Thank-you notes for guests

What's a wedding without the guests? The ones who specially come to shower us with blessings, share our joy and lend a hand in the process; they are very precious to us.

We decided to keep our wedding small and limited the guess list to about 55 people, hence those who came were our closest family, relatives and friends. We wanted our guests to feel cosy and involved during our wedding, to be able to relate to us and our story and enjoy the moment with us. As such, thanking these loved ones for their presence was very important to us. :)

We wanted to keep the appreciation simple and sincere, hence it took quite a lot of brain picking initially.

Using the invitation cards from the hotel, we transformed them into appreciation cards instead using a rubber stamp. We also printed photos taken by our event photographer for our guests and wrote each a personalised note before sealing it with a sticker. :)

We hope our guests like them! :)

Our Wedding Invitation

Wedding invitations - the first item that any guest would come across before the actual wedding. A wedding invitation could reflect a couple's story, reveal hints on the theme of the wedding or even let you know more about the couple's personality, likes and dislikes.

For me, it's very important that the design of the card is to both of our liking and that it is affordable. Our hotel did provide us with cards, but we thought they were too plain for our liking and decided to source for something else instead. Coincidentally, we were to go on a trip to Guangzhou, China at around that time and decided to look out for wedding stuff over there.

We came across an area selling lots of wedding stuff over there and were blown away! Whoa! From gowns to shoes and accessories, there were so many things available and we were spoilt for choice. We came across a few shops specialising in wedding invitations and they had quite a few designs we liked. It could be because we did not know how to bargain, I didn't find the prices attractive and were quite hesitant to confirm our purchase. Furthermore, we had to furnish them with details for printing and I was also worried about the lack of reaction time for any errors in printing as our stay in Guangzhou was quite short. To cut the story short, we decided to go the Do-it-Ourselves way again. We bought the ready card stocks (choices were more limited) and decided to do the printing ourselves.

We settled for the gold design which would match our Gold Theme for the banquet. =)

The process of doing up the card was quite tedious. We took some time to finalise how we wanted the wordings to be, the exact content, the font style and size, etc. We also took some time to adjust the printing dimensions since it wasn't the usual printing dimensions. The biggest blow came when we realised..... THE ENVELOPE WHICH WAS GIVEN TO US WAS TOO SMALL FOR THE CARD! *Tears hair*.

To be honest, I was very upset about it. How could they give us envelopes that are too small? Where in the world were we going to find affordable envelopes for so many invitations? Would we be able to find envelopes of the matching size and color (GOLD!?)? I was worried and upset and was all prepared to use the cards from the hotel if we found no solution.

Thankfully, I started to buy from Taobao not too long ago and decided to try my luck. I must say I was really lucky. I managed to find one seller who had envelopes of the size and color I was looking for. ONE! :D *yay!* We also ordered a wax seal to complete our little project.

Here's close-up of the final outcome. We love the envelopes as we feel that they gave a pretty classy feel. I had always wanted to play with wax seals and am happy I managed to buy one customised set for around $6. The hubby chose the classic "Xi" design :). There were many compliments on the seal and we were really glad that our guests liked it. =)

We had to print. cut, stick, pack and seal before one invitation could be completed. It was a lot of fun and we are really pleased with the outcome. =)

I'm not sure how much was spent on making the cards, but a good estimate would be about $1.50 for each card. =)

 

Unity Candles

We did quite a lot of Doing-It-Ourselves (DIO) for our wedding and I must say doing many things ourselves, while stressful, has brought us closer as a couple.

We initially did not set out to make our own unity candles but a quick search online didn't yield very encouraging findings. The unity candles available online were either beyond our budget or we were not keen about the designs. What more, we were also not prepared to pay extra for shipping from overseas. Faced with so many "NOs" within our hearts, we knew that DIO was the way to go.

With the long list of things to settle, the unity candles were not on the top of my priority list. The hubby asked me a few times and (I've no idea where I got the courage from) I merely told him that I knew what to do (even when I didn't!! :p).

We finally decided to make a trip to IKEA to take a look at the candles. Seriously, walking down the rows of selection strengthened my determination to do up our unity candles ourselves. Plain white candles, like the chunkier round ones, only cost around $3 - 4 dollars each for the one we chose. The bill came up to less than SGD$15 for all the candles we bought, together with 3 candle holders. =)

I wanted our unity candles to be simple and sweet but I had no idea how I wanted it to be specifically, hence we went to Daiso and walked around to look for possible decorative items to buy. We did buy stuff which we did not manage to use, but thank goodness it was only one item and we could use it for other decorations.

So... after a day's worth of effort, here's what we came up with! =)

 

 

 

Ta Dah! Here's the final product. =)

 

Our set of affordable, simple and sweet unity candles. =)