Or, to expand:

• minimum cost
• minimum effort (unless the task is something really fun!)
• maximum impact

In the context of invitations for example, getting someone else to do them might be low effort and high impact, but a bit high in cost. Learning calligraphy and hand-lettering 100 individual invitations with all the trimmings might be lower cost and have a lot of impact, but is too much effort for me. Putting together a simple but well thought through design with a few interesting elements balances out all three.

What this brings me to is minimalism, and I’m cool with that. Major kudos to those who have the budget to ignore the first condition or the time and dedication to not worry about the second, but I’m pretty happy being cheap and lazy(ish)

This isn’t a slight on those who aren’t craftily/graphically inclined or don’t have time for it and choose to get stuff done by other people – if you don’t like doing this kind of thing anyway then it probably isn’t worth it for you to start DIYing stuff. This way of thinking suits me, my love of creative things, my experience and the time that I have to dedicate to such projects, and I don’t expect anyone else to adopt it. If you’re not sure about one of your projects, take a look at this DIY Reality Check Flowchart (pdf) from 100 Layer Cake.

…yikes, some of this reads like marketing jargon!

They’re done! And only just mailed out, despite my best intentions to give everyone a good few weeks’ notice. We ended up creating a Facebook event in the meantime, which has actually led to most people RSVPing on there and ignoring my request for their address to send them my cute invitations! I’ve managed to send out about half now, and will have to chase up the rest or hand them out when we get to Perth this weekend (on the RSVP date, eep!).

I’m really pleased with the prettiness to work and cost involved ratio. Here’s a breakdown of the costs:

• heart stamper: $17.95 from Lincraft
• cream card: $15 for 25 sheets from Eckersley’s (half price sale, and we only used half the sheets since the invites are A6)
• printing at home: free (okay, my ink costs a bit, but there wasn’t much printing involved)
• envelopes: $10 for 50 from Officeworks
• red paper: $1.50 for an A2 sheet from the local newsagent
• thread: couple of dollars from Lincraft

If you want to try something like this, it’s really easy with the shape stamper! I’m planning on using the stamper to make garlands of hearts sewn together for decorations at the party, so I’d say I’m definitely getting my moneys worth out of it. This is how I did it:

• Did the design up in Photoshop (although with a ‘design’ this simple it’s perfectly easy to put it together in Word or whatever software you have), leaving room for the paper shapes to be added on later.
• Printed them out four to a page and sliced them up with a rotary cutter (if you don’t have one then a metal ruler, blade and cutting board or even just scissors works fine)
• Punched out heart shapes from the big red sheet of paper.
• Glued (just with a gluestick) the hearts into the correct positions on the card to make sewing easier.
• Sewed through the hearts in the widest basting stitch, leaving the end threads a bit long.

That’s it! They didn’t take long at all to make, but I think the tactile effect of the different textures makes it just that more interesting than simple printed invites.

I also have these lovely strips of remnants, as I punched the hearts out of a poster sized piece of paper in rows and cut off each row as I went. I’m planning to stick them together into a long strip and use them for decorations somewhere, along with the heart garlands. No wastage makes me happy!

Philip Treacy hats

I am not a high fashion person. I’m not even a vaguely fashionable person. But damn, these hats by Philip Treacy are more like art. I don’t think I have the bone structure to pull one off even if I could afford it, but they are lovely to look at and thought I’d share! These are probably the most tame of his creations that I’ve found photos of – some are definitely not ready-to-wear and really quite bizarre, but stunning all the same. If I was thinking of wearing a hat at my wedding it would probably be inspired by the one on the right, although I’m not sure I can give up the birdcage veil idea!

I did a bit of messing around with The Boy’s little Zumi camera that we’re thinking of using to take some wedding footage last weekend, and cut it together with some music in iMovie. I should probably warn you that I took this footage at an anime convention (oh yes, I’m one of those) and apparently some people are taken aback by the sheer geekery, but lets focus on the video making process.

Honestly, if we switched all the geeks in cosplay for our wedding guests and chucked in a little bit of the ceremony, I’d be perfectly happy with having a video like this for our wedding video. It definitely isn’t for everyone though… here’s my pros and cons based on making this video:

Pros

• way way cheaper than hiring a decent professional videographer, especially if you already have a camera to work with
• more creative control to make it exactly as cheesy as you like
• a cheap and easy to use camera can be passed around amongst guests to get a good variety of footage
• a fancy camera isn’t really necessary for this uh, ‘rustic’ style
• the software that comes free for editing videos on Macs and PCs isn’t too bad to work with if you don’t want to do anything too fancy
• editing isn’t difficult – although I’d probably spend more time on our wedding video, this one just took me a couple of hours
• a short, fun YouTube video is more likely to get watched by your friends and family than a really long high quality DVD

