And so the man hunt begins...

Our RSVP cards were due yesterday.  Here's the verdict:

Yes:  62
No:  24
Non-responsive:  29
Non-responsive members of immediate family and wedding party:  5 (grrrrr)
Persons who invited themselves:  1 (officially)

Could be worse, but it still makes me angry that so many people haven't responded.  And I'm really angry about the person who invited herself, but that's another story.

Share the love.  How many people did you have to hunt down?  How many people invited themselves?  How difficult was it for you to actually get a real count?

Hurry Up People!

2 months until the wedding today.

And 2 weeks until RSVPs are due, and we're still missing about half of them.  Peoples need to get their shit together FAST.

Ugh, I am not looking forward to coming after people.

The Coolest RSVP EVER!

Soooooo, I may or may not have invited two of my favorite authors to my wedding.

I may or may not have written them notes with their invitations saying I wanted them to know that without their books, Daniel and I probably never would have met.

And I may or may not have received a response from one of them last week.

If I did, it would look like this:

Honestly, Who Better to Fill One of These in Than an Author?

Personal Photo

It also would have included a gift of an entire book series, signed to us specifically.

The Great Tree of Avalon

Personal Photo

If that had happened, I might say that the author was awfully kind and thoughtful.

So why would I invite two famous authors to my wedding?  Well, when I started middle school, I was kind of over reading.  I loved books when I was little, but I was a lot more interested in cheerleading, dance, and gymnastics by the ripe old age of 10.  It was not until I read The Seven Songs of Merlin by T.A. Barron that I regained the love I had once had for reading.  After that, I was unstoppable.  And when I finally gave in to the hoard's demands and saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in theaters, I was in love, and that love was slow to ebb.

We haven't been through Daniel's and my origin story in a while, so let's recap, shall we?  Berkeley has a program called Decal that allows undergrads to teach full-on courses to other undergrads, and everyone can get credit for it.  Within Decal is a club called BookWorlds which teaches exclusively on fantasy and sci-fi novels, specifically on worlds that exist only in books.  My freshman year, I searched obsessively for a class on Harry Potter and found one my second semester through BookWorlds.  Our officiant, Nicole, was the lead teacher for this class, and since she and Daniel were friends, Daniel hung out in our class a lot.  We'd noticed each other, but it wasn't until I decided I wanted to teach that we actually got to know each other.  Three days of obsessive facebooking, AIMing (yes, it was that long ago), and emailing later, we had our first date, and the rest is history (some of it fantastical).

So you see, if I hadn't read Harry Potter, we never would have met.  And if I hadn't read The Seven Songs of Merlin, I probably wouldn't have read Harry Potter.  I feel like I owe the authors something for that.  I probably owe as much to J.R.R. Tolkien since BookWorlds would not have happened without The Lord of the Rings, but he's dead, so getting him an invitation would be tricky, and honestly, who has the time for that kind of thing?

The response/gift I may or may not have received from T.A. Barron was not completely out of the blue.  We've met.  Actually, he's met Daniel too though he doesn't really remember.  The first class I taught was on his Lost Years of Merlin series, and I asked him to come and speak to our class.  He obliged by meeting with us privately before a talk at a book store (in San Jose, funnily enough), and we've been in loose contact ever since.  We met up when he had an event in San Francisco, I told him about my sorrow of never getting to see Stonehenge up close (damn preservation attempts!), and I spoke in a documentary he was doing about kids and books.  He's a very cool person, just the sort of man I expected from reading his books, and it is entirely possible that I am actually his biggest fan (family excluded of course).

Now if only J.K. Rowling would get back to me... .

Did you invite anyone famous or someone neither of you really knew to your wedding?

P.S.  Rahm Emanuel was so getting an invitation before he left the White House.  Daniel is actually related to him, and while he's not really close to the family anymore, I was hoping to get White House M&Ms out of the deal.

