around...

Once all the flowers and leaves were on the invitation, the OCD bride in me took over and I spent another 30-ish minutes slightly adjusting each clip-art's position, angle, etc. While I wanted the top and the bottom to look balanced (same number of big flowers, berries, etc.), I didn't want them to be perfectly symmetrical. I liked the asymmetrical look and, to be honest, I would have driven myself slightly insane trying to match both of the sides perfectly. 

Once the floral border was the way I wanted it, it was time to add text! I spent another hour or so searching for the perfect fonts to use, which was no easy task. Every "handwritten" font I found clashed with the floral border, or took too much attention away from it. There were fonts I would have loved to use, but decided that I needed to keep it simple and stick to a more timeless font. Mixing fonts was part of the plan, and I was happy to finally find two fonts that complimented not only each other, but the floral border perfectly. For the detail text part of the invitation I used "Athelas" and for our names I used "Zapfino"...

I repeated this process with our RSVP card, using the same florals and fonts, but in a slightly different way...

I decided to omit a "details" card, since our Save-the-Dates had our wedding website on them, and every out-of-town guest was personally contacted with hotel and travel information. I wanted to keep the suite simple, so I stuck with the actual invite and a RSVP. Nothing fancy, nothing extra. Just the bare essentials!

Instead of going through Vistaprint, or another printing company, I opted to get them printed right through my campus printer's office. Located a mere fifty steps from my dorm room, I loved being able to talk to the office worker's in person and tell them what I had in mind. They were also experts at printing invites, since I seen so many of my friends get their wedding invites printed there and was always so pleasantly surprised at the final product.  The office had their own supply of card stock in dozens of colors, and they allowed me to do as many test-prints as I wanted until my invites came out perfect. They also cut the invitations for me, which saved me SO much time and effort, especially since all this was being done during finals week.

To get 60 full-color invitations and RSVP's printed, I spent a whopping...wait for it...$22. #Hallelujah for my campus' printing room.

Next up: the final invitation reveal and budget breakdown! 

The Clownfish Invitations: Gathering Inspiration

Now that our wedding invitations have been mailed out, I get to share one of my very favorite wedding DIY's so far...our invitations! Right from the very start, I knew I wanted to design our wedding invitations. Not only to make them "unique" and personal to us, but to save us some major money. Wedding invitations can cost the average couple hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars depending on the style of the invitation, the type of paper used, and how the invitation is made (here's lookin' at you, letter-pressed invites!). I had some basic graphic design knowledge after going through the process of creating our Save-The-Date, but I was wise enough to acknowledge that I was no Photoshop expert. I wanted to keep the design fairly simple, but still stylish and sweet. Because of that, I wanted a stupid-simple wedding invitation suite. No more inserts than necessary, and not enough heavy, crafty details to make the postage more than the actual invite itself.

On the actual design side, I've been loving the look of watercolor flowers (but seriously, what bride hasn't?) so I knew I for-sure wanted to go for that "look". I set out to find some watercolor floral wedding invitation inspiration and hit the good 'ole Etsy jackpot...

Image via Belle Hanah Paperie Etsy Shop

Image via Beau Tied Affair Etsy Shop

Image via Honey and Roses Press Etsy Shop

As you can see, I was seriously drawn to pink florals, script-y fonts, and pretty simple invitation layouts. After I got the a-okay to start designing a girly wedding invitation from Mr. C ("But it's so...pink...") I went ahead and started piecing together our wedding invitations. Oh, and so you don't start feeling too bad for poor, manly Mr. C...we compromised on all the pink, and the font was made gray, just for him. Compromise is the key to marital happiness, I've heard.

Next, I show you the design process and how even a graphic-design clueless bride can design her own wedding invitations!

Sign Our Guest Poster, Please!

