Invites and Champagne Tasting

I sure haven't blogged much lately, but no one really seems to mind. We have been very busy, Daniel has been busy with school and I've been making a lot of wedding plans lately. Yesterday we did a blind taste test of champagne to see which ones we wanted to serve at the reception. We categorized each type into (a) Toast only, (b) Toast and/or Drinking all Night, (c) Don't even serve for the Toast. My dad insisted that we not know which kind of champagne we are trying so we would give an unbiased judgement towards each. I must say, it was QUITE the experiment.

Surprisingly, we ALL loved one of the lower end Champagnes the best. Us girls were certain our favorite one must be super duper expensive, which of course made all the guys giggle because they knew all along that our "sophisticated champagne tasting palette" had chosen one of the cheapest options. Actually, one of our most favorite tastes was an Almond Champagne from Trader Joe's that costs around $6 a bottle, it was so yummy! So I guess the dads and Daniel win this round and prove their point that just because it costs more, does not mean it tastes better.

I also spent all of last weekend at my sister's house making our invitations. We have decided to hand make every single one, including sewing the outer lace envelopes, stamping and then embossing our names on each invitation as well as "rsvp" on the response cards, and embossing a lace stamp detailing along the edges of each invitation and inner cards. My sister designed a beautiful directions card as well, which will hopefully keep everyone from getting lost on their way up the mountain. I am pretty much impressed with our efforts and I can't wait to finish them all in a few weeks. I have to get them out by April 1st so I better get a move on collecting addresses, that is sort of scaring me at the moment.

Here are some pictures of our mock designs, in case you are curious:

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These are the stamps we had custom made (except for the lace stamp, that one we found online)

 

This is the basic idea of the invite. It's not the real deal because we had just ordered the stamps that day so unfortunately these were made with images of the stamps, using Photoshop. "Kaitlyn & Daniel" will be embossed in black, and the lace stamps in the corners will be embossed in bronze. 

 The lace envelopes are going to hold the invitation, response card, and directions card. This was the un-sewn version of the lace envelope, just to give you an idea what it may look like. 

My sister, Nina, made this card. I know the image quality kind of sucks because it's a picture of the computer screen, but you can really see how much work she put into it. I love it and think it is a great way to make sure no one gets lost (not to mention it's way cooler that a boring old google map)

Pretty awesome, huh? We think so, actually we are pretty darn proud of ourselves.