The RSVPs

Already, response cards are pouring in.  In fact, we got our first couple a mere 5 days after we mailed them!  It's so nice to have such prompt answers.

And yet, I can feel the laggers looming already.  People have told me that they are waiting to respond until they think of a good mad lib, and while that is pretty awesome, I also wonder how long they will wait.  FFIL also told us that he will not be returning his response card because he only has one son and wants to keep the entire invitation suite as a souvenir.  My response?  You owe us 44 cents!  All right, not really, we're going to send him another one, so he will give us his response card.

I'm already glad that we put out the effort to make return address labels because the very first card we got back did not have the couple's names on it.  There seems to be some general confusion about where the names go among that younger crowd, so I'm glad we'll have the return address labels when others forget to write their names.

I'm so happy we were inspired to do Mad Lib invitations at the last minute!  Already, we've gotten some great responses.  Here are my favorites so far (with names withheld for obvious reasons):

'Zooks!  I am chuffed to be invited!  M is barmy to attend.  No one is miffed to decline.

Gadzooks!!! (author's note:  why look!  A trend has started!)  We are titillated to be invited!  D and M are electrified to attend.

Hooray!  We are jazzed to be invited!  Monsieur/Madame are aflame! to attend.

And I have no idea what this means, but it sounds cool anyway:

Coads-nigs!!  We are insangelous to be invited!  We are callipygian to attend.

Once we have them all, we've going to make a scrapbook with everyone's responses.  Should be a lot of fun to look back on years from now.


Did you do anything special for your response cards?  Did people write nice notes to you?

Invitations: Check!

Invitations are officially sent!  Yay!

Well, OK, there's still a couple of people who need to give us their addresses, but most of them are out.

It's such a relief to have this over.  Now the tux, rings, and ceremony are the only really big things we have left to do!

I really like the way the invites turned out.  I think tying the suite with hemp chord really added a lot to the look without adding much to the cost.

 

This is like the epitome of my wedding concept summed up in one small item:  beachy, classy, and cheap (without looking cheap).

Daniel did an amazing job on the envelopes too.  We didn't want to address them by hand because we both have sucky handwriting, and there was no way we were paying for a calligrapher to do it, so we decided to use labels instead.

The return address labels were easy.  Daniel found them on Vistaprint.com and got them for FREE!  All we had to do was pay $3 for shipping.  Major win.

The individual address labels were much trickier, but Daniel found a label-making program online that we could download, so we could make and print the labels from home.  Then all we had to do was buy blank labels from the label company (Avery), pick a background for them from Clip Art, type the addresses into the label spaces, and print.

OK, having a background made it a little trickier than that.  Daniel spent hours trying to get the spacing right for each one.  But in the end, it probably didn't take much longer than addressing them by hand would have, and they look much nicer.  Plus, the whole shabang cost us about $10.  Take that, calligraphers!

Invitation Envelope

Yes, I'm inviting J.K. Rowling to my wedding.  Shush.

RSVP Card Envelope

*All Personal Photos

They aren't are coordinated as they could be, but they still look pretty good, especially for what we spent on them.  And I kind of like that not everything has the exact same look.

How did you address your invitations?  Did you do anything to spice them up?  And did anyone else invite someone neither of you actually knows (come on, I'm not the only one, right?  Right)?

Save the Date: Best of the Best

You guys know I'm a save the date video fan, and I do love watching them.  From the boring crap to the professionally crafted, I love seeing couples express themselves as they invite their guests to share their special day.  Every one is unique and, to me at least, cooler than a traditional STD.

I've been looking at more save the date videos than usual lately, and I wanted to share with you a few that I think are truly exceptional.  You know, besides mine.

Because there's an awful lot of crappy, boring STD videos out there that might mean something to the couple but don't mean much to anyone else.  The following videos transcend the "Hey look, you're on TV (or YouTube as the case may be)" excitement that most STD videos rely on to interest their audience and actually captivate complete strangers.

