We're still waiting on RSVPs.....but hopefully people will get to us soon so we can invite more if we're able!!! Although that will also mean making more invitations which doesn't sound like fun :/
Anyway, I'm also waiting on emails from like five people right now about wedding-related things. Hair and makeup, photography, etc. So much just waiting for answers when planning a wedding! But we're getting there! We got the vests and ties for the guys. We got some burlap table runners from a friend of Kevin's who used them at their wedding! We are getting blue mason jars from a family member to use as centerpieces. I got the table cloths a while back. I need to order napkins still. We are going to do little plants for the favors (still need to order little flower pots). I think I found some shoes. We are working on rehearsal dinner plans. We booked manicures and pedicures (yay Sharing Spree and sites like that for good deals!). We have an amazing couple who has volunteered to help get the food ready on the day of and tons of amazing family members who are making delicious goodies for us to serve. Which brings us to the current issue.
I have been going back and forth for the past few weeks on whether to do the meat ourselves or buying the pulled pork from the food cart guy across the street from my work. He makes amazing smoked meats and offered to give me suuuuch a good deal (Go visit him! He's on SW 4th between Clay and Columbia downtown Portland. Get the pulled pork tray with Asian sauce over rice. YUM.). Any catering places I checked charge between $11 and $15 per pound for pulled pork. Well we are serving 200 people (about 1/2 pound per person is the normal serving amount), which would equal about 125 pounds of pork (figuring in some extra)! That's between $1300 and $1800 just for the meat! He was going to charge me a fraction of that, but still about $600-700 more than it would cost to do the meat ourselves....So. We're back to the plan of making it. Really, storage space is the biggest issue. All we have to do is stick it in a crock pot and let it cook. So it will take time and space more than anything, not much actual preparation work. And we can do it in batches, so I think it will be fine.
But then we come to other foods. We want to have pasta salad, potato salad, green salad and cole slaw along with the main dish. I know about 1/2 pound per person of meat is what we should prepare, and that is easy enough to figure out. But how much salad?! 1/2 cup per person is the normal serving size for salad. And one gallon has 16 cups, so one gallon of salad is about 32 servings. Again allowing for extra, we'd want about 8 gallons of salad. But we don't want 8 gallons of EACH salad. I've been trying to figure out how much of each salad we should have. And would 8 gallons really be enough total? We don't want to run out of food! 2 gallons of each salad doesn't quite seem right. What if one salad is way more popular than another? So what I'm thinking is that we will shoot for 3 gallons of each salad. Which would be 96 full-sized servings, but people take less when there are more salads to choose from. So. That's what we're shooting for. I'll post afterward how that worked out since apparently no one on the whole internet has information like that!
So now to arrange all the food-makers and helpers. And get serving platters and figure out how and where to store all the food. Wish me luck! And any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Some websites that have been helpful in giving ideas for quantities:
Ellen's Kitchen
Great Party Recipes
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Invitations and other updates
Oh my goodness. Where has the time gone? I'm done with school, how am I busier now than when I had 12 credits of classes?!?! According to my Knot.com profile, there are 44 days to go to the wedding. WHAT?! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!?!
Just kidding. Mostly. We really have a lot taken care of! Okay, so what has happened since I finished school and last blogged. Has it really only been one month? Wowza. Here's a quick rundown of the past month: Ben surprised me with some amazing graduation parties, we helped my parents get some stuff done to get their house ready to sell (Sad. But exciting for them! Go here to check it out and buy it!), we put the invitations together and sent them out, we found an apartment and Ben moved into it (I will move in after we get married in 44 days!), we booked our honeymoon plane tickets, the honeymoon plane tickets went down by $150 each (lesson learned: after booking tickets, RESIST THE URGE to check the prices), we started our premarital counseling, I have been applying for all kinds of jobs, I moved in with Kevin and Helen (yay roomies! Although I am not here very often!), and we have gotten a lot of wedding stuff figured out.
1 of 2 surprise graduation parties planned by my amazing fiance! Some of our amazing
house church friends met us at Benihana for a surprise dinner for me! Then later that weekend,
surprise party #2 at my parent's place! <3
First let's talk about the invitations! My roommate (former! sad!) Megan did an amaaazing job on them and designed some beautiful pieces for us! After finally finding the right paper and envelopes, and changing our minds about a million different things a billion different times (sorry, Megs!), we finally got stuff printed. I don't even know how that happened, she had to like change the alignment and rotation and blahdy blah designy things, but she got everything printed.
