Unveiling of our invites... Yahoo Messenger and Emoticon galore!

Me and my mom picked up our invites from Impress Prints yesterday and started to look at ways to package it. With my left over parchment paper and the free sticker monograms, we made a 2 inch strip to put all tie our invites together. I have told my mom that I don't like any lace or ribbon on my invitations. I don't like the ribbon effect! LOL! So the strip of parchment worked well.

Most of the finished invites before we ran out of parchment paper to make the strip.

Impress Prints copied our monogram to have as sealers.

It turned out great and I have inserted the bridal registry coupon from Trinoma and we no longer have the time to go to Rustan's to finalize our registry there. So Trinoma it is... Most of our relatives already know that we wanted monetary gifts instead of a boxed one so there is no need to put that on our invite anymore and I am really not keen on having printed in our beautiful invitation.

Next I then debated with myself whether to put the wrap sticker on the envelope or simply write the names on the envelope. My mom said that I can just write it since my handwriting is not bad and I am armed with a calligraphy pen. I wrote the names away.... Just an advice if you will be taking this route... better have the list of the guests and how you will address them on the invitations to avoid errors.

I took the calligraphy approach instead of printing the names. We will be using the wrap printout for the invites we need to mail out.

Closer look of the invites with the 2 inches of parchment strip.

Now everything is in order, the problem is how to close the envelope. I have used the monogram sticker for that purpose so with the emoticons bride and groom forwarded to me by co-w@w sister and bridal fair buddy Kristell, I made a powerpoint file with the emoticons, printed it on sticker paper and voila... instant sticker...

A page of emoticon stickers...

Cut it out one by one... I finalized some of our invites at Coffee Bean ... It was freaking hot at home!

nice nice nice.. hehehehe

I cannot believe that I was able to cut it straight.

The bunch of invites ready for distribution

This is the map that I have drafted.. Impress Print printed it for free as long as it is black and white... of course.. I don't need to be choosy anymore.

I distributed the invites already to my relatives in Manila and my officemates... We are scheduled to hand out the ones for Christian's relatives in the next couple of days. I am planning to give out the one for my Beda friends soon and mail out the ones for our other friends. It is all going as planned.

By the way, our invites were our idea but we asked the assistance of Graphizar to do the layout since I am not skilled with Photoshop or any other similar program for it to be print ready.

Total costs of the invites:

Total Costs of Invites
Impress Print (printing)	3780
Graphizar (layout)	500
DIY materials (sticker paper, parchment)	150
Total	4430
Less: Ate Pam's contribution	2000
Total	2430

Smiles of the guests after seeing our invites: PRICELESS.... hehehehe

Mock INvites

Early this morning, me and Christian went to Impress Prints office in San Juan. After a day of sending our layout, they have made a mock print out for us to check. Their office is easy to find and it is accessible too, specially to us who have no cars.. LOL! The traffic along Tandang Sora was bad today. Well traffic is always there in Manila.

When we got to the office, Jen asked us to wait... It was not a long wait. When she handed me the invite is was so cute! I cannot contain my excitement. My eyes lit up. I then read thru it and saw some mispelled names and words that we need to fix. Jen said that they can do it for us. We also talked about the map, the one I sent them is not high resolution... Hmmm... I don't even know what it means.... hehehe..... So I will just work on that or have them do it for me since Jen said that they can do it for us but they will just be using google map. I will ask my sister to take care of it tomorrow morning. I also need to forward them the copy of our monograms for the stickers that comes with the package.

Well... our invites will remain hidden from our guests... I have the pictures of it on our mywedding sites for my co-w@Wies to see. I have also started with some possible ways to package our invites aside from the envelope that Impress Prints will provide us. All things are falling into place.... Hayyy.. i wish the days are longer!!!!

received our invites layout

I received our invitation layout today from Graphizar. I have eagerly waited for this one since it will truly reflect the wedding theme that we have. I was shaking when I opened the file. I was watching the loading bar ... cannot wait for it to reach 100%. The wait is all worth it. The invites are so perfect. Christian likes it as well since he said that it is not formal. We are not formal people and I guess our invitation really represents us as a couple.

