Save The Date!

Posted by Tigritza

...By now, you've all hopefully received the save-the-dates! So, we're safe to finally post about them. This was, by far, the most exciting wedding project so far! And certainly the most time-intensive. We started off with a noble idea: Let's hand-make the save-the-dates to save money. What ended up happenning? It was just as expensive as it would have been to print fancy custom save-the-dates in the store...but they're cute as hell and we love them!

First, we got the idea from a DIY book. I can't find the exact project online, but it looked something like this.

So if you took a look at the link above, you'll see there were a lot of moving parts here. First, the front and the back of the card. We opened a Powerpoint file and set to work - using our theme colors (red, orange, yellow), we came up with a design that was simple and, we thought, fun. We tried the printer at home, but lesson learned: if your printer came free with your computer purchase, it's probably not a very good printer. So Tasha spent hours searching our neighborhood for the cheapest printing shop that could do our job! We finally found it: Taws was fantastic! They worked with us to get the right paper and negotiate a price for printing AND cutting the rectangular front and back of the card! Score.

Next, the wheel - how were we going to do this? Tasha (she is awesome isn't she) found a cheap circle-cutter online, and used it to cut wheels out of the same paper we used for the card front and back. It was a ton of work, and turns out it's actually really hard to get the wheel perfectly cut (to get your starting cut to meet your ending cut, resulting in a perfect circle). Picture below. We also bought tiny little gold brads to hold the wheel to the front rectangle of the card.

We also had to use the circle cutter to cut a hole in the front of the card, to create a window through which you could see the images on the wheel! DISASTER. We lost about 10% of our cards this way...it is VERY hard to cut a small circle with this circle cutter. Oh well - Taws was nice enough to print a few extra for us (wisely anticipating such disasters) so we literally ended up with JUST the right amount of printed cards with useable circle-windows!

Next, the circular pictures: when someone turns the wheel, and looks through the circular window, what pictures do they see? After looking through lots of wedding sites online, we loved the idea of using the words "She Said Yes!" ...especially since there are two of us, both "she". We also were really excited about our date, Friday April 13th 2012... especially since the last Friday April 13th was in 2007, the day we met! So, we came up with two awesome little "logos" - on Powerpoint again, of course. We wanted the "She Said Yes" to look a little old-school, and the "Friday April 13th" to look a little quirky. And this is how they turned out! (I knew all those years making PPT decks as a consultant would pay off one day!)

So, those would be two of the pictures on our wheel! But what about the other two? We wanted pictures of us. So one cool Saturday September morning, before catching a bolt-bus to New York to see Tasha's parents, we took my camera, a tripod and ourselves down to Rittenhouse square. I set up the tripod and put Tasha in front of it, and took a light-test shot. Wow. The light was perfect, and Tasha looked phenomenal. So that was it! We had an absolute blast. We used the self-timer and just took a bunch of shots. A lot of them were really funny, with Tasha laughing or giggling with that giant smile of hers. We processed them later that night, and picked the top two! (Another 3 of the photos went on an awesome magnet we made to accompany the Save-The-Date (also made in Powerpoint, and also printed at Taws).... but unfortunately there's absolutely no way to display that here on the blog anonymously, since our faces are all over it!)

Taws was able to print our circles on huge pieces of sticker paper. Tasha had bought a circle punch of the perfect size online, so I cut the stickers into strips...

and set to work punching them out one by one! Over 300 punches in total. Each punch required aligning the circle perfectly in the 1.25-inch circle punch, slipping a piece of foil under it (apparently this helps smooth the cut) and applying herculean force onto it to snap the circle out perfectly. My PALMS were bruised by the end of the day... so much so that holding onto the banister of our staircase hurt! Below is a pic of me working the circle punch on our coffee table.

...So, I wasn't the only one hurting. Turns out, Mr. Circle Punch wasn't too happy either. He decided to break down halfway through our operation. We called a bunch of craft stores in Philly, found one 10 miles away that carried the right size, and I biked all the way over there...only to be told they were mistaken, they didn't have the right size. So I biked all the way back home, near tears and extremely dejected, and we decided we had to make it work. Using masking tape, we assembled and stuck the punch back together and pushed on. We had to change the masking tape every 20 punches or so, but we finally got through it all! Et Voila - the bowls of circles finally added up!

