I am so happy to report that the invites (from hell) have finally flown the nest. It has been the most stressful DIY project so far (probably b/c I've been procrastinating on doing other projects... but who's counting??)

Although I had great plans to have the invites done and ready to be mailed at least two weeks prior to sending out, it came down to the wire. I had designed the invites and purchased paper over a year ago to print them myself. As time ran out, I realized the impossibility of printing and cutting all 150 invites myself. So I started contacted local print shops to see what can be done.

The first one I contacted on the North Shore where I work said they would print and cut everything for me for around $20. Great. Done deal. Until I brought the paper to the store, only to realize their printers would not be able to print on thick card stock. They would have to run everything through their press machines (which required an extra week of time, creating plates, and came in at $120 price tag!) I found this out on a Thursday (3 days before the invites were scheduled to go out). I was *this close* |---| to throwing in the towel and just coughing up whatever they asked for.

However, luckily for me, I phoned a print shop in Yaletown and told them my situation. They said that they also did not have the machines that would be able to accept the paper I had. But they were kind enough to provide a referral to The Letter Shop in Downtown Vancouver. I phoned them up and described the type of paper I had and they said they might be able to the job for me! I begged off work early that next day and brought my paper and files with me. Two hours later, John (the owner) sent me home with these babies... Cut and shrink-wrapped for me... oh Purty!



Printing on 150 sheets of my own paper, cutting and 15 minutes of typesetting time all came up to $32 and change! The staff at The Letter Shop were so knowledgeable and friendly, I felt like a guardian angel was smiling on me when I found them. According to John, there are only two print shops in Vancouver that have the type of machines that would take my paper!

Here's a look at what all the hard work in progress:

All of our inserts. We included a map purchased from an Etsy vendor, Chinese insert, and an RSVP instruction card directing our guests to respond via our wedding website.



Guests of the bride and her family also received a gift certificate for a local Chinese bakery. Yummy cakes to celebrate our wedding! Actual cakes will be handed out on Pig Day (more on this in a future post).



Here's a look at the outside of our invitation. The monogram on the front of the invitation was stamped and matted onto scrap pieces of paper. The rubber stamp used was custom made. I used a gold ink pad and ultra-fine clear embossing powder. This proved to be quite the frustrating little project. As it was near impossible to stamp clearly and straightly (I know it's not a word... whatevs) I must have made 300 of these to get 150 usable ones.



Here is what the whole invite looks like:



This is the back of our envelopes. I ordered a custom embosser from eRubber Stamps with our monogram on it (designed by me on MS Powerpoint). The monogram was one of the first wedding DIY projects I took on. I ordered both the custom rubber stamp and embosser quite early in the game. In hindsight, I wish I had held off on doing that so quickly. This is because once I started designing the invitations, I decided I *had* to have the Burgess Script file and ponied up the money for it. Now I wish the script on our monogram is Burgess Script. I know, no one will notice. But I'm just crazy like that. It's an illness. *sigh*



Also, instead of envelope liners, which I LOVE, but was too lazy and cheap (to save on cost of paper and weight of the envelope) to incorporate, we purchased a stamp with a quote from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem ($10 yo), How Do I Love Thee and stamped the inside flap of the envelope in gold ink.





I took the invites to the post office and these were the stamps that were available. Not exactly wedding-y but SO CUTE. It's Vancouver 2010 Olympic Mascot Sumi playing wheelchair curling.



So that's it! On June 22nd, our invites flew the coop. I can see why other DIY brides say that the invites are their biggest and toughest project. I second guessed myself every step of the way. I'm happy they are gone. Are the "perfect" Heck no. But I seriously couldn't stand to look at them anymore!

Now we wait for RSVP's! It's all feeling so real now! eeeeeEEeeEEE!! *squeal of joy* (I'm such a dork, I know)

Last weekend the FI and I went to The Hudson's Bay Co (aka The Bay aka the only department store in Canada... sort of) to register for gifts. This was supposed to be done... oh, I don't know... back in February??! Yeah.