Cons

• the video quality of the Zumi and your average point-and-shoot camera is not going to be particularly high
• the sound quality of non-professional video cameras is pretty bad unless you’re very close to the speaking person – definitely not ideal for recording vows or speeches
• if the camera is getting passed around you run the risk of it getting lost or forgotten somewhere…
• there’s also the risk of missing or screwing up the video of important moments
• some people might find editing challenging or too time consuming
• iMovie (the software that comes on the Mac that I used for this video) is really quite limited, which is frustrating at times if you’re more of a power user
• the Zumi (ironically?) does not zoom, and ‘zooming with your feet’ isn’t always possible
• you or whichever friend you’ve roped into being ‘videographer’ needs to remember to be prepared with extra memory cards and batteries

Of these issues I think the sound quality is of the most concern for me, as two of my talented bridesmaids are going to be performing a song for us and I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those watch-again-and-cry-happy-tears moments that I don’t want to be marred by really fuzzy sound. Maybe I can hack together something to record the sound independently and set it to the video later? Something to consider…

But I saw this post on A Los Angeles Love today, and had to bring attention to it. It’s pretty much what I was trying to say here and here about the lack of diversity in wedding blogs, but probably better articulated. Go read it. I’ll leave you with a quote:

Fuck the pianos and sofas in fields with pretty people – it’s EASY to take pretty photos of pretty people in pretty settings in posed situations (whether they’re actual clients or models, it’s still staged) . But you know what takes real art? Seeing beauty where it really resides – in scrunchy-faced tears and heads-thrown-back laughter and overwhelming love, caught in an instant as someone brushes away a tear in real-time. If you don’t want to capture that, why would you bother with becoming a wedding photographer?

via SMH

These tweets and the press release they were quoted from were taken down shortly after, but not before outraged people took screenshots and Google cached her site.

Love is love people. I’m sure Jesus would agree with me.

photo by Feather Love Photography, via Ruffled

I love the idea of using images instead of table numbers. Doesn’t this look so fab? So instead of saying “I’m on table 4,” you can say “I’m on the T-REX table”, or LLAMA TABLE, or TEAPOT TABLE, which is significantly more awesome.

The rest of the wedding photos are absolutely worth a look too, even if it just makes you jealous that you can’t have a rooftop wedding.

Fake details are fake!

My plan is to print the text onto some textured cream card, use one of the oversized shaped paper punches to punch the hearts out of some red paper, then sew them on in cream thread with the widest stitch on my machine. Simple, textural, somewhat time consuming but hopefully not so much as say, gocco-ing 50 odd invitations. I’m totally into typewriter fonts at the moment – this one is a free font called Bohemian Typewriter if anyone is interested.

With some travel and obviously saving for the wedding coming up we don’t really have a lot of cash to throw at this party, so things are being kept fairly simple – a casual afternoon affair with some basic (self catered) nibbles and punch in my parents’ backyard. I’m really hoping that people take us at our word regarding not wanting any presents, because it would be heartbreaking to have to leave anything large or delicate behind in Perth because we can’t take it home! Hopefully my wording about presents and BYO alcohol aren’t upsetting to people… some people seem to get offended about the most ridiculous things to do with weddings, although I’m pretty sure our peeps coming the party aren’t so judgy.

How early are you supposed to send out invitations for a casual event like this? We’re not expecting anyone to travel for it – a few weeks maybe?

Um. So yes, I’ve changed my mind on colours again. And it probably won’t be the last time. But anyway, I call this one “Pink Lemonade Happy Funfun Awesome Times”, and it is fairly similar to the last mood board that I posted with the addition of a delicious watermelon pink. Despite being one of my favourite colours, yellow is a bit limiting in a lot of ways and I thought it needed one more contrasting colour to round things out. I think the pink adds a bit of warmth and fun, hopefully without being too girly. I think the girls would also all look stunning in pink, although it might be a more difficult colour to find than the dove grey that I have pictured…

• Meet with our photographer for the first time! Although with following her on Twitter and Facebook I sort of feel like I know her already…
• See our reception venue in real life for the first time – hope it lives up to expectations, because I have deposit down =/
• Find out from reception venue what kind of decorations they’re happy for me to put up.
• Figure out if we want to stick with the venue’s catering or get external Chinese catering.
• Cake tasting – not sure I even want a cake yet, but if there’s a chance to taste cake I will take it.
• Check out some ceremony venues and get one booked in.
• Take a look at the flower markets and have a go at making a practice bouquet.
• Attempt to check out some musicians?
• Throw an engagement party!

Am I missing anything important that I should be working on this far out?