Glitter bombs and invite glitches

In all the excitement of bespoke cocktails and wedding pie planning, it seems our grooms-to-be Gordon and Euan may have overlooked something…

Invites, I haven’t mentioned anything about invites! It’s all well and good planning the day but if we don’t get the invites out then ain’t nobody coming. And if I’m honest this is how invites happened, we were so busy focusing on the day and everything that’s happening that we hadn’t invited anyone.

So, first thing, who to get to do the invites while keeping costs low… well, straight off the bat, Euan’s cousin Amy, who’s an art teacher, has an art degree and her own design company quite happily offered, wow what a generous offer which of course we happily took her up on. Now of course I’ve met Amy a few times, but this is where I really get to start knowing her and straight off, we’re under strict instruction to put a mood board together so she can start to put together ideas for us.

Euan and I decide on tartans, Edinburgh and of course the cats and dog, so Amy offers us a cute little fold out invite – A7 size I think it is – just a dinky little thing that unfolds so that we have four sections on either side so eight in total to work with, the top one either side with this sketched image of Edinburgh castle, fireworks going off above and in the banner along the bottom, Euan’s favourite flowers with images of both cats and the dog subtly hidden within. Oh, and on brown craft paper so easily recyclable.

CREATION JUICES

Next up invitation creation night! We close the B&B, invite Amy and her mum, auntie Susan, get a few bottles of wine to lubricate the creation juices and sit in to come up with the wording and layout, section one is simple enough – the invite – section two where and when.

So far so good! Next, I have this bright idea (hopefully anyway!) to put in some hints for the day, especially considering how hush hush everything is – dog treats (obviously because Bear’s coming), who’s that…? (a nod to the table plan), wedding cake!? (pie of course), dancing shoes (my next post will explain that one) and sparkles (more about that one later). The idea being to give everyone a taste for the day, without being obvious.

Then we’ve a little section about accommodation – Edinburgh’s a pricy city and a lot of people are coming a long way so I decided to tap some contacts, so I put some feelers out to see if I can get some form of discount code. I try a few and I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, then through a random conversation with an old friend I get put in touch with someone. A bit of haggling and a lot of emails and my guests have a 20% off discount code, couple this with three, four and five-star hotel options and two of them are based mere minutes from The Hub. Honestly, I have no idea if anyone will take up the offer, however it’s there.

Now it’s the wedding gift section, I have to say Euan and I have had a lot of back and forth on this section over a few months. No arguments but definitely a lot of discussion. Do we want a gift list? This is the one bit we agree on, we do not need a gift list. We’ve lived together for five years, have our own home which is also a B&B, coupled with the fact that neither of us is particularly into possessions – the thought of putting together a list seems far too much of a chore.

Now, I don’t know what my faithful readers think, but I’m all for asking for contributions to our honeymoon as we are experiences people – Euan hates this idea, he feels like it’s begging. Then good friends of ours, through no prompting, comment that their gift to us will be a contribution to our honeymoon. This, coupled with Euan’s cousin, who did this for her wedding without any issues, convinces him. So, two bottles of wine into the evening (that’s by myself), I try to create a verse to give across our views on this…

‘The best gift you can give us is your fantastic presence on the day. Genuinely. Our home and business is already set, if you’re in the need to give help with the honeymoon fund we would be grateful to get.’

RSVP PAIN

I’m not sure even now if we think it was the right idea, but I’m sure on the day we won’t be thinking anything about it. Last little section was on the RSVP, in order to save money and again the environment, Euan created an email and we’ve asked for responses that way, which of course gives us easy access for proof too for that inevitable, ‘sorry you didn’t tell us you were allergic to carpet dust’!

Folded up in little envelopes, with each one packed with a spoonful of biodegradable glitter, a double spoonful if I know they hate glitter, and they were posted off. Hence the sparkles hint above, or is it?

Don’t know if anyone else has had this but over two months later and we were still chasing people for responses and so many people have responded via text or messenger – so infuriating! Still we push on and back to the planning, catch up next time where I will tell you all about the entertainment and other surprises, and I think I’ve also promised more about bridesmaids…