Confession: I always, always forget to sign a couple's wedding guestbook. Whether I'm attending the wedding as a guest or as the photographer (hey, we can leave our well-wishes, too!), the thought of signing the guest book never crosses my mind. So when it came time for Mr. C and I decide on how our guests will leave their mark on our wedding day, I had absolutely no idea what direction I wanted to go.

Let's explore our options, shall we?

The Photo Book

Photo via Emmaline Bride // Photo By Michelle Gardella Photography

The photo book guestbook is by far one of the most popular wedding guestbook options. Guests can take a look at your engagement photos, and, if you've plastered them all over every social media possible by the time your wedding rolls around (guilty), Grandma and Great Aunt Lois will really enjoy seeing them for the first time. They also have plenty of space for guests to write comments, even though some guests will no doubt write a well-meaning word of advice right over your faces. Although I absolutely love my engagement photos, and would love seeing them in book-form, we decided against this idea rather quickly. Mr. C and I already have our favorite engagement photos printed out, and we plan on making a higher-quality photo book with our wedding photos. For any bride-to-be that's set on a photo book but wants a higher quality book than say, Shutterfly, can offer, I personally recommend Artifact Uprising! Their books are pricier than other companies, but the quality is so spot-on, and they're just so friggin' pretty to look at.

The Polaroid Guest Book

Image via Style Me Pretty // Photo by Nicolle Vertseeg Photography

The photographer in me was immediately drawn to this guestbook idea. The budget conscious bride in me looked up the cost of the camera and the film and died a little inside. Also, the thought of film being wasted when slightly-intoxicated guests and/or grandparents tried to operate a non-iPhone camera was something I knew I didn't want to chance. While the execution of this idea might have been totally successful and lovely, I wanted a much cheaper, stupid-and-buzz-proof guestbook option. Note: still totally jealous of couples that get this type of guestbook to "work".

The Stone Guestbook

Image via Offbeat Bride // Photo by Whitney Lee Photography

When I was originally getting some inspiration for possible guestbooks, the "stone" idea was popping up left and right. The idea is for guests to write well-wishes and words of advice to the lovely wedding couple on...rocks. While I totally get the concept, I know stones and rocks will never be a part of Mr. C and I's design aesthetic in our home. Plus, I've never written on a stone. What kind of marker/pen would I need to provide? Does every table have stones? Or is there one big stone jar? The logistics were too much, and Mr. C wasn't exactly on board, so the stone guestbook was abandoned and it was back to drawing board.

The Thumbprint Guestbook

Image via BleuDeToi Etsy Page

This guestbook idea is one that basically exploded overnight thanks to the popularity of Pinterest. Guests are asked to ink up one of their digits to quite literally leave their mark on the guestbook with their own fingerprint. These fingerprints can make up the shape of a huge balloon, "leaves" on a tree, or friggin adorable little bumblebees, as seen above. The only wedding I've been to that had a fingerprint guestbook was a friends, and her stamp pad left my thumb the darkest shade of blue for a couple days. If heading this direction, definitely make sure the ink you use is washable! Mr. C and I wanted to do something a little bit different than the thumbprint guestbook, while still having a guestbook we could hang up in our home and admire for years to come. Which is why we decided on...

The Poster Guestbook

Image via Embie Online Etsy Shop

A wedding guestbook poster is kind of exactly what it sounds like...a big poster that guests sign that will eventually make it's way into the couple's home, to be hung up and admired (until it is inevitably replaced by their children's school photos, family portraits, etc.). Granted, there isn't as much blank space on these posters as there would be in an actual guestbook, or even the photo book version. What I loved the most about these guestbook prints/posters was that I could design one myself and totally swag it out. After getting the A-okay from Mr. C to go ahead and start designing our own guestbook poster, I gathered some inspiration for what I wanted ours to look like.