One of the reasons it took us so long to register was that we couldn't decide where to register. If we lived in the US, we would register at Crate and Barrel and BBB without question. Here in Canada (correction, I should say Vancouver), we have much fewer options. The largest department store is The Bay. There's also the Sears, but there are very few locations in Vancouver and a serious lack of inventory at their "flagship" store downtown (so needless to say, we had to go another route). There is a Pottery Barn and William Sonoma in Vancouver, but only one store of each and very small as well. Also, for both PB and WS, if you register in Canada, guests from the USA will not be able to purchase off your registry (1/4 of our guests are travelling from the US). They can either purchase from a store in the US, physically bring your present and then phone the Canadian store to take the item off your list, or they have to phone (long distance, might I add) to the actual store in Vancouver to make the purchase over the phone. I think I got that right. I actually phoned the 1-800 number of both stores to enquire about cross border registry shopping. Unfortunately, no dice. *sigh* One of the few times I'm sad to be Canadian.

So despite our best efforts, we were not able to register at a US friendly store. And by default, we ended up at The Bay.

We showed up last Sunday morning woefully unprepared (as evidenced by FI's naive assumption that we would only be an hour or so).

We started out in the small appliances section and quickly scanned a much coveted Kitchen Aid Artisan Stand Mixer in a brushed metallic finish.



Wandered one aisle over to discover the Cuisinart stand mixer. This bad boy:



Well, it's not as pretty as the Artisan. But with the blender and food processor options, and more wattage (FI wanted wattage, yo!) I hadn't heard much about it before and we didn't have time to go home and research which product was better. We just opted for the latter, as it has all the funtionality of the Artisan and then some.

While we were in that department, we also threw a convection toaster over, three teired steamer, and a Foodsaver onto the list.

Next we hit up the Pots and Pans. The selection at the Bay in Vancouver was not great. They had some random brands like Lagonista, Beaumark. They had some limited Calphalon in store as well, but they were all of the non-

We stood in the pots and pans section for over an hour (I kid you not!) bouncing back and forth between Gordon Ramsey by Royal Doulton, Jaime Oliver, Curtis Stone (who??), and Calphalon (all non-stick, so that's a no-go). We finally settled on the Gordon Ramsey pans. Instead of the 10 piece set, we scanned each item separately (which ends up costing more in total, but will be cheaper for each person purchasing).



Next we headed back up to the china section and wandered aimlessly looking at china patterns. FI balked at ANY and ALL china patterns that were not plain white. So frustrating. So I had to walk away from beauties like these:


Vera Wang Lace


Vera Wang Blue Duchess


Monique Lhullier Etoile

SO PRETTY! *double sigh*

We settled on a set of casual china instead:


Gordon Ramsay for Royal Doulton

We rounded out our china with a few service pieces from Villeroy and Boch:







All in all, we registered for just shy of 70 items. Which is less than what was recommended based on our guest count. We were truly overwhelmed at the choices. Choices on dishes and housewares we would be stuck with FOREVER. Truly, even more daunting than deciding to get married, dare I say?

We circled the china section so many times, I could have sworn I could see their carpet wearing down before my eyes. At about the two hour mark, I was not a happy camper and just wanted to get out of there. At the three hour mark, I started to feel light headed and warm and had to find somewhere to take a break. Shopping is hard work!


YAY! ALL DONE!

If I could do over our registry shopping day, I would:

1. Do an inventory of things we already have
2. Make a wish list of things we need and what we want replaced
3. Do our research - specifically, know what brands are carried at the store and compare what's available
4. Be prepared to compromise - I had no idea FI only wanted white china and I wanted fine china with a delicate pattern. In the end, after over 3 hours at the store, I stopped caring and let him scan the casual china - that's sort of compromising, isn't it?
5. Eat a big breakfast. Bring snacks and water. Be more prepared than a boy scout going on a hiking trip. I'm not even kidding. Shopping is serious business and not for the faint at heart.
6. Lastly - Don't leave the boy alone with a scanner gun. I had to run to the potty can came back to find him trying to scan a GIANT flat panel TV! Note to self: FI needs close supervision!

How did everyone else's registry experience go? Did you register on multiple trips? In hindsight, we should have done that, but because we left it so long, we had to rush to register last week so we can send out our invites this week... post on invitations to come soon!

We've been finding the honeymoon planning to be tremendously difficult. According to my handy-dandy checklists on both The Knot and Weddingwire, we should have booked our trip 3 months ago! oops! Does anyone else feel like there are just too many choices out there?

A glimpse into my neurotic brain: We only get to honeymoon once. And I really want it to be special. Ideally, I'd like to go somewhere we haven't been before and somewhere that we couldn't easily go to and enjoy when we have kids.