One hassle though, Christian changed his best man the last minute I received it. Grrrrr... But good thing Impress Print, the one doing the printing of the invites, will be able to change it! Whew... So we are off printing them already and hopefully by next week, it will be ready for pick up.

I will not be posting the invites since I wanted it to be a surprise for our guests. For my co-w@w brides.. you can check it out on our mywedding.com site and the webpass is available in our forum.

Presenting... our wedding theme....

Hello hello to everyone... A few days ago me and Christian were discussing what will be our theme for the wedding. We cannot think of anything until a surge of electricity ran through me! I told him that we can have a Yahoo Messenger theme or more of a chat theme, since we met through the wonderful world of chatrooms! He totally agreed with me on this and hence we have our wedding theme... everything of our stationery will be YM inspired. Checked out the photos of the invites draft that I have placed here...
This is a very rough draft of our invites. I worked on it using MS Word but will try to work on it using Adobe Photoshop when I go home to my mom's place this weekend. Our invites suppliers will be printing the final layout and I asked help with the fonts that we can use. I just wish my sister have good fonts installed in her PC.

Working without a Photoshop did not stop me from thinking of other ways of incorporating our theme in our wedding. We talked about having our table numbers as smiley YM emoticons instead of the regular numbers. Hehehehe... Again, I worked on a draft of it.

I am still trying to search for other emoticons that we can use. We need seven all together. I really want the emoticons from YM instead of the other messengers since YM is where we met. Hope someone can help me with that! We are also making the escort cards and I will write about that soon. More YM inspired DIYs to come.

One more bridal fair.... not getting tired of it!!!

Me and my cousin went to the Wedding Expo of Themes & Motifs today. We went early to avoid the crowd of people that might go today since it is the last day of the event. Before we got in the venue, my cousin met one of her former officemates --- well she is my former officemate as well since we all worked the same call center before. She is one of the exhibitors for the bridal fair.

I think we spent near two hours in the venue. Looking around suppliers... since I need to get the prices of invite suppliers and photobooth. I also wanted to try the food of Josiah's to see if I really made a mistake in booking Hizon's earlier in our preparation and without even trying other caterers. Well... what can I say... I like the food of our caterer.... I am just happy that I booked Hizon's. We even went to the food tasting of Hizon's at Palacio de Maynila just to see the difference between the two. My cousin liked the food of Hizon's as well.

While we were eating, my cousin just told me if I want to book Calliope for our invites, since they are offering a 10% discount on their invites and they are willing to work with me to get the design that I want.... I said I will really book them but will just walk around. She just then said that she will pay for it as her gift to us.... I am so happy to hear those words and I am really thankful for it. At least we have one supplier checked and we don't have to spend for it.... So we have both our rings and invites as gifts. That really made my day!!!

We also talked to our former officemate and she will work out something to meet our budget for the services that they render. I guess I will just have to pay the downpayment soon to get that check from our list as well. Everything is really taking shape but with the venue we are still zero on that one. As we went around the venue, we came across one of the designers, Merlene Marcelo and we just both laughed out loud.... Our middle names are both Marcelo and we told Merlene about it.... She just laughed as well. She had a promo this September where she will work around the budget of the bride for the dress as well as the entourage if you visit her shop. I will try to go to the place and check it out and probably bring my mom with me since I really don't know anything about dresses!!!!

Of course there are the photobooths!!!! I just went around and we tried the one by Baicapture and my photo was like yuck!!! My face was too oily... I really need to find a remedy for that one.... I know powder is a quick fix but I need a solution to stop my face from being too oily.... Hmm.....

As I mentioned earlier, we went to the food tasting of Hizon's since I want to see Palacio de Maynila and man.... I can't believe that the venue is 100,000 pesos... it is just a tent with a concrete facade for crying out loud.... My cousin told me that it was not worth it.... We just enjoyed the food especially the pritchon wrap and the cheezy lasagna.... as well as the creme brulee with blueberries .... it was so good... I don't have to eat dinner anymore since I was so full with the two food tasting that we have today!!!!

I just posted some pictures of the loot bag and the agreement slip with Calliope to document this day!!!