So a lot of people have inquired about just how in the heck I printed on my escort cards… and I’m here to tell you that it’s much easier than you think!

First, you need to consider the program that you’re using to print in. In the best circumstances, you have a design layout program like InDesign or Illustrator. The next best thing is a graphics design program like Photoshop… (remember you can always download the FREE opensource designercopy of Photoshop known as GIMPshop). Now, you just need to figure out the measurements of whatever you are printing, and create a new file with those exact dimensions.

In the case of the escort cards, the dimensions are 3.5″ x 5″. My printer has a front loading feeder that can handle dimensions as small as 3″x5″. If your printer can’t handle paper this small, then you are probably out of luck (I’m very sorry)… BUT if it can, then you’re right on track.

Create your design and make sure you turn on the rulers (View…Show Rulers) in order to make sure your design fits on ONLY the bottom half of the card.

Now, when you go to print the design, you’ll need to open up the settings. My HP printers have a tag known as “Paper/Quality.” This is where you’d usually change your print settings for cardstock, glossy paper, etc. You can also alter the dimensions of the print size, which is what you’ll need to do for the escort cards. For my color laserjet, I needed to change the print settings to 3.5″x5″ as well as change the paper settings to Heavy Cardstock.

Printing out the cards is a labor of love (or hate… I didn’t really have a lot of fun with it… but it had to be done) and takes a lot of patience. I had to compose each card, change the printer settings each time (my printing profile wouldn’t stay for some odd reason), and manually feed each card in. I’d estimate that my 140 cards took about 3+ hours to do.

Still confused? You might want to check out your printer manual (it’s usually online too)… or if you leave a question here I might be able to help or direct you to help. I’m kinda computer nerdy like that…

I loved the way the seating cards turned out, but I needed to figure out how to let people know where they are sitting. As Mr. Lemon reminded me, we can’t let this wedding look too classy and forget about the two silly kids that are at the center of this event! I adored the button placecard idea that Martha popularized, but since I don’t have a button maker (nor did I want to pay the hefty price for them), I went for the same idea with some new materials. My solution: marble beads.

When deciding how to name our tables, Mr. Lemon and I tried to think about a theme that we could both fully embrace and that represented us. As you might know from experience, coming up with 15-20 unique names of anything is difficult, but we finally settled on honoring our favorite getaway destination: Disneyland. We named each of the tables after our favorite rides, but putting that directly on the placecard seemed a bit off.

“Mr. Robert Smith, Tower of Terror” — Yeah… not so much.

That’s where the fun little marbles come in! I found little icons and characters to represent each ride, and using my handy dandy silicon glue (stinky!), a bag of flat floral marbles and my 0.75″ hole punch, I went to work!

I printed and punched out all of the little circles, glued on the marbles and trimmed the final product to get my little icons (great instructions courtesy of notMartha).

 
 [my apologies for the glare... couldn't get a good photo of them with all the light bouncing off!] 

Then, I just used a glue ZOT to attach the respective marble to each of the placecards.

And if people are still a bit confused, they’ll have a hint to the name and the number of the table on the inside of their card.

Total cost for the glossy additions:  $5.50 (glass marbles), $3.89 (silicon glue), $5.99 (hole punch) = $15.38

For those of you that aren’t into this much playfulness, you could easily change the pictures to fit your mood. It’d be very easy to print out numbers for each card to add a nice little touch to each card.

    I never really had much of a vision for what I wanted to do with my table cards. I didn’t have any clever ideas about how to arrange them nor any cutesy little seashells or favors to attach to a name card. And try as I might, I never had an “ah ha!” moment where the perfect idea fit into my head. But… they still had to be done… and before I left LA for that matter!

I ventured to my little piece of heaven, PaperSource, on Thursday morning to pick up three sets of placecards (Luxe cream…. like my invites) and also bought myself some pretty pieces of flat paper.

Now, at our reception site, we’re expected to lay out table cards on this table with meal choice clearly indicated on each card.

First task….  NAMES! In some cases, a computer can be your best timesaver, but on Thursday afternoon I was ready to throw my printer off the balcony due to the amount of time it took me to hand feed, reformat (for some reason my custom printer settings would not save for the LIFE of me and I had to reenter them every single time), retype and print each one.

Yet in the end, they turned out beautiful (btw… can I tell you how much I adore the Burgues Script I raved about before?!?) and I was on to the next step.

Now, I’ve seen people use colored dots, stickers, different colored place cards, etc. to indicated meal choice, but none of those options really got me excited, so I decided to use the different colored papers as our food key.

I cut each of the papers into 3.5″ x 0.5″ strips, and attached them to the base of each placecard. (The last paper is scrapbook paper from Michaels) I used the light blue for the Filet, dark blue to indicate Sea Bass, gold for Kid’s meals and the swirly paper for Veggie.