I was drawn to floral-y type designs that were pretty, fuss-free, and minimal. I wanted our guests to have as much room as possible to sign, so I wanted to keep the design smaller and simpler. The monogram poster (as seen above) was one of my favorites, so I knew I wanted to head in that direction. Thanks to Mrs. Tractor, I discovered the incredible, beautiful online world that is Creative Market, and I got to work finding design elements that would create the pretty, fuss-free, minimal, floral-y guestbook poster idea I had in my head.

The guestbook poster God's must have been smiling down on me when I found these floral design letters. Hallelujah!

Image via Angie Makes 

I purchased the floral monogram letters for $10, and got to work creating my guestbook poster! All of the designing was done within a Mac App called iScrapbook. It's basically a dumbed-down version of photoshop, but still has all the bells and whistles I needed. Although our final guestbook poster design is pretty simple, it took a lot more time that I'd like to admit to finally decide on it as the "final" version. All creative brides know how that goes!

Note: The actual poster does not have a dark-gray trim. It's an all-white poster, I just added the border to you can see the dimensions.

I love the design I ended up with, and I know I'll love seeing it hanging up in our house for years to come! The plan is to place it in a gold frame (with the glass removed) so that guests can write on the poster during the reception, then place the glass back on when we hang it up.  I'm having it printed through the private photo printing place I use for my photography business, so I'll be able to get this 16x20 poster printed for around $13. The total cost for this project was around $25, including the cost of the print and the floral monogram letters. Both Mr. C and I love how this little DIY-project turned out, and we can't wait to see it all filled up with the names and well wishes of our nearest and dearest!

How did you decide was type of guestbook to use? Do you still look at yours often?

Flowers for the Floral Clueless Bride

As a wedding photographer, the wedding flowers are one of favorite details of the day to capture. From traditional, compact bouquets to towering floral centerpieces, I love me some pretty wedding flowers. This being said, it may come off as a surprise when I say that on Mr. C and I's list of wedding "priorities", the flowers were pretty dang low on the list. Since we've been planning our wedding on a smaller budget, and paying for a lot of it ourselves, we knew we had to make some sacrifices when it comes to how we plan on using/displaying flowers on our wedding day.

I knew from the beginning that while I definitely wanted to have flowers, we had to be strategic and make our smaller floral budget stretch as much as possible. While I'm ALL for DIYing, I knew there was no way I would be doing my own wedding flowers. The idea crossed my mind early on in the planning process, but as soon as I realized just how much effort/time would be involved, I opted to let a professional handle it. Best. Decision. Ever. We were saving so much money in other areas (my dress, the invitations, etc.) that I knew we would be able to hire a florist as long as we kept our blooms relatively simple and as inexpensive as possible.

Since getting engaged, I had been pinning some "inspiration bouquets" on my wedding board and gathering some ideas of the colors and kinds of flowers that I liked. I knew right away that I didn't want lilies, and didn't want any bold colors or textures. I loved the softer colors, and I wanted to stick with flowers that fit into our color palette. Basically, pinks and creams. Oh, and a small side note: Mr. C totally let me handle this aspect of the wedding and fully supported me/trusted me in picking out our wedding flowers. As a man who doesn't know the different between a peony and a poppy, he didn't have much to contribute to the wedding flower discussions, and he totally let me take the lead on this one.

When I was looking for some floral inspiration, I felt myself continuously being drawn to fuller, lush bouquets filled with babies breath, pink and cream roses, and peonies....

Photo via Style Me Pretty/ Photo by Anna Jaye Photography

Photo via Seasonal Celebrations

I love this concept for the bridesmaids bouquets, but a bit fuller/bigger, with more roses and babies breath. Photo via Bridal Musings / Photo by Live View Studios

When it came to centerpieces, I knew I wanted light pink roses. Simple, beautiful, and classic. Easy to execute, it fits our wedding "style", and they're relatively inexpensive. Emphasis on the inexpensive. I stumbled on this picture and instantly fell in love. Gold and baby's breath...need I say more? I knew I wanted to try and execute a very similar idea for the ceremony flowers...

