We are Travis and Tina. We're planning our low-key urban wedding. These are our tales as we coordinate our celebration.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Invites: Months in the Making

When I first got engaged, a friend pulled me aside and told me that there are a lot of expenses in a wedding and, in order to stay sane, to ignore all of the hoopla -- except for one thing. She told me to focus in on one thing that was important and splurge. She said I'll be glad I did.

Well, I decided I wanted cute custom letterpress invitations. I mean, we are only inviting family, so it couldn't possibly cost that much. Well, folks, yes it can! Once I processed the sticker shock, I decided letterpress was out, as was a totally custom design.

Luckily, I found a very lovely San Francisco themed invitation through Hello Lucky. Sure, the letterpress version was well out of reasonable price range, but the digital version was OK and I couldn't resist the quirky, simple theme.
Time to Assess Invites

Even though the invites aren't a custom design, I felt like there was enough decision-making involved as it was. Paper type, ink color, wording, envelope color, label color, etc. I set up a time for Travis and I to visit Hello Lucky in person. They're right here in San Francisco, so we swung by after work one Friday.

We had a lovely and short appointment where Stewey helped us out even though we weren't going full custom. He pointed us in the right direction and gave us some take home samples. We also got to see the letterpress(es) in action!
Decisions

We headed home and that weekend committed to the purchase of invites, RSVP cards and labels. Luckily, we'd already asked our moms (thanks, moms!) to compile addresses of all family invited. I make it sound easy. It actually took months to get our addresses together, but, in the end, I'm so glad we had labels made for us. It helped round out the look of the invites!

Hello Lucky is an online stationary shop so we customized and ordered all online. Travis was in charge!

Ordering Our Invites

After numerous proofs, exchanges with the very patient Lillian at HL and final confirmations, we finally received our invitations about a month or so later. It was very exciting to open up our box and see the invitations in real life.

Invites In Hand!

We purchased cheesy ring stamps (they were out of the King/Queen of Hearts stamps -- darn!), affixed and mailed off our lovely invitations last week, 3 months to the day before our Big Day! While we didn't really splurge on the invites, I'm glad we spent so much time on them. They turned out perfect.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Stepping Outside Our Comfort Zone

So we had a wedding photo shoot on Sunday -- except it wasn't for our wedding. A friend of a friend needs some shots to showcase her green wedding cooperative and Ryan, who was with us on the day we met, asked if we'd be interested.

This is not something we'd be into upon first glance. However, I figured it would give us some good insight into the whole wedding thing and some good contacts. I volunteered us. We chalked up the experience to trying something new -- an adventure!

Shivering Between Takes

We can't talk too much about the experience, but hair was done (lotsa hairspray and bobby pins for me - slicked back for Travis) and makeup applied (yep, fake eyelashes). Travis got a bow tie, wore his actual wedding suit and I wore a borrowed wedding dress. We both had borrowed rings and shoes. Photos were taken in all varieties at Dolores Park, 24th Street and City Hall.

Hair Done Up

The weather was seemingly perfect. Until we had to stand outside in it for hours. Anyone that knows San Francisco knows that sunny days are not necessarily warm days. Everyone was super accommodating and sweet, but boy was I glad to get into a warm steamy shower at the end of the day and stop shivering!
Travis Waiting For Direction

Travis and I don't necessarily like to be the center of attention so we were definitely outside of our comfort zone. There was a lot of awkward and stiff posing, but the photo shoot team was gracious and embraced our square selves.

All in all, Travis and I agree it was an interesting experience and we'll get some fun photos out of it. We won't be modeling again soon, though -- that's checked off our life lists! It was also fun to place wedding dress up a few months before the Big Day!