Some ideas we floated around:

Canadian Maritime Provinces - amazing food (think giant stuffed potatoes and lobster!), beautiful scenery, PLUS Anne of Green Gables (I grew up wishing Anne with an "e" was my neighbor and best friend)  But still, why can't I get excited about going there? Probably because it's "just" Canada. And I also see us RV-ing with our kids out there in about 10 to 15 years

Montreal or Quebec City - great cultural experience I think but again, for some reason doesn't quite do it for me

Road trip to Californina - We could drive along the coast all the way down to San Diego, staying at dog friendly hotels along the way and bring Lincoln with us. Visit the sand dunes in Oregon and stay in yurt, perhaps. While this sounds like a ton of fun, driving over 40 hours in a week does not sound like my idea of a relaxing honeymoon.

Italy - I LOVE LOVE LOVE Italy. And FI hasn't been before. Too bad for us that Italy is very very hot in August and a lot of the locals will be out of town on vacation (which means many shops and restaurants closed, or so the guide books tell me).

Spain - I want to see Spain SO BADLY. FI not so interested. Oh well... perhaps a trip with my girlfriends another time!

Some of our *almost* honeymoon locations:

Cook Islands - beautiful secluded romantic Cook Islands *sigh* Unforch, the flights alone would be over 16 hours from Vancouver, as we would have to lay-over in LA or Aukland NZ. FI is also not crazy about lazying on the beach type holidays and a week would cost around $6000, based on some rough estimations I've done.

Mayan Riviera, Mexico - I drooled over the Excellence Resort in Playa Mujeres for months prior to the swine flu outbreak. We were all set to go there on the recomendation of one of FI's friends who honeymooned at the Excellence in Cancun and raved about it. The resort in Playa Mujeres is newer and looks incredible. This option was recently nixed due to swine flu and safety concerns. FI's mom specifically asked us not to go there b/c she would be too worried about us the whole time (as would my mom, so we took this one out of the running).  Boo.  I wish I was hanging out in the hammock over the pool.  Photos below are from the Excellence website. 

FI really was quite keen on going to France for our honeymoon. We've already both been to Paris (separately) and he's also travelled around northern France as well. FI went to France shortly after we met and while he was there and travelling around, he wished I was there to share the sights with him. I would love to go back and explore the City of Lights with my new husband. Does it get any more romantic than that?  Check out this picture I found on Trip Advisor of Mt St Michele at dusk!  Amazing!

We hemmed and hawwed and sat on the fence for the longest time. And kept flipping and flopping about what we were going to do. Last week FI said that we had to just pick a location and stick with it. So we chose France. This week I visited the travel agency to price out some flights. A tentative itinerary would be: 6 nights in Paris and 3 nights in Normandy (we haven't decided where yet, but most likely a town close to Mt St Michele).  Air and 6 nights in Paris would cost us around $3000. We still have to factor in car rental, hotel in Normandy and spending money. Which would put us pretty close (if not over the $5000 mark)

Despite the fact that FI was the one to suggest "pick a place and stick with it" I can tell that the cost is giving him a reason to hesitate. And while $5000 for two fo us for a 10 day vacation in Europe is not an unreasonable number, with all the wedding bills and upcoming expenses that we will be incurring (new flooring, new car and tuition payments), we're trying for a fab honeymoon at a price that won't break the bank (a very fine balancing act, to be sure!)

So we are back to the drawing board and will be re-examining and costing out all our options (again)!

Another option that we hadn't seriously considered previously (because neither of us were very interested) would be to go to Hawaii. Specifically Honolulu and Kona. A close friend of FFIL has vacation homes in both Honolulu and Kona that he's offered to us for free. Flights to Honolulu out of Seattle would be $400 per person. A return flight between Honolulu and Kona runs under $150. I have enough points on my Aeroplan card to cover a car rental for the entire 10 days we would be in Hawaii. FI has enough points on his Aventura card to cover either one of our flights Honolulu or both of our flights to Kona. Which means 10 days in Hawaii would cost us under $1000 not including any spending money. Sound like a good deal? Has anyone been to Honolulu or Kona? How did you like it?

So does anyone have any tips or suggestions for us? Did anyone else have a hard time deciding on a honeymoon location?