Photo via Flower Mag / Photo by Amy Carroll Photography

I had an initial vision for the wedding flowers, and I all I needed was an expert flower lover to make it all happen. After reaching out to friends and family for local florist recommendations, I was put in touch with a young woman who was just getting started with her floral business. Her FB page displayed some of her floral designs, and I was totally impressed by her work. We set up a consultation, and I realized just a few minutes into the meeting that Megan was someone I wanted to work with on my wedding day. She was not only incredibly knowledgable about flowers (who knew there were dozens of varieties of roses?), but incredible sweet and had so many great ideas I had never even considered. Her prices were stellar, and she was willing to work with my budget to get me the most floral bang for my buck....

Photo via Flowers by Meg FB page

Photo via Flowers by Meg FB Page

After our initial consultation, Megan drafted up an invoice and detailed out how every kind of flower will be used, and even what specific kind of flowers she would include in each bouquet, boutonnière, etc. I had never heard of some of these flowers (pink lisianthus and cream ranunculus, to be exact), so it was so helpful to be able to straight up Google what these flowers looked like. I know Megan is going to do an incredible job on our wedding flowers, and we are so grateful that she is willing to work with out smaller budget to give us some beautiful florals for our wedding day! Lots of gorgeous wedding flower detail shots to come in T-minus 3 months :)

Were you super hands-on with your wedding flowers? How did you find floral inspiration?

Dancing our Faces Off

Early on in the wedding planning process, I asked Mr. C what aspect of the wedding he cared about the most. I'm pretty sure he read my mind (or had been thinking on this topic long before I ever asked the questions) because without missing a beat, he said, "the DJ". This answer definitely didn't surprise me, as my fiance is a dancing fool. In the car, at home, and especially at weddings. He's usually the first one on the dance floor and always one of the last ones to leave it. And trust me when I say Mr. C has some sick dance moves, some of which embarrassed the heck out of me at both of our senior proms. The running man, the stanky leg, the wobble...he knows 'em all, and isn't afraid to bust a move. Me? Well...I love to dance. A lot.

Naturally, his dance-inclinded self cared about the most about the DJ out of all the wedding vendors. In the beginning, we toyed around with doing an iPod Dj and just having a friend act an emcee for the night. The more we both thought about it though, the more we wanted to hire a professional who actually knows how to get a huge room of people excited and on the dance floor. Also, it's one less "DIY" aspect for us to worry about and stress over on the day of. So...the search for an awesome wedding DJ began.

Before we started contacting DJ's, we considered what we both wanted from our DJ. Some of the "musts" were: at least 5 hours coverage (to cover both ceremony and reception), the ability to request songs we didn't want played, someone who had been in the industry a couple years, and someone who really loves DJing and wants to help us have the most fun, dance-filled night ever. We also set our max budget for our DJ at $1000. While the DJ is important for both of us, we couldn't afford to take money from other areas of our budget.

We first asked around for DJ recommendations from our family and friends, and even scoured our local Craigslist when the options were looking slim. Every DJ we contacted came with either a lot of extras, like uplighting (which we don't want or need), or charged an exorbitant amount for their hourly fee. None of the DJ's I found "felt" like a good match for Mr. C and I, and while emailing with a few, I didn't feel any kind of connection (chatting with a potential DJ does kind of feels like an awkward first date, ya know). Being a wedding photographer, I know how important the DJ is setting setting the whole mood and vibe for the dancing portion of the wedding reception. A bad DJ can keep people off of the dance floor, while an awesome DJ is creative and knows how to get people dancing. 

The search continued on for a couple weeks, until one night when I was browsing a local wedding photographer's blog and noticed a DJ's name in the "vendor" section of their wedding blog post. The name of the DJ company, "The Electric Gentleman" caught my eye, and I was super impressed by their overall "vibe" as soon as I visited their website. I emailed them right away, and was thrilled when their wedding packages were all within my budget, and they were open for my wedding day.