And finally: Putting it all together. With double-sided tape from PaperSource (an incredible crafts store where we found a bunch of our supplies!) Tasha stuck the front and back of the card together after attaching the wheel. Then, exhausted, we created an assembly line: Tasha peeled off each sticker and I went through sticking them on the wheel of each card. DONE! Below are four shots, showing each of the four stickers in the 'window' as the wheel is turned. (Our names have been hidden, sorry!) You can click on the photo to magnify.

She Said Yes!

Yep, the last line is my favorite part...

Friday The 13th

Last photo -

THE BEST PART: Mailing them. Seriously. We bought Persimmon-colored envelopes from PaperSource, and printed each address individually using our printer at home. We were so psyched to see how far the Save-The-Dates were travelling. They went out to 38 cities: in the United States, South Africa, Russia, India, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Brazil, China, and Canada.

(My favorite was the Russian one, which actually had to be typed out in Russian. класс!)

So - THANK YOU for being so cool and living in so many places!!

[Again, sorry for the censoring but we had to do it. Click on the photo to enlarge - ]

...On a Saturday evening, we took our big bag of Save-The-Dates and dumped them in a mailbox on 19th and Chestnut. It was...strange.

Me: "Is it safe to just leave them here? What if someone breaks in?"

Tasha: "Breaks into a mailbox...and steals our save-the-dates. Really??"

Me: "It's starting to rain. Are mailboxes waterproof?! What if they get ruined???"
Tasha: "Let's go home." She took me by the hand and dragged me back to our apartment, stopping to buy me a Twix ice cream bar on the way. Yep, she's that good.

Save-The-Dates: check!

Red-Orange-Yellow what?

Posted by Tigritza

Dear readers, WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We've been putting this decision off for long enough, and now, we finally have to set it in stone: COLORS. Specifically, colors of best-people outfits. You may recall us mentioning that way back when, at a bar by the river in Bristol, after a few (too many?) glasses of wine, Tasha and I were finally able to 'envision' our wedding: the ceremony, the seating, the fabrics, and the colors! ...Well, the truth is that being able to 'envision' something, i.e. to conjure up a blurry image in the back of your mind, is not at all the same as being able to literally pick patterns out of a catalogue.

Since our wedding's a mixture of Russian and Indian, involving elements of Hindu and Jewish culture, we wanted to reflect that wonderful blend in our color scheme. Rather than going with more traditional wedding colors - like purple or blue - we wanted fiery colors. Fiery! Yep - we pictured oranges, reds, and yellows. Bright happy colors that celebrate rather than calmly state our wedding. After all, a wedding is a party. And we're all still young!

While it's easier to incorporate that color scheme into flowers, decor, etc, we've found that it's pretty hard to translate it into clothing, i.e. Best People Attire, without making everyone look a little too, well, orange!

For the 'best people' wearing dresses, Tasha found this beautiful 'convertible' dress that seems to be pretty popular! We didn't want to necessarily force everyone to wear the same dress, but we wanted some sort of continuity. So the convertible dress (below, image from Two Birds) is the best of both worlds - the best people will get to decide how to wear the dress (there are literally dozens of different ways to wear this single garment!) so reflect their own style and what they feel most comfortable with! All dresses would go till just below the knee, but the top half is totally customizable based on how each person wants to tie it. What do you think?

Now, what about colors? Tasha emailed ten different sellers on Etsy.com, but as it turns out, most sellers just don't have colors that appeal to us and can match our style. However, one seller had some great colors that were orange/red/yellow, but not too orange, and had some beautiful patterns. Below is a picture of her fabrics:

The patterns seem pretty casual, which matches the style of the convertible dress. So - what color do we pick? This is where we really need your help. Our favorite is the one on the far left: orange with patterns and not as overwhelming as just a flat orange. I actually think it's pretty beautiful in its own way. SO:

- do we pick just that one pattern and have everyone wear it?

- do we pick a whole bunch of different patterns (all three above, plus one more) and allow best people to pick their favorite and mix it up? This could be pretty cool, but will this look way too crazy and wildly inconsistent and distracting? Or will it just look cute and unique? Remember, next to the best people, I will be wearing a red-and-gold sari, and Tasha a white wedding dress.