Jeff and Erin's EPIC Wedding Trailer needs no introduction, and since I've already posted it as the inspiration for mine, I'll just say that this is by far the best STD video I have ever seen.

 

My love for Tom and Eva's Wedding Invitation may be primarily based on my film major background and love of silent films.  Nonetheless, I've seen others like it, and none capture the same level of quirky, cute, and funny simplicity.  Plus, it's short, a trait most STD videos need to acquire.

The Invitation is professionally done.  Well, the first two are professionally done also, but this one is really professionally done.  As in, most people can't make a computer-generated animation STD video.  Still, it's very cute.  You may want to watch their proposal video first though.

So, what do all of these videos have in common?  Professional help.  Maybe that's what it takes to know what can captivate an audience and what is just too personal.  And obviously, the professional production looks a lot better.

But if you want to make a save the date video and do not know any filmmakers, there are some things you can do to make it interesting without professional help.

1.  Have a plot:  That is what interests me most about all 3 of these.  There is a clear idea behind them, they explore the idea, and it comes to a conclusion.  You don't have to have a distinct plot, just an easily discernible idea that you can develop.

2.  Film outside:  One of the hardest things to overcome without professional editing is the way a film looks.  No matter what you're doing, you need as much light as you can find, so do it outside on a sunny day, and it will look so much better.

3.  Go silent:  It's really difficult to cut out background noise without help.  Making a silent movie and setting it to music helps avoid any problems with noise you might have.  If you must have dialogue, do it in voice over.  You'll get less static in the background.

4.  Stop motion helps:  As I said in a previous post, one of the best ways to make a save the date video look good is by using stop motion animation.  If you do this, keep it short and simple, and make sure you'll be able to have good lighting.  I'd still do it outside if possible.

5.  Keep it short:  This is probably the most important thing you can do for a home-made STD video.  People get bored easily.  They get bored a lot more easily if what they are watching has low production values.  Keeping it short helps keep their interest through the whole film.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I love these videos.  I think it's such a cute and creative way to invite people to your wedding without spending much money.  Nonetheless, you don't want to bore your guests, so following these tips will help you make a STD video that people will want to watch over and over even if it's not done professionally.

And of course, your guests will love a video that illustrates your personalities.

Invitation Accessories

I've seen people get really into stamps, going so far as to collect loads of vintage stamps for a whole cluster of them on the envelope.  Brides who do this, I take my invisible hat off to you and your level of commitment to detail.  I am not as cool as you.

We found ours by looking through the Post Office website, plain and simple.  We wanted to do something a little different, but that was pretty much the extent of our stamp cares.

In the end, we liked this one the best:

 

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Yeah, it's love and flowers.  Like I said, we're keeping it pretty straightforward on this one.

If you're lazy like us and are going the normal stamp route, here are some others that we liked:

 

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So, who else thinks stamps are ridiculously expensive when buying them en masse?  These babies ate up way more of our budget than I would have liked.

Invitations: A Decision Is Made

After my little invitation crisis, I did some more searching, and it turns out I missed a bunch of designs on 123print.com.  One of them became our salvation.  It's got the relaxed, oceany theme we're going for while still being classy and without seashells, sand dollars, waves, or lobsters (not kidding, I found a beach invitation with a lobster on it).  We still like one of the Wedding Paper Divas designs better, but this invitation is good enough that we don't feel like we're settling too much, and it will save us soooo much money.

So without further ado, behold our invitations:

Obviously, it has been edited, but you get the idea.  You will be amazed to know that I was not the one who came up with the Disney reference, but once Daniel suggested it, there was no going back.

We were all set to do not-very-exciting RSVP cards when I found the cutest idea ever.  Someone had done a Mad Lib RSVP card!

Once again, there was no turning back.

