Honeymoon Planning time!

We're admittedly late in the honeymoon planning with the wedding about 7 weeks away. The name of the game is ultra-splurge because we've been living in a cheap apartment for years and I've been penny-pinching for a long time. On top of that my parents offered to chip in on the honeymoon as long as we stay in the United States in order to "bolster the economy" in this time of recession. Even if it's only for 6 nights we're going to honeymoon like superstars. That's my goal at least.

So, what is the most obvious choice for a honeymoon in the summer? It was a surprisingly difficult decision between Alaskan Cruise vs. Hawaii but we're going the cliche route and picking Hawaii. Then you have the decision: which island to pick? The 3 obvious islands would be the Big Island, Kauai, or Maui. It came down to a coin-toss between Maui and Kauai but I'm going with Maui because it's bigger and there is more "stuff" to do. Kauai apparently is more "natural" but honestly we're not exactly a nature-loving couple.

There are 2 areas of super-luxury on Maui: Kapalua to the West and Wailea to the South. How do I know this? Well, the Ritz Carlton is in Kapalua and the Four Seasons is in Wailea. To be democratic about our 6 nights of luxury I want to split it down the middle, 3 nights in Kapalua and 3 nights in Wailea. That should make for a good trip. I'm going to try to arrive on the islands as early as possible and leave as late as possible on the redeye even if it costs an extra $100 bucks for the tickets.

I haven't priced everything out yet but United is the only airline that has direct flights from San Francisco (SFO) to Kahului, Maui airport (OGG). These direct flights are pretty damn expensive but the cost goes down if bought in a vacation package. Frommer's suggests Pleasant Holidays as a good place to pick packages. I spoke with a travel agent who reserved us some accommodations through a packager and the air fare was about $300 less PER TICKET than if you were to build the trip piecemeal.

Sending and Organizing our Wedding Invitations

A month or so ago we actually sent our wedding invitations in the mail. The process was somewhat arduous but in the end we managed to get 150 envelopes out the door and the response cards have been trickling in ever since.

The sanity-saver in all this is that I happen to have Microsoft Office so we were able to use an Excel-Word mail merge to properly format the addresses so when it came time to print the envelopes I only had to feed them through the printer one at a time.

Preparing our guest list in Excel

To get started I created a new Excel spreadsheet using a template my brother in-law created for his wedding a few years ago. The key to the spreadsheet is that you want to prepare it for a mail merge so that you can print the envelopes without writing out each and every address.

1. Number
2. Status (sent / replied)
3. Regular Names (John, Joe, Mary, etc.)
4. Envelope Name(s) i.e. "Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe"
5. Street Address
6. Address 2 (for Apartment Number, Suite, Flat, Unit, Etc.)
7. City
8. State
9. ZIP
10. # in party
11. Beef (Replace these with your food options if it is per-plate)
12. Chicken
13. Vegetarian

Preparing the Word Template

Setting this up was tricky because our envelopes are not standard envelopes. We were lucky, however, that they had pretty large dimensions (8×8in. with the flaps open, 8×5in. flaps closed). I ran a few test pages on 8×11 inch paper and lined them up with our envelopes to make sure that the return address and mailing address information would print correctly.

Printing the Envelopes

I happen to have a Laser Printer at home so we fed the envelopes through the single-sheet feeder one at a time. The envelopes went through with mild bending. No creases but they got a little warped. However, once you stuff the invitations in the envelopes it will straighten things out. Overall it took about 2 hours to print out 150+ envelopes. Time consuming but at least we saved a few bucks instead of having the printers do it.

Things to put in the envelopes

Now is the time to make sure you have everything. Etiquette suggests that you do not explicitly say anything about gift registries or receiving money. To be as pseudo-polite as possible we included an extra slip of paper provided by our reception site that had driving instructions to the hotel that included the web address for our free wedding website provided by theknot.com. On theknot.com we have detailed driving and hotel booking instructions, our gift registries, and the story of how we met.

• Primary envelope, with extra colored paper lining for effect. Nothing printed. 
• Stamped response envelope with our mailing address printed on the front (costs extra)
• Response cards. Make sure response cards asks for names, # of people attending, and the meal choice (if necessary). 
• On the back of the response card, put a code number that corresponds to your Excel sheet just in case the response name is illegible.
• Invitation card
• Information card with driving instructions, hotel booking information, and website information.

Wedding Invitations and Wedding Response cards

We're getting ready to print and ship our wedding invitations! It's the last major thing on the list. Flowers, DJ, food, photographer, and videographer have all been taken care of.

Where to get invitations? Chinatown, Stationery store, or Costco?

Costco, the purveyor of supreme value, sells wedding invitations, response cards, thank you notes, and other wedding-related stationery. This fact is not immediately apparent on the website but if you search for "wedding invitations" on Costco.com the search result will take you to Costco's wedding invitation website. (or bookmark http://pal.einvite.com/?Cobrand=PAL&Site=PAL&vk=1777211146) The site is pretty easy to use and they have a decent selection.

Since we live in the San Francisco Bay Area we thought we could get a printshop from Chinatown or around the area to get things printed out super cheap. Unfortunately we couldn't figure out where to start and we read some negative things about the service from places in Chinatown. Of course that is to be expected since nowhere in Chinatown will ever give you decent service

In the end, we decided to go with a small store called Lobella in Daly City. The proprietor of the Lobella, Nancy, has been very helpful and informative. We visited with her several times and she was always helpful without providing too much opinion which is important in making the wedding invitations your own.

Which paper company?

