Wedding Invitations and Lunch With Odyssey Home

I am back in Birmingham, back to the real world and I now have access to the cord that connects my camera to the computer.  Now I can download and post the photos from the trip and the ones prior to the trip.  These are the ones taken prior to the beach trip.

Before we left I picked up the wedding invitations from the calligrapher's and got them mailed out.

Ed was hanging out under the coffee table as I was taking pictures of the invitations.  This is one of his favorite spots.   There's Ed under the glass table top.

I also had lunch with a good friend, Odyssey Home  before I left.  She was back in town for her husband's grandmother's funeral.  While I waited for her to get to the restaurant, I took these pictures.  And threw some coins in this fountain.

We had lunch at Tavern on the Summit.  It just so happens to be the restaurant where I met The Murph a few years ago.  We immediately hit it off.  I thought he was very handsome.  We exchanged business cards.  He convinced me to go out with him. (it was REALLY tough- haha).  I made sure I had a chaperone for our first date (he was a stranger after all).  Later, The Murph joked that he wasn't sure if the chaperone was for me or for him.

As Odyssey Home and I were leaving the restaurant, I retraced my steps from the restroom through the bar area and showed her exactly where The Murph was sitting the night I met him.

This is Odyssey Home.  We were busy tweeting and instagraming at the table.  I think we were causing a bit of scene and disturbing a couple of old guys having lunch at the next table.  

I had chicken salad and she had Caesar salad.   And of course we took pictures and tweeted.  At least I tried to tweet, but for some reason (user error), I couldn't get my tweet to work.

Her tweets were working.  She's way more tweet savvy than I am.

After lunch, I headed home and The Murph and I left for the beach.  We had so much to pack with my bike and racing stuff and a bunch of things we had to take to The Boy at school along with our usual stuff (and I'm not a light packer), that I forgot to pack the camera cord.   As any blogger knows, this can be a very traumatic experience.

Luckily, I did have Instagram, so I could take pictures with my cell phone and tweet them after I finally figured out how all the buttons work.  I even figured out how to follow people on Instagram.  So hey, it wasn't a total loss!

I am posting all the race pictures and the beach pictures on another post.

I feel so much better already!!

Wedding Invitations Picked Out And On Budget!

We finally ordered wedding invitations!  You would think this is easy, but I assure you it is not.  For one thing, if you remember these past blog posts Here and my all time favorite Here where I added photos of invitations I liked, you will understand the problem.

I wanted fancy, expensive wedding invitations fit for a movie star or well.... a princess.  Unfortunately, these types of invitations cost money.  LOTS of money.  For example, my favorite invitation is $55 dollars per invitation and prices can go up from there.  No wonder they are so wonderful!  

When the Running Nazi was pointing out what a budgeting dumb ass I was on that run a while back (this one, remember),  I made sure not to mention the cost of the invitations I liked or my "secret" wedding invitation budget.  Since we are having a small wedding and only ordering 75 invitations,  I figured we could spend a little more per invitation.  

My "secret" wedding invitation budget was $2,000 dollars.  Do the math and you can see that 75 invitations at $55 dollars is over $4,000 dollars.  That amount was even out of my "secret" wedding invitation budget.

The Murph was more vocal about his wedding invitation budget.  His was under $500 dollars.  This was a more acceptable amount for the Running Nazi as well, although she thought we could get invitations for under $200 if we weren't such spendy fools.

So, see the dilemma we were in when it came time to order invitations.  I'm trying to find fancy smancy $4,000 invites for under $2,000, the Murph wants invites for under $500 and it really doesn't matter what the Running Nazi thinks.  I never put her in charge of the budget and now I'm too scared of her to tell her how much we spend.  

So we walked in the store today and there were literally thousands of invitations to choose from, including William Arthur and Vera Wang.  They were hanging on the walls everywhere and there were tons of books to browse through.  We had some decisions to make.

So that's where this poor man comes into the picture.  Alan, the owner of Alan's Invitations, one of the most popular invitation shops in Birmingham.   We talked to him last year about invitations and got totally confused at the huge selection.  It was probably the Murph and my first argument, although the Murph said it wasn't really an argument, just a minor disagreement.  

Alan didn't remember us at all or at least he said he didn't.  A good thing for us he didn't remember us, he might have thrown us out of the shop right then.

I think Alan has a super human ability to block out unpleasant things and unpleasant would describe me and the Murph trying to decide on invitations.  He's been in retail for awhile.  I remember purchasing birthday invitations for the Boy here many, many years ago.  I don't think they do birthday invitations anymore. 

Alan had his job cut out for him today.  The Murph and I have different ways of communicating and making decisions.  All unpleasant.  The Murph had decided on an invitation within 5 minutes of entering the store.  While I thought that invitation was okay, it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  I thought it was kind of plain.  I wanted sparkle.  I wanted some bling bling.  I wanted tulle or ribbon or both.  And I wanted it to have at least a hint of fuchsia.  Fuchsia, not red, not burgundy.  Just that perfect shade of pink.

Not too much to ask you'd think, except for the fact that this invitation doesn't exist unless you're willing to spend mega bucks.  Being practical like the Running Nazi, the Murph said, "Why spend a lot of money on something people just throw away?"

Love the funky chandelier!

After a couple of hours where I satisfied myself that I wasn't going to find any bling in our wedding invitation budget, I decided on shiny vintage gold invitations with a satin ribbon.  We customized the entire thing and added a hint of fuchia to the inside border and ink and the envelope flap.  Then we picked out fonts.  Millions of fonts.

I wanted our names in cursive, the Murph didn't like flowing, curly girly letters.  Alan came to the rescue by finding a cursive font that wasn't too frilly for the Murph, who was already declaring the fact that he was going to have to turn in his man card.  

Below is a close sample to what we chose.  All by William Arthur.

Alan probably needed some Valium by the time we left.  Although I was the worst, most indecisive one, Alan told me I had my hands full with the Murph.

 I know I do, but...

Alan's been in the wedding invitation business long enough to know better than to tell a man in front of his fiance that he has HIS hands full.  Even though I know the Murph has his hands full with me too, it's more fun to say the Murph is a handful.

The Murph with his checking account a little bit lighter.

But think of how much money we saved.  My secret budget was $2,000.  The Murph's budget was $500.  The actual wedding invitation cost for 75 invitations was $850.  We saved over $1,000 dollars!!

Go me!!

Wedding Invitations I Love

I spent several hours today surfing around online looking at wedding invitations.  There are just so many to choose from and I love so many of them even the ones that are a little too rustic or casual for what we have in mind.

Here are some of my favorites that I found.  Most I think can be customized to our colors (which aren't set in stone yet.)   I found a couple of color scheme ideas in the GO Wedding style magazine.  One is blush and black and the other is fuchsia and silver.  Both I love.
Luxury Wedding Invitations 

One of my favorites

I like this one, but with fuchsia instead of blue

I found the above three wedding invitations here -   http://www.carciofidesign.com/

I love her designs and they have the Murph's approval too.  There were some others, but they either didn't fit the theme (whatever that is because I'm all over the place!) or I couldn't figure out how to copy and paste the picture on here.

There are several pocket type, letterpress invitations that we liked and can order through a local store here and choose any color, font type, etc that we want.   That is a less expensive, but more boring option.

I like a little more sparkle!