Hiatus

We are caught up now between Christmas and New Year. The writing of thank you cards is a more laborious process than I had anticipated - I have written 20 out of 66!! Phew. And then Christmas cards to write and send...

Yesterday we picked up our proof book from our photographer. It is a weighty tome - 187 pages of photos. Wow! We also have a DVD of all of our photos at 12Mb (or maybe 12 Megapixels, I cannot remember what he said and I have not looked at the files). At any rate rather large! We have to choose around 100 photos for our album. That will be a job for after Christmas I think...

Image C Photography

Arigato...

I have ordered our thank you notes! It is very important to make sure that you thank your guests for coming and sharing your day with them, and of course thanking your dear old aunts who could not make it due to health reasons/being out of the state/country but sent you half of their life savings anyway.

The image above, from Mokoh, graced the thank you cards that we sent out for our engagement party. I love the simplicity of the pattern! Mokoh Designs are made here in Western Australia and use papers from sustainable sources.

RSVP update

Well... we did better than I had expected in terms of the RSVPS! The number of cards did not add up to the 60 I had originally counted, for various reasons, but we received 44 RSVP cards and 11 were not returned. That is exactly the 80% return rate that the optimist in me was hoping for. Wow!

Woo. So now that the numbers are in, we have to figure out who sits where. That will be fun!

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Another return

We received another invitation "Return to Sender" today. That makes our list to two missing, and five unknown. Oh, and a total of twenty one returned RSVPs, so we are above my pessimistic baseline!

Stationery First Aid

A big let down today. Eight of the invitations were returned, due to the address on them not being legible. I purchased envelopes that were 100% recycled and unbleached. The envelopes themselves are fine but I do not recommend printing on them.

I wavered between using the printer and handwriting, and in the end I printed since my writing is fairly scruffy. I also thought about sticking my address sticker on the envelopes but held off as it only has my name on it, and not Chad's.

Unfortunately the RSVP cards are doing the same - I printed directly onto the cards and they are rubbing off! I thought that it would be nice to have the RSVPs personalised - that is why I ended up directly printing. I tossed up ideas including printing the info onto a sticker and then sticking it onto the RSVP card, however I thought that there might be issues with people writing on the stickers.

Hmm, so a couple of lessons learned there!

Fingers crossed that the RSVPs make their way home. We now have a total of seven!

To RSVP or not to RSVP

I decided to send out an RSVP card with our invitations. Mum said that I should get people to RSVP by phone or email, but I was keen for something a little more formal. Phone and in person can be forgotten, and emails would be okay for most of the younger crowd but I did not want to assume that everyone could use it!

My experience from the RSVP details that we put on our engagement invitations was that noone used the particular phone number that I put in and only six used the specific email address.

I designed a simple RSVP in the shape of the postcard. The names of the invitees have been printed on each RSVP and I have also added a stamp to each postcard so that noone can complain about the cost of sending it! The only effort is to tick a box on the card and post it.

I am curious now to see what the take up rate will be for this method of RSVP. The pessimist in me says I will have a 20% return. The optimist says 80%. We shall see! I am putting a gadget on my blog to keep track of the numbers.

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Another box ticked

I posted the wedding invitations this morning. There was a big stack to go out! Last night we tidied everything up and stamped and sealed envelopes.

We bought a 5m roll of magnet to stick to the back of the invitations, so that people could put them on their fridge without having to scrounge around. I had worried that the magnet would not be strong enough – apparently that was not the issue. The magnet itself stayed on the fridge while the invitation fell off! So last night C and I spent pulling each magnet off and resticking it with double sided sticky tape.

We also checked each invitation and made sure all of the inserts were in there (registry card, RSVP card and map of the venues) before we sealed the envelope and put stamps on.

Phew. I am glad that is done now!

Thank you so much to my sister E for her design advice and to ML and NM for their cutting and sticking assistance in getting the invitations finished. And of course to C for his efforts of sticking and sealing. I think that it would have driven me batty to try and do it all myself!!

Invitation Busy Bee

Bridesmaid ML came over last night to help with the invitation construction line. She brought over a couple of cutters and soon set to work making piles of card and paper for making invitations. I was a bit slow and still had some of the invite sheets to print as well as RSVP cards. I eventually knocked those over and started to construct the invitations.

It was great to get things moving and we managed to get a grand total of twelve invitations constructed! All of the RSVP cards have been cut and stamps added. I shall have a few more busy hours putting the rest of the invitations together, and addressing envelopes. I shall have to see if I can enlist the services of my sister E and other bridesmaid NM to help keep the production line rolling.

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The seeds of an invitation

E and I have been busy scouring the pretty paper shops of Perth! We started a couple of weeks ago at Starfish Lane. After browsing through their ideas and papers I redesigned the invitation that I had in my head. Unfortunately they did not have all of the paper available that we required so I ordered what I could and purchased that yesterday, with the intent of finding the remainder of our requirements elsewhere.

We first tried Annie P Paperie. They had some pretty paper but not what we were looking for and disappointingly their card was all metallic and shiny, not the matte finish that we were looking for.

Next on our list was Collins Craft up in Balcatta. It had been recommended to me by my friend AT and E and I were very impressed by the large range that they had available! We were able to purchase the rest of the card that we required there and for a cheaper price than I had paid at Starish Lane.

