Invitations, and the rest of the associated stationary, invite frustration, pulling hair out, throwing up hands, and many moments of insanity into your life. At least, that was our experience. My mom and I had the brilliant idea of creating the stationary ourselves. Couldn’t be that hard! I had browsed Pinterest for hours looking at rustic themed Save the Dates and we were getting down to the wire. These cards needed to be made and sent out yesterday, but for some reason the design of them eluded us. Unfortunately for us, I had come across the most adorable idea; wooden leaves with magnets on the back! After scouring the Amazon, Michael’s, and Hobby Lobby websites, I finally was able to locate wooden leaves that were both a decent size and affordable. They came in and I whipped up some sample stains at work to see what color would look best.

Things were seemingly looking up! Until I actually tried to turn them into Save the Dates… For some reason everything I tried looked awful; I couldn’t figure out how to do the text on them that wouldn’t result in hours of wood burning work or careful penmanship and would look consistent and decent. Sometimes it’s a pain to have high standards when it comes to creativity. In swoops my mom, whisking me off to Hobby Lobby in search of something to save the day. Perusing up and down the aisles, picking up nearly everything we came across only to shake our heads and put it back, I finally came to the conclusion I wish I had come to before we had invoked all of this insanity on ourselves; Do we even need Save the Dates? I mean, won’t the invitation be enough? All of the information is right there and we could just send them earlier than it is deemed required etiquette wise. My mom, relief washing over her face, thoroughly agreed. Back to the proverbial drawing board.

With new visions of sugarplums (I mean invitations) dancing in our heads, Mom set her Apple pencil to her iPad and let her creative juices flow. She came up with the adorable idea of using the EnChanning Occasions barn itself as the design for the invites. There were many iterations of this version, some including our cute little teardrop trailer, but each of them invoking disappointment rather than the expected “ahh” moment. Something just wasn’t right, something was quite wrong. So we sang ridiculous, annoyed themed songs. I’m pretty sure if anyone who didn’t know us had passed her studio window, they would have backed away slowly wondering what was in the water. Multiple visits, drafts, texts, and video calls later, we finally experienced that “ahh” moment; she had created the design! Off to Hobby Lobby again for paper! Which brought us to our next round of frustration induced giggles, songs, and mini tantrums. In the middle of the store.

If you know me, you know I love sparkles! So you likely wouldn’t be surprised to know that I stopped in my path when I came across a pack of champagne and silver metallic card-stock paper and exclaimed to Mom “This is it! This is the paper I want!” I definitely regretted this declaration temporarily, and I’m pretty sure my mom did too. The ink wouldn’t dry properly on this paper, so we tried to find an idea with an insert that would work instead. Thumbing through stashed card-stock with her ink stained fingers, Mom tried a variety of purples, grays, and whites with the metallic paper. None met our standards, none until she pulled out a sheet of vellum. By the time the Cricut was as exhausted as we were, the final version of the invitation design was on the desk between us and we did a celebratory dance, clinking our glasses of wine together and breathing a sigh of relief.

With the celebration out of our system, Mom sits back down and says “Okay Chelsea, what do you want the text to say?” My face fell. I tried to distract her by changing the subject while quickly opening up my Pinterest app in an attempt to find text I liked. She didn’t fall for my antics, so she did the same. After a few moments lacking inspiration, I decided to write my own text:

Naturally, Mom rolled her eyes with a big smile but typed it up anyway and we printed out a sample invitation. She really didn’t have much room to talk though, since she had been secretly busy writing her own version as well. I guess you could say that the two of us were slowly losing our minds! Though, as I always say to Garrett, you can’t lose what you never had! The text would suffice for a test print and we could keep brainstorming later, but it would also give us a bit of fun. When the two of us are together, no one is really safe, and Dad was a victim on this day (as per usual). Deciding to drag him into our bubble of torture, I bounced up the stairs with the invitation in hand and prank in mind. Dad is a brilliant man, and is one of the people I go to for any proofreading needs, so we decided to ask him to proofread this joke text and bit back our snickering. He started to read it but only got a few words in before finding corrections, so he paused and grabbed a red pen. So much for the prank! Mom and I both just burst out laughing and he looked at us puzzled. We broke down and told him to just read the text and tell us what he thought, and he gave the same reaction Mom had moments earlier, minus the smile; rolled his eyes.