Then we went to this place in Beaverton where we got them all cut. For $15. Seriously. We could have literally spent HOURS cutting each invitation from the page. They did it in 5 minutes. (Of course, Megan had printed crop marks on the papers which made it possible for them to cut in the right places!). Highly recommend doing that if you DIY your invites. Save yourself the time, stress and lost appendages and just get it cut somewhere! They just charged us the shop minimum since there were so few papers (compared to the normal quantities they deal with).
So after gettting them cut, we spent an evening putting them together. Ben and I had a pretty good assembly line going and we really got things done pretty quickly. We had gone back and forth on using an RSVP card, but finally decided on having one. We went with a Mad Libs style RSVP, which has been so fun! We found some samples online (yay Pinerest!) and combined them to create the wording we wanted. We did it postcard-style and the front of the card had the actual mad libs with a place for the guests to fill in their name (more on that later). The back had our address and a place for the number of guests. Since we have limited space, we filled in how many seats we had reserved for them, then allowed a place for them to fill out how many would actually be attending. We didn't want people bringing their cousins and brother's girlfriends, or things would get quickly out of hand. So we had to be kind of specific. Now, here's the issue we had with the Mad Libs portion. I was afraid people were going to send the cards back without actually filling out the Mad Libs and wouldn't fill in their names, so we wouldn't know who was coming or not. After going back and forth, I decided to fill in the names ahead of time on most of them. On those who we allowed to bring a "guest," I just wrote a number that corresponded to their name on my Excel spreadsheet instead of filling out the name so I would still know who it was. I am pretty proud of myself for this, because we have received some without names, but I still knew who it was.
We still hate that we weren't able to invite EVERYONE that we wanted. Although not many people have RSVPd yet, so maybe we'll get to invite more after all... (If you are reading this and received an invite but haven't yet RSVP'd, please do so!). Anyway, now we are awaiting the responses and working out all the other details! More to come on that later!
Here is a list of resources we used for the invites:
- Paperworks.com for paper bag-colored paper and matching envelopes. Cheaper than anywhere else and really great quality paper! We paid a little under $50 for 100 sheets of cover-weight paper and 150 matching size 10 envelopes, with shipping included.
- We also got some paper from Michael's (less than $4 for 100 sheets of paper bag-colored cover-weight paper, but the color wasn't quite right, so we used that for the RSVP cards) and from Paper Source ($5ish for 10 sheets of paper....which was too light anyway besides costing way too much, so we used that for the little registry tag).
- Amazon.com for the lace ribbon and twine we used to tie everything together (that link will take you to the specific ribbon). The ribbon was really pretty and good quality. Not quite as soft as I imagined, but it still looked beautiful and wasn't too bulky in the envelope. I also ordered a small hole punch from Amazon since the twine we used was really thin, it would have looked weird with a normal-sized hole.
- The US Post Office, clearly. The invites themselves didn't weigh too much, so by weight we could have used just one normal $.45 (or whatever postage is...) stamp. But because the ribbon we tied made it a tiny bit bulky, they had to hand-process them which cost an extra $.20 per invite. So glad Megan suggested we go in to check about postage before buying stamps/mailing them, we would have gotten a lot of things returned....! We also bought postcard stamps for the RSVP cards (again-going to the post office to make sure our postcards were an appropriate size to not have issues when mailing!).
All in all, we didn't need that much material and the time it took to put them together was really low! Megan spent more time designing them than we did putting them together I think! We spent a total of
about $225 on the invitations, including all materials and postage. We made about 120-ish inviations, but have the materials to make more. We actually have a ton of paper left, which will be convenient for programs!