It's not perfect since we had limited editing options, but I think people will get the idea.  Hopefully.  Anyway, I love that the responses will have that personal aspect.  Gives us an excuse to do something with the cards post-wedding.

How did you pick your invitation wording?  Do you think people will be confused by our RSVP cards?

Over-analyzing Stop Motion Save the Date Videos

I have noticed a very interesting trend in Save the Date videos.  In an age when computer-generated animation is becoming increasingly prevalent (even Disney says they're through with hand-drawn animation :( ), stop motion STD (I'm sorry for the abbreviation, but it's just so damn convenient) videos seem to be taking the wedding world by storm.

OK, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic.  After all, only a very small percentage of couples even use STD videos.  However, of those who do, a significant number have made stop motion videos.

Now, I'm a film studies major who wrote as many papers as possible on animation (I once wrote a ten-page film theory paper on The Lion King), so forgive me if I'm delving too deep into analysis here.  But this trend toward stop motion STD videos surprises me for two reasons.

One is that stop motion films are incredibly time-consuming.  You have to set up each frame by hand, and it can take hours to get thirty seconds of material.

The other is that using stop motion requires a surprising level of creativity.  Since they've virtually disappeared from Hollywood cinema (Tim Burton is the only significant exception), I'm surprised so many people thought of it.  Of course, I may have come across all of the other film major's STD videos, or maybe someone started the trend, and the others saw their work and copied the idea.

Regardless, I've been very impressed by them.  You have simple, cutesy ones like this:

 

 LEGOs Seem Particularly Popular

However, you also get really artsy stuff that looks like it belongs in an avant-garde film festival:

Gotta Love Vampire Weekend

So why are people making such time-consuming films?  And why are they making them so damn long (seriously, you do not need to take four minutes to get the point across)?

As to the latter question, I will keep my opinion to myself out of respect to the filmmakers.  But I think I've got a handle on the former.

Stop motion may take forever, but it is very easy to make well, especially on a low budget.  The biggest thing the above films have in common aside from the mode of filmmaking is that both use household items as their props.  It doesn't get much less expensive than a few LEGO people or some clothing.  Stop motion allows couples to make a cute, unique STD without spending much if any money.

It's the budget bride's dream come true.

Since most people don't avidly search YouTube for STD videos, and also because Hollywood has given up on stop motion, making your STD using this mode of filmmaking creates a completely unique look.  Indeed, you can even make it look professional much more easily than using people.  Fewer variables to deal with.  If you do it right, you won't even need to edit the film.  Add in the low cost, and now I'm surprised more people aren't doing it.

So newly engaged folks, if you want to make unforgettable STDs without shelling out much cash, just jump on the stop motion bandwagon.

And if you've made it through all that, I hereby dub you an honorary member of the Berkeley Film Department.  Or at least I would if Berkeley actually had a Film Department (we're smushed in with Rhetoric.  It's really embarrassing).

Sound reasonable?  Other ideas about why people would produce stop motion STD videos?

Invitations are not worth stressing out over. So why am I doing it anyway?

Guys, I feel like a first-class idiot right now.

Remember when I said I didn't care about invitations?  Apparently, I was lying.

The invitation I showed you before did not look so good in print.

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The colors of the printed version can only be described as bleak.  Daniel noticed it right away and did not want something so sad to represent our wedding.  Can't really argue with that.

The other sample we got from 123print.com was much happier.

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It's a little darker in print too, but it works.  Daniel really liked this one, but it just didn't feel like our wedding to me.  I like the design, but I just don't like it enough.  So we started looking for other invitations.

Unfortunately, I could not find anything nearly as cheap as 123print.com.  The ones we did find and like only barely fit into our budget and would not allow us to use our invitation budget to cover thank you cards also.  Nonetheless, we really liked some of them.

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I absolutely love this one.  Even though it's not directly related to our wedding, the water colors sort of feel like the ocean, and it really stands out which I love.  However, Daniel thinks it's not really our wedding, so we scrapped this one.