- do we pick one color for the "best woman" (equivalent of maid-of-honor), and another color for the rest of the 'best people'? This would make her stand out, but I don't like making it seem like she's so much more special than the rest of our friends and family. Yes, she'd be the one that most impacted and built our relationship, but everyone up there with us (and the rest of the guests!) are important to us in very different and symbolic ways.

Once we've figured that out, we also need to think about the best people who will be wearing pants/suits. Our initial vision was that it would be pretty cool to have the best-people-pants-wearers (sorry but no gender discrimination here!) on Tasha's side wear Indian clothing, and the ones on my side wear Western clothing, all within the same color scheme. Specifically, we really wanted Tasha's older brother to wear Indian clothes :) Below is an outfit we bought for him in India! (The picture is of someone else trying it on.)

But then, what color could the rest of the pants-wearers wear? An orange suit seems kind of, well, ridiculous! What about a light beige suit with an orange-themed tie? (I've really never ever liked beige though...) Or just a vest + trousers + brightly-colored tie?

HELP US!

Lots of love,

Tigritza (& Tasha)

"Workflowy that sh*t!"

Posted by Tigritza

At long last, we're finally back online! I know, this blog is horribly in need of an update. To put it blunty: since our last update, our world has turned upside down, inside out and finally back on track again, albeit still a little wobbly. Business school and Nursing school keep us incredibly busy - we often leave the house at 8am and return anywhere between 7 - 9 pm, with a list of school-related things that still need to get done that night, or a party (read: 'networking event') that we "have" to go to. And as the second quarter kicks off in late October and recruiters swarm onto campus, the pressure will be on and it's only going to get busier.

After realizing that wedding planning IS as crazy as they say it is, especially when we're doing it all by ourselves (I should be able to list this on my resume!) we've started using Workflowy to keep track of our "list of wedding-related things to do". Workflowy is a really simple but great little tool to keep track of all the little things you need to do in life. And at this point, we can't live without it! Anything and everything we need to do goes on Workflowy.

A lot has happened, and we don't want to brush over all the small but significant milestones. They each deserve their own post, and hopefully the big ones will get their own posts...

...but to give you an idea, here's what we knocked off the Workflowy list for September:

- Make Save-The-Dates and magnets, and mail them out! We'll do a blog post about this, it was definitely an adventure in itself.
- Sign contract with Photographer - we're SO excited about this incredible duo!

- Finalize/buy Tasha's wedding dress

- Buy little bottles for Tasha's dad's homemade vodka (NOW you're excited, aren't you?)
- Find Russian restaurant (FINALLY!)

- Meet with florists

- Meet with DJs

- Meet with an officiant

Things we're working on now, and are on the Workflowy docket for October:

- Connect with the new wedding venue directors (our old one, who we absolutely loved, was unexpectedly let go, and we have to start planning with the venue from scratch. Here's where our world turned upside down.)

- Finalize Indian food

- Connect Russian/Indian restaurants with venue chef to coordinate logistics

- Get wedding veil, jewelry and shoes for Tasha

- Get shoes for Tigritza

- Keep working with random designer/entrepreneur for best-people clothing (this is a surprise, so we've gotta be vague!)

- Finalize flower lady (i.e. florist)

- Finalize music dude (i.e. DJ)

- Finalize officiant (excited about this one!)

- Create invitation design and get price estimates (urg, it's like save-the-dates all over again!)

- Look at registries (Tasha, this is non-urgent. How did it get on the list for October?)

- Call Little King, the incredible little jewelry shop in NY who made our engagement rings, to design some awesome/innovative wedding bands!

- Look into making deals with hotels for guests, who are already asking about where to stay

- Look up how to make a chuppah and send design to Tasha's dad, who is building it for us

- Interview Penn Orchestra students to play the violin for us during ceremony. Yay for cheap high-quality student labor!

- DECIDE once and for all: Typewriter Guest Book or No Typewriter Guest Book?

- Get a bajillion used wine bottle corks for name card stands

- Write AT LEAST ONE blog post

Well, at least I crossed one thing off the list :) Here's to the next 12 days of October! Full speed ahead...

I can't wait to marry her.