Just kidding. Mostly. We really have a lot taken care of! Okay, so what has happened since I finished school and last blogged. Has it really only been one month? Wowza. Here's a quick rundown of the past month: Ben surprised me with some amazing graduation parties, we helped my parents get some stuff done to get their house ready to sell (Sad. But exciting for them! Go here to check it out and buy it!), we put the invitations together and sent them out, we found an apartment and Ben moved into it (I will move in after we get married in 44 days!), we booked our honeymoon plane tickets, the honeymoon plane tickets went down by $150 each (lesson learned: after booking tickets, RESIST THE URGE to check the prices), we started our premarital counseling, I have been applying for all kinds of jobs, I moved in with Kevin and Helen (yay roomies! Although I am not here very often!), and we have gotten a lot of wedding stuff figured out.
house church friends met us at Benihana for a surprise dinner for me! Then later that weekend,
surprise party #2 at my parent's place! <3
First let's talk about the invitations! My roommate (former! sad!) Megan did an amaaazing job on them and designed some beautiful pieces for us! After finally finding the right paper and envelopes, and changing our minds about a million different things a billion different times (sorry, Megs!), we finally got stuff printed. I don't even know how that happened, she had to like change the alignment and rotation and blahdy blah designy things, but she got everything printed.
Then we went to this place in Beaverton where we got them all cut. For $15. Seriously. We could have literally spent HOURS cutting each invitation from the page. They did it in 5 minutes. (Of course, Megan had printed crop marks on the papers which made it possible for them to cut in the right places!). Highly recommend doing that if you DIY your invites. Save yourself the time, stress and lost appendages and just get it cut somewhere! They just charged us the shop minimum since there were so few papers (compared to the normal quantities they deal with).
So after gettting them cut, we spent an evening putting them together. Ben and I had a pretty good assembly line going and we really got things done pretty quickly. We had gone back and forth on using an RSVP card, but finally decided on having one. We went with a Mad Libs style RSVP, which has been so fun! We found some samples online (yay Pinerest!) and combined them to create the wording we wanted. We did it postcard-style and the front of the card had the actual mad libs with a place for the guests to fill in their name (more on that later). The back had our address and a place for the number of guests. Since we have limited space, we filled in how many seats we had reserved for them, then allowed a place for them to fill out how many would actually be attending. We didn't want people bringing their cousins and brother's girlfriends, or things would get quickly out of hand. So we had to be kind of specific. Now, here's the issue we had with the Mad Libs portion. I was afraid people were going to send the cards back without actually filling out the Mad Libs and wouldn't fill in their names, so we wouldn't know who was coming or not. After going back and forth, I decided to fill in the names ahead of time on most of them. On those who we allowed to bring a "guest," I just wrote a number that corresponded to their name on my Excel spreadsheet instead of filling out the name so I would still know who it was. I am pretty proud of myself for this, because we have received some without names, but I still knew who it was.
We still hate that we weren't able to invite EVERYONE that we wanted. Although not many people have RSVPd yet, so maybe we'll get to invite more after all... (If you are reading this and received an invite but haven't yet RSVP'd, please do so!). Anyway, now we are awaiting the responses and working out all the other details! More to come on that later!
Here is a list of resources we used for the invites:
- Paperworks.com for paper bag-colored paper and matching envelopes. Cheaper than anywhere else and really great quality paper! We paid a little under $50 for 100 sheets of cover-weight paper and 150 matching size 10 envelopes, with shipping included.
- We also got some paper from Michael's (less than $4 for 100 sheets of paper bag-colored cover-weight paper, but the color wasn't quite right, so we used that for the RSVP cards) and from Paper Source ($5ish for 10 sheets of paper....which was too light anyway besides costing way too much, so we used that for the little registry tag).
- Amazon.com for the lace ribbon and twine we used to tie everything together (that link will take you to the specific ribbon). The ribbon was really pretty and good quality. Not quite as soft as I imagined, but it still looked beautiful and wasn't too bulky in the envelope. I also ordered a small hole punch from Amazon since the twine we used was really thin, it would have looked weird with a normal-sized hole.
- The US Post Office, clearly. The invites themselves didn't weigh too much, so by weight we could have used just one normal $.45 (or whatever postage is...) stamp. But because the ribbon we tied made it a tiny bit bulky, they had to hand-process them which cost an extra $.20 per invite. So glad Megan suggested we go in to check about postage before buying stamps/mailing them, we would have gotten a lot of things returned....! We also bought postcard stamps for the RSVP cards (again-going to the post office to make sure our postcards were an appropriate size to not have issues when mailing!).