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Daniel really liked this one, but it feels too wintery to me.  Maybe if it was a different blue, but as it is, we scrapped this one as well.

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And then there's this one.  Despite the fact that it is in no way related to the theme, colors, or feel of our wedding, we both fell quickly for it.  You can put your own picture too which is pretty cool.  If price were not an issue, we would have ordered it already.

Unfortunately, price is an issue.  Regardless of our budget, we should be going for a cheap invite because it's something neither of us cares much about.  But because I am a first-class idiot, I cannot seem to let go of the invitations I actually like for the cheap one that is only OK.  The swirly blue one above would cost us much less than $100 for the invitations and response cards.  The one we really like is almost $200 even with the huge discount they sent us.  There's no way we can justify spending that much with a perfectly fine option that is so much cheaper.

And yet, and yet, I can't let go and just get the cheap one.  I just can't.  It's not even that I really dislike it.  It's fine.  But because it's my goddamn wedding, fine isn't good enough for me because I'm an idiot.  Even for the stupid invitations that I don't care about, I still want them to be good and unique and memorable.  Because I'm an idiot.

I have some ideas about how to make it work with getting some cooler invitations without spending quite so much, but I really shouldn't be wasting time looking for and ordering more samples, and it would be much better for me to learn to let go.

And yet...I just can't seem to do it.

If you know of any really cheap invitation places/websites, I'd love to hear about them.  We really need invitations and response cards together to be $150 or less.  And if you can knock some sense into my stupid, stubborn brain, that would be good too.

Poll

Invitations that go with your wedding theme/feel or invitations that you like better but are totally unrelated to the wedding theme/feel?

More on this to come, but for now, I just want your opinion.

Oh, you want an invitation? All right, if we must...

Being in a state of immobility and until recently, lacking the ability to sit up straight for my than an hour, I haven't done one bloody thing for the wedding since the surgery.  I haven't really done anything useful since the surgery.  But today, the two-week mark, it is time to jump back on the "useful member of society" bandwagon, and I did so the most painful way possible:  I started looking for jobs and invitations.

Oh how I do not care about invitations.  Daniel and I agree that this is an area where every expense should be spared and as little time as possible should be wasted.

I do want to have them, and I'd like them to be nice, but that's pretty much the extent of my interest.  I will never understand people whose ultimate wedding goal is to make their own invitations and have them be perfect.  I am just not crafty like that.

So my invitation inspiration folder is filled with cheap, easy invitation-making websites, the kind where you fill in some text, and they send you the printed version.  Easy, peasy.

Thus far, we rather like this one:

from 123print.com

(Daniel won't let me put the "sanity" part in the actual invite :( )

Simple, elegant, and appropriate.  Not particularly original, but we're not particularly concerned about that.  I'd be ready to order after less than an hour's search if it weren't for one little practical detail that I actually care about.

As you all know, the guest list and I have a hate/hate relationship.  The stress it causes me extends to the actual guests and their ability to return their invitations on time and with the proper number of people.  As in, I dearly do not want people to invite people who were not actually invited by writing their names in on the RSVP card.

To avoid having to have the "um, actually, that person wasn't invited" talk, I came up with a plan a while back.  This plan involves having personalized RSVP cards with the names of all of the invitees written out on the card, so you can check "yes" or "no" for each person.  No room to write in names means no uninvited guests on the RSVP card, right?

Unfortunately, sites like 123print.com do not seem to have this kind of personalization.  My first foray onto Etsy.com seemed like the logical solution, but it has yet to produce satisfactory results.

And so I turn to you, dear readers.  Help!  My requirements are simple:  I want cheap invitations that do not require me to do anything more than type in their text but that allow enough customization for me to produce the personalized RSVP cards described above.  And I don't want them to look like crap.  That's pretty much it.  Ideas?  Websites?  People?  Do you know anywhere/anyone who can do this for me?