Wedding Wednesday: Stationery Two

Okay, dear readers, where did we leave off last time?  Yes - Etsy.  Now, I know that wedding (and, more generally, lifestyle) bloggers love Etsy, and I do understand that.  Sometimes I even agree. But Etsy stirs up a lot of uncomfortable emotions for me.  On the one hand, I feel overwhelmed.  (There are too many options!)  On the other, I feel inadequate.  (And I could never be that creative or crafty!)  A whole website full of beautiful things that people made themselves?  What's the point in trying to be a well-rounded woman and, you know, plan a wedding if I collapse into frustrated wails every time I click on?  Wait - is this just me?  No, I'm pretty sure it isn't.  If it were, the founder of Regretsy wouldn't have scored a book deal.

But I do recognize that there are incredibly talented people on Etsy and that it is, when used properly, a fantastic resource.  And I realized that there are ways to use Etsy without having an emotional breakdown: I needed to limit my options.

Because I'm planning what is, in effect, a destination wedding, I communicate with my vendors almost exclusively through the internet.  I will meet each of them at least once before next August, but between now and then we'll rely on email and Skype.  The majority of Etsy stores are based in the United States and the opportunity to actually work with someone local on a piece of my wedding was too good to pass up, so I first filtered the shops to show only those in the DC area.

Etsy presented a really great selection even when limited, but the decision was easy in the end.  Almost every image I liked turned out to be from the same store: Pink Orchid Invites.  There wasn't one design that was exactly what we had in mind, but I loved different aspects of most of her pieces and so emailed Caroline to see if we could work together to create a custom design.  She was totally open and friendly in our emails, so we met up as soon as I moved back to DC.

Mom came too, of course, and we selected the ink and paper colors we liked - which is so important to do in person, I think, because they look completely different on a computer screen - and got a feel for the varieties of paper.  I pointed out the kinds of designs that Jon and I preferred and showed Caroline some examples of other companies' work that were similar to the direction we wanted.  When we left, I was absolutely confident that she understood what we were trying to create and that she was excited about helping us make it happen.

Like I said last week, I want the design of our paper goods to be consistent throughout the ceremony, so we decided to create the invitation first because it's the most complicated and then use it as a base for all of the other pieces.  By the end of the summer, Jon and I (and the parents) had signed off on the design.  Now we're just waiting for our Save the Dates to arrive - I'll show you as soon as they get here, of course!  In the meantime, though, I hope a glimpse of our monogram will hold you....