Hand-making my invitations

So after searching the internet for the exact invitations I wanted, I found out that I have very expensive tastes:  lace invitations.

Our theme of delicate lace and cream-white-ivory-pewter color scheme just seemed perfect for these types of invitations.

So hand-made invitations it was.

I bought the paper and lace with coupons (or otherwise on sale) at hobby lobby and from then on glued, glued, and glued some more.

I also knew that people may want to hang the invitation on their fridge, so from the beginning, i knew the invitation itself would have to pop out of whatever I constructed.

In Microsoft Word, I wrote out the invitation and went around the web to find my favorite cursive font (Kunstler Script).  I used "small case" of Bell MT as well. I then went through the painstaking task of finding a background. We tried lace backgrounds, flowers of all sorts, and settled on queen anne's lace.

A trip to Staples them all printed up.

Designed and printed, I placed them into hand-made tabs.  Well, sort of handmade.

This punch out gave me ruffled circles.  I cut 4 corners from them and glued them to black paper photo corner tabs.  The tabs were secured to the pearled paper and the invitation slid into these tabs.  Perfect!

Next I had to make the "case" to hold this beautiful matted invitation.  I choose grey because of the beautiful contrast.  I cut a 12 x 12 into two major pieces: a 12 x 7 and a 5 x 7.  I then made little pockets for the RSVP cards.

 And then everything had to dry.... and dry... and dry some more.

Having secured the lace to the grey paper before doing the rest of the inside gluing, all I had to do then was fold them up, tie them with ribbon and put them in an envelope.  I added paper doilies to the inside of many of the envelopes.

And there it is!  Invitations that I LOVE.......  but that took a LOT of time.  But, hey, I'll only get married once!

Catering Choices on a budget

So, basically, there are no catering choices for the budget savvy bride, only smaller guest lists.  We looked pretty much everywhere.  The Marinated Mushroom came highly recommended,but when we called we were told they no longer do weddings more than 50 people.  Ouch.

So without any friends' recommendations, we were left with google.

Andrew's Catering looked nice and they were very responsive, which was also fantastic.  Their prices, however, were very high when compared with others.  While the food may be that good, my budget just couldn't stretch another $700.

My primary complaint with caterers in Tallahassee is that it is the worst customer-service oriented business ever.  They don't want to give you any price quotes without sitting down with you, feeling you out for how high you'll go, and then offering to give enough discounts to you to meet your max budget.  I wanted to get an idea of people's price ranges by email (I work regular office hours, so 9-5 was tough to try and call or meet).  Almost no one gave prices over email, even when I was very specific as to what we wanted.  Many never even responded to email.  So, my advice is to tell them at least $300 lower than your max budget and see what they'll offer up.

For us, we were looking for a chicken-based dish, with a vegetarian option, a starch and vegetable side, and that's it.  We got it from FSU, of all places--Classic Fare Catering.  They were the  most reasonably priced and we'll have our "meal" be the pasta stations.  We don't think it'll be the best food ever, but it will appeal to everyone's taste, they can order the type of pasta, topping, and sauce that they want, and it will be somewhat fun.  For china service that they'll set on the table, the "chefs" for the two pasta stations, the food (including chicken, which can be added to the pasta), and two appetizers, we came in at $25 per person.  Sadly, that was the best we could find in Tallahassee.