You're invited!

Planning our wedding has been a humbling process. I don't know if it's supposed to be, but it has been.
I started out thinking I was going to apply my boundless creativity to every aspect of the process. I quickly figured out that my skills only expand so far.
We bought paper products for our invitations early on, because I was confident I could design a beautiful invitation for us with ease, having forgotten the painstaking hours spent in computer labs for my design classes in college.
We initially were leaning toward a Wall-E theme, because it's one of our favorite movies and it's impossibly adorable.
However, Wall-E is really hard to draw, as evidenced by my failed attempts at creating a save-the-date.
After I gave up on Wall-E, we compromised on a bird theme. I trolled the Etsy pages for wedding invitations, looking for inspiration. I bought a 30-day trial to Adobe InDesign in hopes that I would become a good artist in that amount of time. By day three, I'd given up and put out feelers for anyone who would design the invites for me.
I did what's called an alchemy request on Etsy, looking for someone to help me draw the birds for the save-the-dates. Typography and extremely basic things are not beyond my grasp, but I was having an awful time electronically rendering two cute little birds. I set my desired cost at $25.
More than a dozen people applied for the job, which surprised me a lot. On the second day, one of the people whose designs I had admired, arippke, said she would do everything - save the dates, invites and RSVP cards and envelopes for $40.
She's done a beautiful job, and we're going to get the save-the-dates printed tomorrow. Out of respect for her designs, I won't post the original image. I will take some photos when we start stuffing envelopes.
What I've learned is that you can't do everything yourself, but if you spend a little bit of time looking, you will find someone who will be willing to help you out.

Da burds

These guys are gonna be our cake topper.

A cozy feeling

I spent the first several months of my engagement being shocked at the sheer amount of things people are expected to do when they get married, and the cost of those individual things. A videographer? A calligrapher for the invitations?? A cake knife and server that cost more than $50??? They don't tell you about these "traditions" when you're dating.
Shortly after a giddy visit to David's Bridal to try on dresses, I began receiving catalogs in the mail with ideas for favors, minutiae for the wedding, and gift ideas for bridesmaids and groomsmen. I know as a recent college graduate and a reporter that I don't make very much money, but I was shocked at the amount of money people spend on each favor for their guests, or at least the amount the catalogs want you to spend.
About that time is when I started brainstorming with my fiance on what we could make ourselves. I knit and crochet, and my fiance is a paper craft aficionado, so our first idea was that we would make different animals for each table at the reception. I thought I would use the amigurumi style, a simple way of crocheting shapes popularized in Japan. The problem is it takes me a really long time to make amigurumi animals, because they are simple, but sometimes there are a lot of finishing steps.
We decided to stick with amigurumi, but instead, I would make simple hearts. I am using a free pattern from a very smart blogger called owlishly, (click here to see the pattern or download it), since I'm not making any profit from the wedding favors.Our colors are purple and black, so I have been making the majority of the hearts in various purples. There are a few in crazy colors, just because I had some yarn sitting around and I wanted to crochet it up. I'm hoping I'll have enough different colors to satisfy all the kids in the crowd.
The other thing I plan to crochet myself is our cake topper. We had initially planned on having Wall-E and Eve as our cake topper, because we love the movie Wall-E, but I started having second thoughts and fretting that it may look too like a kid's birthday cake. Then I started working on our invitations (another post) and decided I wanted a bird theme instead. Daniel has been patient and understanding with me, so it was easy to convince him of birds.
I looked to Etsy for cake toppers, and there were plenty, but they are all appallingly expensive. The proverbial light bulb then appeared over my head and I clicked to my favorite compendium of amigurumi-style patterns, Lion Brand Yarn's pattern database. There, I found the perfect little birdlets.

This photo is from the Lion Brand website, so this is not what our birds will look like. But you get the idea.
I've been able to drastically reduce our costs by making these items. Granted, it is taking some time to make 100+ crochet hearts, but I think it's worth it. I want to put effort into the things we provide for our guests. I want them to know how happy we are that they are there to celebrate our marriage.