 
(this was one of my ooopsies…can you tell I was a little tired by the time I got to the N’s!)

So… we’ve got people’s names and meal preferences… what about where they’re sitting?!? Ah… that comes with the next part of the project!

Monique Lhuillier is having its semi-annual Sample Sale. The sale is three days only, July 12-14!
You will find garments for 40-80% off the original prices. Both Bridal and Ready to Wear garments will be available. No appointments are taken, first come first serve.

All sales are final, no alteration services provided and merchandise is “As Is.”  No exceptions and absolutely no returns!

Location:
Monique Lhuillier Salon
9609 S Santa Monica Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
#310.550.3388
www.moniquelhuillier.com

Dates and Times:
Thursday, July 12th 10am-6pm
Friday, July 13th 10am-6pm
Saturday, July 14th 10am-6pm

Insider tips on the sale: The line-up on Thursday usually starts early in the morning (around 6am), and will be quite long by the time the store opens at 10. Many brides play hooky at work for the morning to make it for the day. All of the dresses are available on racks, and dressing rooms are very small and not private. People can be vicious on the first day… especially brides that are looking for “ONE DRESS.” And if you haven’t ever been to the BH store… it’s really small, especially with so many dresses crammed into it.

If you’re looking for one of the “very popular” dresses (i.e. Miranda, Geisha, Swan Lake, etc.), don’t expect to find it. But… with 200+ wedding dresses you can easily find something that is very similar. I shared a dressing room with a girl who wanted a Geisha, and actually found another model that was identical minus the mermaid skirt, and she actually liked it much better.

They also have sashes, veils and other accessories for sale, as well as ML’s ready to wear collection. All of the dresses are 8’s or 10’s unless they are cancelled orders (could be any size).

Bring one friend if you can… it’s not a warehouse sale… but it helps when you can have someone carry gowns for you and look over your stuff while you venture out of the dressing room to find more things.

Oh… and have fun!!! It’ll be the first ML sample sale I’ve missed in 5 years (thanks to the honeymoon)

 My favorite store is now carrying my favorite crafting device — PaperSource <3′s Gocco!!!

They only have the extra large printer right now, but they’ve got ink, screens and bulbs for every gocco user out there! The prices are a bit high ($15.85) for screens and bulbs, but at least you can get them quickly!

  Can I admit a little bitty mistake I made way back in the begining of our guest list planning??? The Knot. Yes, I put all of our contact information and addresses into what I thought would be an easy data management system. I was completely wrong and only realized it as I noticed the insanely wrong guest count numbers that were appearing at the top of my RSVP list. I blamed the glitch on some of my misclicks, but after trying every which way to fix it, I gave up and ran far far away. Oh, and did I tell you that this just happened last Monday??

We still needed a final catering count, a seating chart and a better way to manage all of the OOT guests… what to do? Should I just work and transfer everything into Excel and do the seating chart by hand? Or find something new? Mr. Lemon tried to convince me we could do the seating chart by hand, but since we’re parting ways in a few days, I didn’t want to try and discuss seats over the phone without both of us having visuals. And… there was no way I was going to be spending any money to make the seating magic happen. What to do, what to do?

Oh wait… what about that cool little “Bridal Toolkit” that I’d heard about from Bed, Bath & Beyond? It had a neat free seating chart function, as well as a cool guest list organizer? Hmm… might as well try, eh?

They recommend that you download their Excel template, enter in all of your guest information in their format, and then upload the file to their database. I took an hour of cutting and pasting and extracted all of the information I had in the Knot mess, and suddenly I had a much more organized database set-up. I went through and tirelesly reentered every yes and no as well as everyone’s meal choices. Mr. Lemon was able to start organizing the tables with the super easy seating chart, I was able to print out (with one little click!) the catering counts instantly and suddenly I can relax because everything is all in one place. *PHEW*

Now, if I could go back to the begining, I would have started organizing everything using this nice free system, but if just for the ease of entering gift information and the WONDERFUL excel files that it exports, I’m very happy to switch over now. Maybe you’ll run away from that other horrible free website and start using this one.

The Guest Card Layout

The seating chart designer (they’ve got square/round tables and you decide how many people sit at each table)

“It’s every music nerd’s fantasy to be called upon to assemble that
perfect mix CD — to be the go-to guy for giving special occasions their
own soundtrack. So when my niece asked me to put together an hour of
love-themed dinner music for her wedding reception, I took it as a
sacred responsibility. I was used to being her weird uncle, but now?
Now, I was her tireless music supervisor. From the start, I set strict guidelines: No heartbreak or infidelity. Nothing unnerving, angry or lusty. Nothing that sucks.”

What’s my luck that in the 5-minute drive to the vet, I’d happen to hear the NPR story on the “Perfect Wedding Mix CD” … sometimes you just can’t escape the madness!