Now all that remains is to get the words right and put it all together!

Stationary Stationery

I was going to suggest to my sister E that we go to a local Bridal Expo next weekend. That is, until I had a look at their Preferred Suppliers and realised that they had Stationary vendors!

Honestly I do not understand why it is so difficult to spell it correctly! See here for my last expression of disappointment.

Back to the Expo... I believe it is the same one I went to a few years ago (2001??) with my friend SCC. I know she found it useful to organise at least her wedding limousine. We do still have a few items to arrange for our wedding and it may be of use - dodgy spelling not withstanding.

Guest book ideas

It is nice to have a guest book, somewhere for your friends and family to write you special messages and draw funny pictures. Where though is it written that it has to be a book?









I bought some card before our engagement party with the idea of making a guest book, I could not find the inspiration to finish what I wanted. I might have to put some more thought into it for the wedding and see what I can come up with!

Thank you to Martha Stewart Weddings 1, 2, 3 and
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Quirky invitation idea!

These RSVP cards had a blank conversation bubble for the response. There were some creative alternatives to the traditional "Yes, we will be attending"!

Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

Wedding card

Here is an image of the card that I bought for the happy couple for the wedding just gone! It is by local Perth designer Mokoh Design. We also purchased cards to send as thank yous for our engagement from Mokoh.

Mokoh have also released a whole range of new designs and I cannot wait for another excuse to buy them!

Image is from Mokoh however does not do the actual card justice!

Wedding stamps

Following on from yesterday's post, I wanted to share the wedding stamps here in Australia.

Actually there are only two, as part of a series of stamps for every occasion. The series includes Baby, Love, Romance, Party and Celebrate! The pictures above show the covers of the booklets of 10, the designs are used on the stamps.

I bought a few booklets of the 55c stamps for our invitations, obviously believing two things:
1. We would design lightweight invitations, and
2. The ACCC will not approve the increase in price of postage as proposed by Australia Post.

Images from Australia Post Stamps and Collectibles

Invitations - the finishing touches

BetsyWhite Stationery have posted advice on how to assemble your wedding invitations. This is the part that happens once all of the swirls are inked and all of the ribbon is stuck down. Useful tips include how to stack your papers and insert them into the envelopes, how to address your invitations and finding the right stamps!

Invite Assembly: Part 1 Stuffing the Envelopes

Invite Assembly: Part 2 Stuffing the Envelopes: Square and Tea-Length Sizes

Invite Assembly: Part 3 Methods of addressing

Invite Assembly: Part 4 Finding the Perfect Postage

Local Invitation Options

There are many beautiful options for wedding stationery and invitations available, here are a few of the options that I have come across in Perth.

At Starfish Lane in North Perth, they sell all sorts of goodies for you to make your own invitations and stationery.

They have many different ready made ideas on display in their shop, and they will help you to design your own stationery, and even offer to make you a sample to take home. If you do not wish the fun of making everything yourself, then they also offer the option to make it for you.

There are so many choices in the shop for paper and embellishments, envelopes and decorations!


Mitchell & Dent describe themselves as "purveyors of paper ephemera of note". I am not entirely sure what they mean to convey however I do know that they have lovely letterpress cards! E and I have had the chance to appreciate their art at a market or two last December.




Wren Press in Mount Hawthorn will individually design your wedding stationery, and according to their website their services include embossing, foiling and letterpress, amongst others. You will have to visit their website for pictures.
(According to their website Wren Press design "stationary"!! Go figure.)

Wedding Planner

My sister E has put much love and creativeness into the Wedding Planner that she made us. I do love it, and need to make use of it more than I currently do.


She has used all sorts of different papers to make a special file for us to record all of our wedding notes and plans. The planner has been broken down into sections so that we can organise our day more effectively. The Engagement Party has been left to the end, as E rationalised (correctly!) that once it was over we would not wish to always be flicking through it to get to the wedding information!


She has individualised the divider for each section relevant to the content. For the Honeymoon section below, she has used the patterns from the inside of envelopes to create the illusion of the ocean!


When I first was engaged I had a few vague thoughts about getting a planner of some sort. I did a survey of a few of my (girl)friends who had recently been married, and the concensus was that they used an Excel Spreadsheet. Noone seemed to own up to having used a planner! Even so, I thought that a planner might be a nice addition to my wedding stationery, as an item more collectable than an Excel spreadsheet. I was more inclined to just buy a nice blank book and make it up myself, rather than some commercially overpriced effort where you are forced to conform to someone else's idea of how you should plan your wedding.

Very early on E asked if we had a wedding planner. When I answered in the negative I think that her creative processes went into overdrive and she transformed a plain tan file into the very stylish and useable planner that I have tried to show in the photos.

PS I do also have an Excel spreadsheet, but it's useless for saving bits of paper and business cards and samples!!

Thank you cards!

The cards that I ordered to use to write thank yous for our engagement have arrived! I am very excited! They are from Mokoh Design Australia, a local Perth business. I first saw Mokoh products at the September Perth Upmarket. I purchased a lovely red print that I have still to frame and hang! It is currently sitting on my buffet and is a constant reminder that I have many pictures to frame and hang.



There are so many pretty designs and prints on the Mokoh website. I initially asked for a sample of a different style print, but decided upon the one that I have purchased after browsing through the website.

The string wrapped bundles of cards are so cute!!