All in all, we didn't need that much material and the time it took to put them together was really low! Megan spent more time designing them than we did putting them together I think! We spent a total of
about $225 on the invitations, including all materials and postage. We made about 120-ish inviations, but have the materials to make more. We actually have a ton of paper left, which will be convenient for programs!
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
FINISHY!
I think I've written a blog post with that title before. Once upon a time in Korea.
This past year has been a whirlwind! I came back from a semester in Spain, moved in with some amazing roommates who have become dear friends, met and fell in love with an amazing guy, went to Korea, got engaged and graduated from college! Whaaaat?? I just today turned in my last assignment for my very last class. And now I have to get my apartment packed up to move, plan a wedding, find a job and get MARRIED!
I have kind of let everything go the past couple weeks because I was working on getting everything done for school. So now that everything is done, I guess I should get back to planning! I still need to find some people to take care of things, get decorations, print and assemble and mail the invites, buy plane tickets to the honeymoon (we might have to move the wedding up since the cheapest flights we found leave at 10:30 pm the night of the wedding!), and move. I hate moving. We found a place in Beaverton that we are going to move to. But first I'm going to move in with Kevin and Helen for a couple months until the wedding. So it's going to be a busy summer! I think we can do it!
This past year has been a whirlwind! I came back from a semester in Spain, moved in with some amazing roommates who have become dear friends, met and fell in love with an amazing guy, went to Korea, got engaged and graduated from college! Whaaaat?? I just today turned in my last assignment for my very last class. And now I have to get my apartment packed up to move, plan a wedding, find a job and get MARRIED!
I have kind of let everything go the past couple weeks because I was working on getting everything done for school. So now that everything is done, I guess I should get back to planning! I still need to find some people to take care of things, get decorations, print and assemble and mail the invites, buy plane tickets to the honeymoon (we might have to move the wedding up since the cheapest flights we found leave at 10:30 pm the night of the wedding!), and move. I hate moving. We found a place in Beaverton that we are going to move to. But first I'm going to move in with Kevin and Helen for a couple months until the wedding. So it's going to be a busy summer! I think we can do it!
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Get 'er done!
Every time I get something wedding-related accomplished, I feel so fantastic! And then realize I have barely scratched the surface. But that's okay, I'll celebrate each little thing anyway!
We had a pretty successful weekend! We found an amazing suit for Ben and vests for the guys (dark brown for Ben and tan for the guys) at Macy's (AND they were on sale!!!). And we even found a tie (well, two, now we have to choose between them!) for him. So that was huge! The suit looks amazing on him and will be so good with all our colors. So yay! Kayla and I still need to go shopping for a dress for her, and then we need to find ties for the boys. And we need to find a fourth groomsman for Ben since Jace can't make it :( BUT! So many good things!
Then today I got an email from Debbie letting me know that one of her coworkers has an Etsy shop where she makes little flower accessories. So I'm talking to her about making me a sash to go with my dress! I was going to make it myself, but there are some things I need to just have someone else take care of for me! Also today I ordered lace for the invitations! It was a good price from Amazon, the cheapest I could find, and seems like it will be perfect. Of course, that's the scary thing about ordering online...I don't really know what it will look like. But I think it should do the job!
We had a pretty successful weekend! We found an amazing suit for Ben and vests for the guys (dark brown for Ben and tan for the guys) at Macy's (AND they were on sale!!!). And we even found a tie (well, two, now we have to choose between them!) for him. So that was huge! The suit looks amazing on him and will be so good with all our colors. So yay! Kayla and I still need to go shopping for a dress for her, and then we need to find ties for the boys. And we need to find a fourth groomsman for Ben since Jace can't make it :( BUT! So many good things!
Then today I got an email from Debbie letting me know that one of her coworkers has an Etsy shop where she makes little flower accessories. So I'm talking to her about making me a sash to go with my dress! I was going to make it myself, but there are some things I need to just have someone else take care of for me! Also today I ordered lace for the invitations! It was a good price from Amazon, the cheapest I could find, and seems like it will be perfect. Of course, that's the scary thing about ordering online...I don't really know what it will look like. But I think it should do the job!
