Postage Hell

A little note about STD's.

If you are planning on going the ever-popular postcard route the way we did, opt for a 4x6 card size or less and avoid the 5x7. We failed to think that through before ordering from OverNightPrints.com and ran into a little problem...

4x6 in. (or less) = $.28 per card.
5x7 in. = $.44 per card.

Might not seem like that big of a deal at first, but then multiple that number times 200+ and you've got yourself a big fat extra expense for no good reason.


In an effort to see the silver lining, I think this was meant to be a little lesson before the big invite mail out. Our original idea was pretty kick-ass: Since October, we've been collecting old paper towel tubes from family and friends. The plan was, we would make our own mini silkscreen 10x16 in. poster prints and use the paper towel tubes as mailers. To reinforce the tubes, we were working with our designer friends on making a tag board overlay that would look like birchtree bark, complete with the return and mailing addresses having a "carved out" effect. To seal 'em, we were going to buy some tube ends from Uline at bulk, and then create a sticker to look like the inside rings of a tree when you saw it, and have that sticker cover each end. Once completed, it would look like a little branch and fit really nicely with the whole outdoorsy-whimsical feel we were trying to go for.

Apparently no creative effort comes with some sort of aftershock. After some estimated calculations on the USPS web site, it appears our idea would really run us up on shipping costs. We could try UPS, but it's still gonna be up there. Not sure this is going to pan out how we hoped and it looks like we're going to have to figure something else out.

To all our friends and family, regulars at work and perfect strangers who have been helping us collect paper towels tubes: Thank you so much for thinking of us and sorry we won't be able to use them. I promise we will do our best to find a creative use for some of them and recycle the rest.

Back to the drawing board.

STD's and Indiana (haha, I know)

With 192 days to go, the wedding is basically 6 months away we have decided to make one tiny, little change... the wedding is now officially going to be held in Southbend, Indiana.

It's just that, with everything going so smoothly we thought, "hey, let's change that." Chicago wasn't enough of a challenge!

In all seriousness, the big determining factors were the following:

• With over 250 guests, finding a caterer for less than $9K (estimated before tax and without) booze wasn't seeming as though it would be likely to happen. I have some great recommendations if you're realistic about how much you intend to spend. Email me for deets.
  
• October 9th is marathon weekend in Chicago. Hotel rooms are around $300 and up.
• With one of the highest sales taxes, adding that to every bill was beginning to add up.
• This will make it easier and hopefully less expensive for all the guests. For Ohio peeps, the drive was cut from 6 to 4 hours. For Chicago peeps, there's a direct train and it's not too much of a drive if you have a car or a friend willing to make the trek in their car (we're also working on getting a friends and family pickup system in place for non-car owners) and for Indiana there's no commute.
  
• We can (hopefully!) have the "backyard"/low-key wedding style we've been dreaming up without trying to replicate it for a lot more money in Chicago.
  

The plan is to scope out the venue in question next week. Until then, we're still in the land of TBD which is honestly pretty unnerving at this stage in the game.


On a much brighter note, JCakes and I were able to collaborate on a very sweet little midwest-centric save-the-date design. There was some changing since the back was supposed to have an Illinois outline, (I am now really appreciating the fact that I did not call this blog something other than "awesome MIDWEST wedding," with the location changes and all) but ultimately, we both love it. Here's a preview...


It's not at all stuffy, it makes sense for us and it's just the right amount of cute. Pretty awesome.

Our good friend Christyl Uhan did the final editing and sent it out for printing through www.overnightprints.com (My friend Rachel over at 10.02.10 ties the knot can vouch, it's the way to go if you're going DIY) and Christyl was also able to score us a discount on the printing costs. The only downside on the site is that you jump from ordering 100 to 250 and the next up is 500. Not too hard to work around if you have a lot of people living in the same household. For us, 100 was just a little too shy of enough to cut the mustard. Honestly, I'm just glad we got them out. We should be receiving them in the next week and then it's just a matter of getting them all out to our nearest and dearest and on to the next task.

Whew! I'll be so relieved when we finally this stuff locked down.



P.S. If you were hoping to snag October 9th at Humboldt Park, hit me up. We're sad to see it go because it has a crapload of potential.