"The Electric Gentleman" is a young husband + wife DJ team, Taylor and Kelsey, who's main goal "is to make you dance your face off". Their philosophy is hands-on in planning, and hands-off the day off. Meaning, they're super dedicated to playing the right kind of music for your event, but don't hog the microphone on your wedding day. I've seen plenty of DJ's tell corny, awkward jokes and take time during the wedding to promote their own business. It was awesome that Taylor and Kelsey put such an emphasis on making the night about us, not them. After emailing back and forth a few times, I was confident that they would be the perfect DJ's for Mr. C and I's wedding, and we went ahead and booked them last fall. We could not be more excited to have "The Electric Gentleman" as our wedding DJ's!

Screenshot via The Electric Gentleman

We are hoping to have a full dance floor the entire night, and knowing our friends and family, that's definitely a realistic goal. Since booking Taylor and Kelsey, Mr. C and I have started crafting a list of must-play songs and definitely-do-not-play songs (hate to say it, but the Cha Cha Slide is on the "do not play" list). While we'll have a small list for both of these song categories, we're leaving most of the song choices up to them. I have no doubt that they are going to do an amazing job DJing our wedding, and I'm already stoked to show you the ridiculous dancing pictures that are to come.

How did you choose your wedding DJ?

Let the Real Fun Begin!

So, this happened this past weekend...

More graduation photos to come, because I'm honestly not sure what other pictures to post...

WE'RE GRADUATES! Mr. C and I graduated on the hottest morning of this entire spring, and we both may or may not have gotten grad cap forehead sunburns. #palepeopleprobz. It's incredibly bittersweet that our undergraduate career is over, but I could not be more proud of Mr. C and all that he has accomplished. The journey was long and incredibly hard at times, but we finally reached the end of this chapter and are on to our next great adventure - marriage!

Now that college is behind us (at least for Mr. C, a master's degree may be in my future) and we have a full summer ahead of us until the wedding, it's time to get serious about putting the finishing touches on planning this thing! Most of my planning happened this past summer, when I was working full time and had a lot more free time to figure out the "big" things. I wanted to get most of the planning done before I started my senior year, so that I could concentrate on my studies and really finish my college career strong. The only "big" wedding-related things that were done during the school year were designing my save-the-dates and invitations, picking out the bridesmaids dresses, hiring a videographer, and finalizing some decorations. All fun stuff, if you ask me!

MOH Smiley, recreating a pose from my high school graduation.

I didn't have much time (or room space, let's be real) to do any of the DIY's I planned on doing, so I'm really looking forward to tackling a lot of the projects this summer. Nothing too crazy or labor-intensive, trust me. Ain't no bride-to-be got time for that! Every DIY I plan on doing is something that can save us money (our invites, for example) or is something I want to make that we can also use in our house afterward. Or, something I can potentially donate to another bride-to-be. Maybe. If they don't completely suck.

MOH Schmo! 

I'm so looking forward to tackling these mini-projects and finally doing the "fun" things for our wedding. On the agenda for the next month or so...do a table setting/centerpiece mock-up, send out the invitations (mid-June), finalize Mr. C's wedding day look, and get to work on the DIY's. There's lot of posts coming your way, and I apologize for the small gap in new posts. The last couple weeks of the semester absolutely FLEW by, but I am so excited to get back to posting more! With less than four month's 'til the big day...let's do this!

Planning for our Marriage

If I had a dollar for every time someone asks me how wedding planning was going, I would have enough cash to pay for the entire event plus a few extra excursions on our honeymoon. I'm kidding, of course, but the sheer amount of times I've been asked this question over the past 15 months has far proceeded the amount of times people have asked how marriage planning is going. Which, surprisingly, has been zero times. During the course of Mr. C and I's engagement, not one person has asked us how we are preparing ourselves for marriage.