So next up on the list is getting the rest of the invitation materials and putting those together and sending them out. I am going to send them out a little earlier than traditional since it is a holiday weekend. Maybe like 9 or 10 weeks before the Big Day. Anyway, we're working on all that next!
I also need to figure out the food situation. I would love if I could find someone to cater for us, but I don't think anyone will cater for 200 people for $5 per person.....cuz that's about all we can afford. But if you know anyone willing to do that, please let me know! Otherwise we just need to finalize the menu and figure out who is going to do what!
I also need to figure out hair and makeup. I was planning on also just doing that myself, but might find someone to help out with that since I am pretty hopeless in both of those areas.
Anyway, things are getting done! AND SO IS SCHOOL! I only have FOUR weeks left! I may get my first C in my last term of school because of my stupid Science professor's lack of instructions on ANYTHING, but I don't even care because I will be DONE. And then have to find a job. And a new place to live.
Oh dear...
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
RSVPs and other things
So many decisions to make! I keep checking things of the "To-do" list but then it seems like it doesn't even make a dent on the things left to actually do. Anyway, right now I'm working with my amazing roommate on invitations. She has some really great ideas and has done some cute mock-ups. But of course there are some decisions to be made. We know we will be including the general invitation and a map of the venue so people know where to go. Although as I just typed that, I'm wondering how necessary that is even...it will be online. Anyway, I still think we should include that. Now for the other things. Do we include registry information? "Amy and Ben are registered at ______________." Or do we just tell them to visit our website to get registry information? And then there are the RSVPs. Oh dear.
I've been thinking online RSVPs are what we want. Just include a little card telling them how many spaces we have reserved for them, when to respond by, and to go to our website to respond. But now I am wondering if maybe we should include an actual RSVP card with the option to respond online. I hate the thought of spending X amount of dollars on RSVP cards and postage and then having no one use the cards. But I also hate the thought of not getting RSVPs because people think it is too much work to go online to respond. And then there are the folks who don't really use the internet. Bah. We could always send RSVP cards to those who we don't think use the internet and then ask everyone else to respond online. Ah too many options!!! Advice? Ideas?
I've been thinking online RSVPs are what we want. Just include a little card telling them how many spaces we have reserved for them, when to respond by, and to go to our website to respond. But now I am wondering if maybe we should include an actual RSVP card with the option to respond online. I hate the thought of spending X amount of dollars on RSVP cards and postage and then having no one use the cards. But I also hate the thought of not getting RSVPs because people think it is too much work to go online to respond. And then there are the folks who don't really use the internet. Bah. We could always send RSVP cards to those who we don't think use the internet and then ask everyone else to respond online. Ah too many options!!! Advice? Ideas?
Anyway! These are some of the invitation ideas I like:
Love the white lacey details on this one! Still looks good with black font though.
Very simple but elegant at the same time. I like the monogram that is repeated throughout
and the lace and twine tied around it.
I like the size and shape of these ones, not the traditional size but more legal-sized envelope shape.
Love the lace :)
I like the burlap texture and the white printing details. I really love white printing, but that is something you have to have done professionally. So it seems like it would be easy enough to just get like a stamp to stamp on an "&" or something on each one!
I really love the flowery lacey design and again the white!
Suuuper simple but with lace details. Love! White font again though... :/
So basically, I love the brown paper bag paper, lace details and white printing of some sort. I like kind of simple but elegant at the same time. We'll see what Megs comes up with for us!!!
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The boys.
Ok, the tablecloths are ordered. The girls are finding their dresses. I have my dress. I guess we should figure out what Ben and the guys are going to wear? We were originally thinking about a tan or brown suit for Ben and tan/brown vests with khaki pants for the guys. The color goes with the more casual feel of the wedding and will look nice with what the girls are wearing and with all the burlap/natural touches in the decorations. We looked around last weekend with Ben's mom and his youngest brother to see what our options were. We went to Men's Wearhouse, Burlington Coat Factory and Nordstrom Rack but we didn't fall in love with anything. We did make Josh be a model though and try on some vest/pant combinations at Burlington. We were thinking that maybe a brown vest and khaki pants would look really nice, then Ben could wear a suit in either brown or tan. But we are having a hard time finding nice brown vests. And Ben can't quite decide what he likes or wants to wear. This was some initial inspiration:
Since we need Ben to figure out what he wants to wear, he looked around online a little and found some nice options. The suits he likes best are a light gray, so that might change things up a little. At first I couldn't imagine gray suits/vests with the girl's casual dresses and with all the burlap and tan touches in the decorations. Like this one, I don't like the tan + gray look (although I do like the mismatched vests):
But I think if we find the right shade of gray it will be okay. Ben just loves this one:
Another nice option:
Pinterest has saved my life many times in this wedding-planning quest. One of the images I pinned for bridesmaid dress inspiration did exactly this. They decorated with burlap, had the girls wear causal dresses in shades of coral/pink, the groom wore a gray suit and the groomsmen wore gray pants with a white shirt. So looks like it can be done! Now to find the right stuff!
