Friday! And Wedding Cards!

It's a bit scary opening a magazine and seeing people in there you've 'met' on forums or blogs. It's even scarier when one of those pictures is you! There we all are in black and white and colour! Of course Cazzy wore her hat, wish I'd worn mine now! (what's she on about??) I'm I allowed to say? Should I? I've never blogged about it...Oh, go on then!

Turn to page 78 of Card Making and Paper Craft June Issue 79 and to quote...'meet the cardmakers who, between them have created over 1000 pieces of wedding stationary'...and I'll say no more (you fibber!!)

When Tom and Emma first decided on a date for their wedding, (October 11th 2008) everyone was thrilled and wanted to be involved. All Emma’s friends decided they would decorate the Hall for the reception, a friend of Tom’s mum made the fabulous Chocolate wedding cake, Emma’s Nan said she would do the bouquets and buttons holes, with help from her flower club ladies to decorate the church. Auntie Debbie and Uncle Alistair said they would drive her to the church in their Jag, but secretly hired a beautiful white Rolls Royce! So that left the invitations…which meant, me. I’d hadn’t been making ‘proper’ cards for very long, although I’d been making my cartoon cards for many years… the thought of doing something this important was a little bit frightening! I searched the web looking for sites that would send samples of the card they had. All sorts turned up. I loved the silk and the pearl but Emma and Tom chose the Ivory hammered card with deckled edging.

‘We want something very simple mum. Two hearts, will be plenty.’

‘No ribbon?’ I asked. ‘No little cartoon spider? No glitter?’

‘ NO!!’

This was going to be harder than I thought!

I’d bought some clear wedding stamps, but they didn’t stamp too well on the hammered card, so Emma decided on silver peel-offs…which I bought… and then the phone call... “Is it too late to change my mind? I think I’d prefer gold…”

Oops! Out came the gold pen!! I did a few samples and Emma and Tom chose the one you see here. I got my way with adding gold elastic cord and the tiny hearts though!

‘The hearts will be too fiddly mum, especially on the favour boxes!’

‘No it won’t! I have a quickie glue pen!’

Once we had a rough idea of numbers, the production line began!! Across the dinning table, working its way across my ironing board and onto the sofa!! My Bigshot for cutting hearts, a big punch for the squares and the Ultimate Companion for folding and scoring.

100 Order of Service Cards…(No envelopes needed for these, but had to add an extra 15 for the choir and vicar!! They didn’t get the added gold elastic though and a few only had the inserts!) with 120 wedding invitations and 80 evening invitations.

A few months before the wedding Emma had the worst shock. The Shop, where she had ordered and paid for her lovely wedding dress, (and bridesmaid’s dresses with matching shoes!) had closed and was emptied over night!! Windows whiten out and a sign on the door! On the day Emma actually paid for her dress they took her money and then cancelled the order!! Luckily the designer had been there and remembered Emma and had almost finished her dress, but hadn’t been paid for it! Everything was sorted out and Emma did get the dress of her dreams in the end! (Although had to go else where for the bridesmaids dresses)

Then, just when I was thinking about addressing the envelopes Emma said…"Mum…I’ve made a mistake…it’s only 40 evening invitations, I wasn’t thinking in pairs.. but it’s now 160 wedding!"

So I’d done 40 too many evening and not enough wedding!! Luckily I’d used photo glue to fix the inserts into the cards and could gently pull out the evening invites and swap them for reception invites. And carefully using a craft knife was able to lift off the Wedding words and swap them to Evening!

The wedding was wonderful. On the warmest brightest day in October. Family came from as far away as America, Emma's lovely sister Maria and Tom's brother from Australia. The best bit for me was seeing Emma’s face when the White Rolls Royce turned up out side, dressed in all its finery. We’d been kidding her all morning that the ribbons for her Aunty Debbie's Jag were too short, Uncle Alistair had been tying them on, there were more knots than ribbons. What else? Ooh yes, and I got to wear my purple hat!!

My tip for anyone thinking of doing their own wedding cards is, go for it, keep it simple and give yourself plenty of time!