The CD has some great tracks on it, with many that I’ve cherished over the years as my favorite love songs. I’m definitely going to explore atones later today for the tracks that are new to me… and perhaps I’ll find some new favorites for the list. Perhaps some of your cherished songs are included as well…. or you have already included them in the musical mix for your big day.

**************

Track Listing

The right wedding mix not only captures the joy of the occasion,
but also reflects the bride and groom’s own musical likes and dislikes.
Here’s what NPR music producer Stephen Thompson came up with for his
niece’s 2005 wedding.

1. Clem Snide, “Forever, Now and Then”
2. Old 97′s, “Question” 
3. Josh Rouse, “Nothing Gives Me Pleasure”
4. Death Cab for Cutie, “Passenger Seat”
5. Jimmy Scott, “When Did You Leave Heaven?”
6. The Lemonheads, “Into Your Arms”
7. Ron Sexsmith, “Moonlight Becomes You”
8. Nick Drake, “From the Morning”
9. Radney Foster & Abra Moore, “I’m In”
10. Norah Jones, “Come Away with Me”
11. Sade, “By Your Side”
12. Matthew Sweet, “I’ve Been Waiting”
13. Neil Young, “Harvest Moon”
14. Chet Baker, “Embraceable You”
15. Iron & Wine, “Ab’s Song”
16. Low, “The Plan”
17. Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash, “As Long As the Grass Shall Grow”
18. Clem Snide, “Find Love”

Graduation….. check.
Moving out of apartment… almost a check.
Getting married…. only 17 days away?!!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?

Somehow I really thought getting married three weeks after graduation wouldn’t be “that” crazy… and once again I completely underestimated the strain and P.I.T.A. moving out of an apartment can be. (You’d think I’d remember with 10+ moves in 9 years) I walked across the stage on Friday morning, have moved most of the contents of my life into either a storage unit or into Mr. Lemon’s apartment, and now am sitting in “our” apartment and trying to figure out how not to have an extreme stress freakout with the list of things that still needs to get done.

Add to that, poor Miss Memphis (soon to be 1/2-mine) has woken us up the last two nights at 3am with some tummy problem, so the vet appointment is now bumped up in priority on the agenda for today.

(looking cute and furry and not sick in this photo)

We’re in for a wild ride for the next 2 weeks…. anyone else contemplating an agenda similar to mine, you’ve been warned.

The crazy choice that so many brides are driven to tears over… chivari or covers? I too was one that was obsessed with the elegance of the chivari, especially since it happens to match my golden color scheme and work with the atmosphere so well. Yet, when it came down to the final decision, it just wasn’t worth an extra $1000 for a pretty and uncomfortable chair.
Now, in the beginning, I thought that the price difference between chair covers and chivari chairs was $0.50. The hotel charges $8.50 for the cover and sash, and only $9 for the chivari chair. Can we say, super sweet??? But then, when I plugged in the figures into my super duper Excel spreadsheet… I realized a fatal flaw in all of this: a 22% service charge and 8.25% tax. So that would mean our chair covers would cost $1571.36 or chivari chairs would rack up $1662.86. Umm…. ouch?
So when we got our latest wedding coordinator, who happened to work previously at another hotel, we asked if it was possible to outsource our chair decor. She approved, as long as we were only dealing with chair covers, since the set-up and clean-up time for the chairs just wasn’t optimal, and we were off in search of a vendor. My mom was referred to Elegant Affair by a co-worker, and it turned out to be the perfect answer to the chair affair.
Our coordinator had worked with them countless times at her previous empolyment, so there was no worry about the service or the quality of the job. Suddenly, the cost of renting chair covers went down to $630, including set-up and clean-up, and my desire to spend an extra THOUSAND dollars on chairs drifted to a far off land.
To top it off, she also offered to hide the large columns in the room with draping for $280 less than the Marriott was going to charge us… and I’m sure she’ll do a much better job! So, in total, we’re saving $1200 from our original decor plans, all for a little bit of outsourcing.

The gym and I have been distant friends over the past month with the flurry of things going on in life. So, I’ve decided to forgo my final weeks of weight training in favor of the newest little fad: the Fit Flop.

Although I own lots of shoes, I wear flip flops 99.9% of the time, so I might as well own a pair that does a little bit more for my legs. I’m assuming they work like the MBT shoes, but these guys are a heck of a lot cheaper ($38). The only problem seems to be finding a pair. Bath and Body Works was carrying them online and in their stores, but they’ve sold out. Bliss is currently taking pre-orders for shipment in mid-July.
I’ll check back in a few weeks to let you know if anything happened… but these are cheaper than a new pair of Rainbows, so if anything I’ve got a new pair of black flipflips. Yippee.