Bounding back down the stairs and getting comfortable in our chairs again, we set back to browsing sample invitations online trying to gain inspiration for the text. In all reality, it didn’t take long before we finally found something that, with a couple of tweaks, suited the wedding vision perfectly. Just like that, we had the final version of the invitation completed. All it needed now was a little bit of twine and a sprig of lavender before being stuffed into envelopes and sent off!

Or so we thought… Mom’s torture was just beginning, dragging me into it via texts that were dripping with exasperation, video calls filled with irritated explanations of issues she was encountering, and phone calls trying to bribe me with a million dollars to elope or pay the million dollars for her therapy. The card-stock we had purchased was not the standard 8.5”x11”, making lining it up on the Cricut mat more problematic than anticipated. It had to be placed perfectly, else the design would not be cut right and the folds would be ruined. Many attempts and plenty of tears later, the appropriate placement was discovered and it was off to the races again, manually placing and loading the Cricut 70+ times. It’s in moments like these that Mom regrets her “I can do it” attitude! An agreement was made that she would cut the invitations and print the inserts, but the folding of the invitations, cutting and taping of the inserts, tying of the twine and lavender, and stuffing of the envelopes was all on me. I’m pretty sure I got the better end of that deal!

I’m so proud of and thankful for my mom, so I’m going to take a brief moment here to brag about her and show off the gorgeous stationary she created! The barn and trees were hand drawn on her iPad and cut out of the card-stock by her Cricut. The fence with the cute little love birds on the post was also hand drawn and printed on the card-stock (and allowed to dry for multiple days). A sprig of lavender for each invitation was harvested from her garden. All of the frustration, crazy moments, and throwing of paper was absolutely worth the final product!

I should also mention that we opted for a website RSVP option because we figured we had drained our creative juices and energy on the invitations. Not to mention we thought it would be easier for guests as they would not have to deal with mailing cards back to me. So all that was left now were the programs! Not long ago, our realtor Kelly had delivered a beautiful bouquet of flowers to us and this bouquet came with an adorable little card for the florist. This card was made from seed paper, which really struck my interest! I mentioned it to my mom and suggested using seed paper for the programs, and in true Patsy fashion she stated “Oh, I can do that!” All we needed was scrap paper, which I have an abundance of at work from shredding, and seeds. However, much like the Save the Dates, we had put this project off for a bit too long and no longer had the patience for trying to figure out how to make the paper the adequate width for the printer. Thus we opted for the easier path and loaded up Google! A brief search later a website was located and seed paper was ordered. During the wait for the delivery I set to designing the programs in Canva and sent the drafts to Mom for feedback. Eventually I was satisfied and had a version that was Mom approved, so I saved the design and waited for the paper. It finally arrived and was promptly stored in my office to be printed on later. And by later, I mean the day before the rehearsal. Crazy? Maybe. But in my situation, it ended up being the perfect procrastination!

One of my bridesmaids texted me the night prior to her flight to inform me that she had unfortunately fallen ill and would not be able to make it to the wedding. I mentioned this to Garrett, concerned for my friend and not really worried about the bridal party line up, but he held up his hand to me and said confidently “hang on, I got this!” And got this he did. He promptly messaged one of his groomsmen who was driving down the next day with his wife and asked if she happened to own a purple dress. He wasn’t sure, so Garrett then messaged her directly, inquiring about the dress and if she’d be willing to step in as a bridesmaid. She replied “I don’t have a purple dress, but give me an hour and I will!” Quite an amazing friend! Thankfully the procrastination on the programs paid off and I was able to switch the names on them before printing them all out that night. With that, the stationary was all completed!