It's my birthday!

I am 30 years old today :O  !!?!  And I have had a pretty fantastic day despite having to work, and it being the last accounting day of the month which is always super busy.

farewell youth.

I was treated to lunch by my little brother (he had to work this evening) at BJ's Brew House, which was delicious.  He and my Mom gave a present to both Aaron and I - a stay at Hotel Zaza for our wedding night!!!!  So exciting!!!!

<3

After work my Mom and I hung out a bit before we met up with Aaron for birthday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory!  We had a delicious feast, and Aaron got me some gorgeous flowers and the new Mindy Kaling book which I wanted so bad!  I had given a bunch out as gifts to my friends, but refrained from buying one for me because we are on a budget.  I got it literally 2 hours ago and have read half of it already.  Win!   I also got a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my bestie Katrina yesterday at work.  I love getting flowers :)  

So it has been a pretty great day filled with over eating, and the cherry on top?  The Addams Family Values is on TV right now!  That is seriously one of the greatest movies of our time and among my favorites, so hilarious!

Source

Here's to the next great decade!

Our Winter Wonderland Wedding Invites - Part 2

I bet you thought I forgot, didn't you...

Refresh your memory with Part 1 here


I included 2 insert cards in our invitations.  The first was for accommodations and hotel info.  I also put our wedding website which has other hotels if you are brand loyal or don't like saving money.

Then we have a directions card to get to the church and the reception.  The directions to the church are good enough, but the reception location is downtown - thus a little tricky.  Our plan was to put better directions and a map at the back of our wedding program.  That way you have it handy when you are headed there!

Then we of course had the RSVP card.  We kept it pretty simple, but made sure to include the deadline!

I knew I wanted to do postcard RSVPs to save on the postage.  Advice though - I thought I could just do a basic card stock but it was waaay too flimsy to get through the post office in one piece, so we added the back.  I think it is a nice touch and color contrast though, so that worked out well.  But wouldn't you know that postcard postage would go up one stinkin' cent from 2 months before when I got super cute polar bear stamps.  That Tiffany lamp stamp ruins the whole look of it!  Oh well.  

I didn't know what sort of box to put in front of the options, so I just went with a circle.  I made all of these in Microsoft Word, so my choices were limited.  I did get some back that were bubbled in like a scantron, and that made me laugh a little. :)

And that is our invitations.  My advice again, is that if you are brave enough to make your own wedding invitations, give yourself plenty of time.  It is a lot more work than it seems!

How to keep track of the RSVPs

Checking the mail has never been so much fun!  Every day a few more RSVPs come in, and it just brightens my stress-filled days.  I only wish it wasn't my wedding so that I'd have some quality hanging out time with everyone!

With a wedding the size of ours, there are a lot of people to keep track of on the guest list.  I am not sure if there is an easier way, but I thought I'd share my method of keeping track of everyone.

1. I keep all the incoming cards for back up.  And possibly a future scrap booking project.

2. I really have a deep love for excel spreadsheets.  Therefore, I have all of my invitees on a basic excel list with their addresses.  I use one line for each person, and if they are bringing an unknown to me person, I just have 'date' as a placeholder.

When I get in their RSVP they get highlighted on the left hand side so I know they wont need to get hunted down on January 8th.  And then on the left I put the number of people coming.  If they can't come, I just put a zero for good record keeping, lol.  

If there is a baby involved, I just put them behind a slash so I can keep the kid head count separate.  I am proud of page 1, almost all have responded!  Good job guys.

I am hoping that we will get a good amount of RSVPs in this week and next week because the deadline is January 7th.  I don't want to have to make a billion phone calls, but from what I read from other brides, it is pretty inevitable.  Until then, I will be anxiously waiting by the mail box :)