Since we need Ben to figure out what he wants to wear, he looked around online a little and found some nice options. The suits he likes best are a light gray, so that might change things up a little. At first I couldn't imagine gray suits/vests with the girl's casual dresses and with all the burlap and tan touches in the decorations. Like this one, I don't like the tan + gray look (although I do like the mismatched vests):
But I think if we find the right shade of gray it will be okay. Ben just loves this one:
Another nice option:
Pinterest has saved my life many times in this wedding-planning quest. One of the images I pinned for bridesmaid dress inspiration did exactly this. They decorated with burlap, had the girls wear causal dresses in shades of coral/pink, the groom wore a gray suit and the groomsmen wore gray pants with a white shirt. So looks like it can be done! Now to find the right stuff!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Super exciting things...
Okay that was a lie. This is not really exciting at all. But if I titled it "Table linens" it would sound incredibly boring.
I did it. I just made up my mind and went for it. I ordered table linens. I have kind of been agonizing over this issue and spending a lot of time doing online research. Did I want to rent or buy? And if I bought, was it really going to be worth it to have to launder them and then try to re-sell them after? Was I going to save enough for it to make sense? Besides that, what size did I want? I have 60 inch round tables. If I get 90" tablecloths, there will be a 15" overlap all around. 108" will give a two foot drop all around. 120" will go to the floor. I was thinking longer would be better at first, would look more formal. Then I realized our wedding is not going to be formal. And its annoying when your feet hit the tablecloth and you can't get your legs under the table. So I decided on 108". Then I considered square tablecloths. But I wasn't in love with that look. Then I realized 90" round would be way cheaper than 108" and about the same as square and they still look really nice.
I looked at a million websites. Special Occasions in Corvallis is the cheapest to rent from. They rent the 90" rounds for $8 each, which is pretty good. Except that I have 25 tables to decorate. That $8 sure adds up. So I put a bid in on some Ebay linens. And lost. And looked at random websites which I didn't completely trust. And then stumbled upon tablecloths at Linens and Things. Not only were the linens there on sale, but there was also a 20% off coupon code on the website for the month of May. So I ordered 25 white 90" round tablecloths for $151, or $6.04 per tablecloth. $6 each!! That is cheaper than renting! And I'm sure I can sell at least some of them after the wedding. Even if I can't though, this was the best deal out there! (Don't tell me if you found a better deal...I want to keep thinking there was nothing better!). I will have to probably iron them before using them. And launder them after. But that will all be fine!
So! One more thing checked off the list! Phew!
UPDATE: The wedding is over! If anyone wants to buy these linens from me, let me know!
I did it. I just made up my mind and went for it. I ordered table linens. I have kind of been agonizing over this issue and spending a lot of time doing online research. Did I want to rent or buy? And if I bought, was it really going to be worth it to have to launder them and then try to re-sell them after? Was I going to save enough for it to make sense? Besides that, what size did I want? I have 60 inch round tables. If I get 90" tablecloths, there will be a 15" overlap all around. 108" will give a two foot drop all around. 120" will go to the floor. I was thinking longer would be better at first, would look more formal. Then I realized our wedding is not going to be formal. And its annoying when your feet hit the tablecloth and you can't get your legs under the table. So I decided on 108". Then I considered square tablecloths. But I wasn't in love with that look. Then I realized 90" round would be way cheaper than 108" and about the same as square and they still look really nice.
So! One more thing checked off the list! Phew!
UPDATE: The wedding is over! If anyone wants to buy these linens from me, let me know!
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