Since we were in Lobella, we had the choice of invitations from Birchcraft, Checkerboard, and maybe one other vendor. Birchcraft invitations tended to be more gawdy and ornate. Think tassels, embossed pictures of couples, frilly stuff, and heavy on the cute factor. For the most part Checkerboard invitations are subdued and conservative with darker colors and overall a more mature appearance. We chose Checkerboard because Birchcraft's selection was slightly too ornate and cutesy. However, we could be accused of choosing "boring" invitations. Unfortunately for our wallets Checkerboard invitations are slightly more expensive than Birchcraft.

What about prices?

Lobella Stationery prices are regular retail ordering for Checkerboard (www.checkernet.com), you see Checkerboard's full retail prices. I was hoping for a discount but Lobella couldn't do that for us because we didn't have enough volume. Interestingly enough, Checkerboard is a wedding invitation vendor on Costco.com. If you're considering a Checkerboard Invitation, check to see if Costco has the design you like (or similar) you could save big bucks. The price difference is approximately 25% (truth in advertising from the Costco website). Costco has some nice designs. At Lobella our Checkerboard invitations retail for $450 including envelopes (200 quantity), similar products at Costco were about $100 cheaper.

However the $100 difference is that it's all self service. No hand-holding or helpful input to make ordering easier or to make sure your spelling is correct or to tell you that it's rude to say certain things. You make your own design, order from Costco, cross your fingers for a good result, wait a few days, and - yikes - you have 200 invitations in your mailbox. With Lobella, Nancy made suggestions about wording, called the printers, and generally arranged the process to be as smooth as possible.

You could, however, save big bucks if Costco AND your stationery store both have the same design. Buy the invitations from the stationery store to get the hands-on help and then order the response cards and reception cards from Costco to save the 25% on the easy stuff

Lobella

508 Westlake Center

Daly City, CA 94015

650-757-1403

http://www.yelp.com/biz/lobella-daly-city

Save the Date cards

The detail that can go into wedding planning is mind boggling. For something as simple as "save the date" cards there are many considerations. However, in the grand scheme of things Save the date cards are trivial items -- most people will see the cards and toss them away within a few minutes. Thus our goal was to spend only the minimum possible to get the point across.

Magnets! We really liked the idea of sending "Save the Date" magnets with our picture on the magnets. Magnets would be very handy because they can go on the fridge but they turned out to be too expensive. In my cursory web search magnets cost around 80 cents - $2 each for bulk orders -- out of our price range. Even at the cheapest rates add 42 cent stamps and a few cents for envelopes is about $1.30 per person and you haven't invited them formally yet.

Photo cards! Photo cards would have been nice too but even from the big online printing services like Zazzle, Snapfish, and Kodak Gallery these cards cost go from $1-$3 each, excluding postage. That's crazy!

Do it yourself! I wasn't really thinking about it at first but a photo card is essentially a photograph on better paper. With a little photoshop magic and a cheap printing service we could make our own cards for a fraction of the cost of the professional stuff and achieve the same end.

• A friend who takes photos as a hobby helped us take a few pictures around picturesque areas with his fancy camera. We bought him dinner as gratuity. (~$30)
• Used Photoshop to add the text (free)
• Print proofs to Meijer to do a test print on 4"×6" matte photo paper because I don't have a proper color printer. Meijer has machines that print digital photos for 25 cents each and we got the pictures within about 2 minutes, literally.
• Adjusted the picture because the text ran off the photo
• Did another test print on 4"×6"
• Sent to online printing service like Kodak Gallery or Snapfish which can print photos for 8 cents per photo.
• Bought some envelopes and stamps to send in the mail.

Resources (as of 12/1/2008):

Snapfish - 8 cent prints

Kodak Gallery - 15 cent prints / 10 cents if you pay $24.99/yr

Shutterfly - 10 cent prints

Meijer - We don't have a color printer so we printed some test pictures at the self-service kiosk. It only cost $2 and 2 minutes for 8 pictures. Meijer also does prints by mail for 9-15 cents each via Snapfish.

Target - for test prints, if you don't go to Meijer.

Zazzle - make your own cards using templates. Lots of choices. Nice idea but expensive.

VistaPrint - make your own cards using templates. Not as pretty as Zazzle but cheaper.

David’s Bridal

There's always so much riding on the wedding dress. So much pressure to look great. It can be overwhelming, because you can have a hard time looking for the right dress. I tried on several dresses before buying one. The first place that I went to was David's Bridal. They have an amazing range of sizes. I think they even go up to size 22 or 24. They have all sorts of designs that are flattering on many types of bodies. Prices can be decent. The most expensive dress I tried on was roughly 600 bucks, the cheapest 99 bucks.

There are a couple things that get to me though. The fabric and quality of the sewing. Some of these dresses can photograph pretty well, but in person, you get what you pay for. Some of the dresses are made out of polyester, and can almost have a bluish tinge to it, because it's so white. I personally, prefer a creamier color like Ivory, that has a little more depth to it when taking pictures.

Another thing, the sales lady can be a little overbearing. She was nice by all means, but after a few weeks, she kept calling me every couple weeks and trying to push their dresses. Also, look out for the quality of the dresses. Make sure you get one that hasn't been tried on by hundreds of brides.

I ended getting my dress in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's a store called Traditions. It's more higher end than David's Bridal, but they had a great sample sale, and couldn't resist. The sales people, seamstress, and everyone there has been wonderful and so helpful. I cannot say one negative thing about the place. The dress is by LeeAnn Belter, she's known for her understated, elegant designs. The dress is also made out of silk, and made in Canada. I try to support those dressmakers working out of North America. Dresses made in China have come a long way over the past ten years, and the quality is pretty good. But I want to support North American made products.

For those girls finding the right dress, take your time, and take people with you who are honest and helpful. And have fun! There are so many designs out there, take advantage of trying it on!