The beginning of our invitations!

I've spent a lot of time looking at invitations, ordering samples, and looking at even more invitations. I LOVE all the unique letterpress invitations out there but they were definitely out of our budget. While we aren't having a budget wedding per se; we want to save money on the things that aren't as important to us so we can splurge on the things that are. At the same time, having an invitation that's unique was important.

I found the petal invitations on Paper Source but the kits they had definitely weren't us. I created a vision of something I liked, ordered the paper, and I'm so happy with the results. Simple, bright, colorful, and definitely not your typical wedding invitation!

The assembly is in progress and thanks to my fabulous girlfriends they're almost done! We spent 2 short evenings cutting the circles out, cutting them in half, and gluing them to the petals. The next night we finished up cutting out the envelope liners and glued them on. Here they are in progress:

Kim cutting out the envelope liners-we had a template from Paper Source.

Fiskers adjustable circle cutter made this go quickly!

Andrea gluing on the circles

Almost done!!

141 days, really?

It seemed like I got it all together the first week we were engaged; I was so far ahead!

After our New Year's Eve engagement, we quickly decided to get married in Napa Valley. Hopefully at a family friend's vineyard! I began scouring the internet looking for a reception venue that would come close to fitting in to our budget. After much searching, we found the perfect place and are now going to have the ceremony and the reception there. Because it's a peak time for weddings in Napa, we ended up booking the location site unseen!!!!! for our wedding on August 9th, 2009. Thank God for the internet and Google image searches or I never would have been comfortable doing that. I don't want to show pictures of the location yet, because I want our guests to be surprised. One clue, it is a vineyard!

Because the venue sent along a list of preferred vendors, it made it a lot easier to begin securing them. Some of the categories (music & catering especially), you can't deviate from the list so that makes it easier to narrow it down. So far we have a photographer, a DJ, a florist, and have the caterers narrowed down to 2. And although it was over our budget, we hired a minister rather than having a friend be an officiant because we wanted a non-denominational Christian ceremony.

I also ordered my dress (which I love but was ENTIRELY different than the ones I thought I wanted), the flower girls dress, and chose the color (watermelon) for the bridesmaid dresses. Since the BM are in 2 states, I went with David's Bridal to make it easy; and let them choose their own dresses. Here are a couple:




And here's the flower girl dress (ordered in champagne):




But since this whirlwhind of activity?? Nothing. We JUST decided to go to Napa 5/15-17 to meet with caterers, see venue, meet the minister, and taste cake. Oh, and to get my hair done!

I'll be posting all my inspiration to add meaning to our ceremony and reception without spending a lot of $. Our budget was eaten up by the venue and catering, so the rest will be a lot simpler!

On to the details!!!