Given the current lull in our actual wedding plans, I've had plenty of time to reflect on not only our wedding day that is taking place four short months from now, but the marriage that will proceed it. Of course Mr. C and I have had several discussions about our expectations for our marriage (some that happened long before we were ever engaged) but there is certainly an aspect of "This is really happening!" when your wedding plans come to a halt and the countdown app on your phone says that there's only 130 days until you're Mr. and Mrs. for life. It sinks in more fully that there is a marriage that follows the most planned-out day of your life, and as incredibly obvious as that seems, the planning of the marriage is so often second-rate to the planning of the wedding.

For me, I am much more excited about being Mr. C's wife than I am about being his bride. Yes, I am having a blast planning this wedding. It is so incredibly fun at times, and stress-including at others, with small moments of "LET'S JUST ELOPE" sprinkled into the mix. When budgets and guest lists and timelines just about put me over the edge, the fact that I am going to be Mr. C's wife at the end of the day makes all the stress worth it. It is an important day of our lives, but it is just one day. A day that was not worth going into debt for, a day who's planning I wouldn't let overtake my life, and certainly not a day that I would let overshadow our marriage. Our wedding day is certainly is a big day, but it is not the biggest day. Truth be told, the day I am most looking forward to is the day after the wedding - a day I am sure will be full of so much joy and peace. The morning after the wedding when I wake up as Mr. C's wife. I cannot wait for the planning to be over and for our lives together as a married couple to start.

A bit cheesy, but oh so true. Photo via Fierce Marriage

Planning for our marriage was something we placed as a priority from the very beginning. Above all the wedding day logistics, our relationship as a couple and our marriage mattered more. But how does one plan for a marriage? While there is absolutely no book or class or counseling session that can full prepare us for life as a married couple, we want to make sure we value our marriage before anything else- including the "big day". Before we had one vendor booked, we looked into premarital classes we could take together in the months leading up to the big day. This past fall we enrolled in a three-month-long premarital course held by our church, and while it didn't revolutionize our thinking about marriage, it did made us take a hard look at some not-so-glamorous parts of being married. How to make a budget, who will do the what chores, when will we have children, etc. Super fun topics, I know.

I thought I had known Mr. C inside and out before this class (being with someone for five years allows you to assume that), but I found myself surprised by his answers and responses to each topic during every class. We got to go on fun dates, talk about some serious topics, and truly start to prepare ourselves for this next season of our lives. Since then, we've also had awesome married couples speak into our lives and give us honest, real, sometimes-brutal advice and words of encouragement. We've had our own private discussion about what the rest of our lives together will hold. It's exciting and terrifying, all at the same time. Committing the rest of your life to one person is scary. Pretending we have it all together would be a lie. It's the working through and hashing-out of what currently is and what's to come has been the most rewarding part of all of this.

Probably the best marriage advice I've heard, a la Phil Dunphey//Image via 9Gag

With four months to go until the wedding, I can look toward Mr. C and I's future and be confident of the love and commitment we have for each other and will continue to have toward each other long after the cake is eaten, and the flowers die, and I can't fit into my wedding dress anymore. Marriage is scary, and until you're in one, you can never truly know what to expect. Truth be told, as "prepared" as we feel for our marriage, I know that the reality of it will probably hit us like a sack of potatoes after excitement of the wedding has worn off. Being as young as we are, a lot of people are kind of just expecting our marriage to fail. I don't blame them- the divorce rates are only continuing to rise. Instead of focusing on proving those people wrong, we're focusing on ourselves, and the life we're building together. Committing to love each other more each day (especially on days it's hard to "like" each other) and promising to not let the craziness of life get in between the vows we'll say in just a few short months.

Above all, I cannot wait to be Mr. C's wife. We cannot wait to be married. After all we've been through together over the past five years, we're joyfully looking ahead and looking forward to our lives as husband and wife. Planning a wedding is fun, but planning a marriage has meant so much more.