I am so confused.

I could have sworn that I had only invited at most 95 people, but when I just updated my guest list on The Knot, it says that I invited 108 people.  Woah.

I know for a fact that several of those who are invited will not come.  I thought it was better to send out invitations out of courtesy than not to send it at all, especially since they are friends of our parents.  Also, I allowed most people to bring dates, even though some have already told me that they will not be bringing anyone.  However, even with the given “not attending” guests, I’m still over by a handful.

Great.  This will take another hour out of my life to reconcile the two lists.  I just cant wait to take a stab at the seating chart.  (sarcasm is lost in the world of the internet)

A hint to all those starting a guest list:  Make a complete Excel spreadsheet with several columns, like shown below.  This will help keep track of everything in one sheet.

<image on weddingbee.com>

We finished our registry!  Well, almost….

Mr. Butterfly and I went to Crate and Barrel this weekend to finish registering for our kitchen and dining room items.  This time, I definitely went a little crazy with the scanner gun because I ended up with 70 unique items in the store.  This does not count the 8 different place settings for each item. 

I will have to look through both Macy’s and Crate & Barrel lists to edit, add and dump some items, but otherwise its another thing off the to-do list!

Now, I have a question for you readers.

For my Macy’s registry, a couple of the items are not available online.  So the guests will either have to call the store and have it delivered, or go pick it up themselves.  I have a feeling that people will just not buy it since its too much trouble.  So, do I leave it on the registry anyway?  Or do I replace it with another item?

What do you think?

A few things I’ve learned while putting together my invitations.  (Pictures are coming soon, I promise!)

• Check and recheck every name and address.  I had to recheck a lot of my guests’ information.  People move, break up, or start dating so its best to keep track of all progress.
  


• Make sure you have a set rule regarding “plus one”.  I don’t have a hard and fast rule about this, and its made the process a bit difficult.  As you know, my RSVP card says “____ of ____ will attend”, and I filled out the second blank.  But without a rule regarding “plus ones”, I had to make a decision on the spot about who got to bring a guest and who didn’t. 
  


• Do not assemble your invitations before you are ready to stuff the envelopes.  I made the mistake of having Mr. Butterfly stuff the pocketfolds with all 3 of the inserts – “RSVP, Information, and Rehearsal Dinner”.  The only problem is that not everyone gets the rehearsal dinner card.  So as I was stuffing the envelopes, I had to remove this card based on who I was sending it to.  Then we got all confused and had to re-open 9 invitations (after they were sealed) just to check that they didn’t get the rehearsal card. 
  


• The most important rule:  Do not seal the envelopes until right before they go out.  We must have wasted 10 envelopes and 1 invitation due to making small mistakes.  Luckily, my vendor sent over extras of everything, so we will hopefully have plenty left over.
  


• Oh yeah – get extras of everything!

You wouldn’t believe the amount of time its taken to pull this together.  But, I gave my first invitation (by hand) to my MOH last week, and she was very impressed.  The extra tape for my tape guns are coming today, so I will be able to finish it off tonight and have it ready to go out tomorrow.  Yay!  Its almost over!

How do you get your groom to stand out from the crowd?  Dress the groomsmen in darker, more subtle colors so that the groom “pops” out from the rest.

My groom will be wearing a two button, notch lapel, black tuxedo with a wing-tip collar shirt, champagne colored vest and tie.  He will also have a boutenniere made of a dark orange calla lily.

 
(Yes, I am re-posting old photos.  I have no shame.)

The groomsmen will be essentially wearing the same thing, but with a black vest and a black tie.  We were originally going to have the groomsmen wear black vests and champagne colored ties, but Mr. Butterfly wanted to stand out a little more than that.  So, we agreed on black ties for everyone.

At first I thought that a black tux with black vest and black tie would be a little dark.  But at our friend’s wedding a few months back, Mr. Butterfly wore all black as the Best Man, and I thought he looked fantastic!

The only difference from the picture is that my bridal party wont be wearing bowties.  With a regular black tie, I was concerned that the groomsmen would give off a slight “funeral” vibe.  So last week, we went shopping for ties at Macy’s and found these.

 
City of London Neckties – Solid Tonal Black Striped Bond Street Silk Tie

My favorite part of City of London ties is the back.  The tips are so colorful!

I know its just a small detail, but I love the fact that the black ties are not solid black.  I think it will make the difference between “dark” and “modern”.

I’m retarded. 

When my mock-up invitation came in, I saw the RSVP card with my address printed on the back. 

Front

Back

So I thought the printed address on the back was an example of what the RSVP envelope would look like.  It is a mock-up, so I just figured that she didn’t put in all of the pieces. 

Last night, as I was going through the different pieces of the invitation, I realized that I did not have any RSVP envelopes.  So I emailed Adrienne from Custom Programs and asked her to send it out pronto.  She writes me back within 3 minutes to tell me that the RSVP’s are actually post cards.

Duh~.  Like I said, I’m retarded.

Anyway, I absolutely love the idea of a postcard RSVP!  I know people are horrible about returning RSVP’s to begin with, especially Koreans, so I’m hoping this will make it at least that much more convenient.  Just fill it out and drop it in!  (Come to think of it, its not that much more easier than a regular RSVP, huh?)

Now my only concern is that people won’t flip it over to see that its a postcard. 

My invitations came yesterday!  Woohooooo~!

Of course, being the neurotic person that I am, I just had to get started right away on putting those babies together!  I have plenty of pictures, however, I still wont be posting them until after these babies go out.  Sorry.

Anyway, to put these things together yourself, you need a good glue gun or a tape gun.  My vendor recommends using these.

Scotch ATG Tape Gun

Koyuko Tape Dispenser

I put together 10 invitations last night, and these work wonderfully!  I used the big one for the invitation and the backing layer panels, and then the small gun for the outside seals. 

So all of you DIY’ers out there, I highly suggest getting both of these guns for your crafts.  They work really well!

So the groomzilla has finally reared its ugly head.    I kid, I kid. 

Mr. Butterfly is having a slight crisis.  He is trying to decide between two tuxedo shirts.  One is from Brooks Brothers and the other is from Thomas Pink. 

Brook’s Brothers

Thomas Pink

You see, all of our groomsmen’s tuxedo shirts all have pleats on the front, because that is the only style that was offered.  However, the Thomas Pink shirt, which is the brand he likes better, doesn’t offer pleated wing collar shirts.  So he’s left with the Brook’s Brothers option, however, they don’t fit him very well.  He spent the entire weekend pestering me what I thought about the shirt choices.  Whatta dork~.

My answer?  It doesn’t matter.  Why?

1. No one will notice because most of the shirt will be covered up by the vests and ties.


2. Everyone will be looking at me (c’mon!  it IS my day), not the difference between his shirt and the groomsmen’s shirts.

It has been over a week and he still hasn’t made up his mind.  So I beg you readers, please help him make up his mind, and rescue me!

Please vote!

Brook’s Brothers shirt – he should definitely match the groomsmen, even if the fit is a bit off.  He can always get it tailored.

Thomas Pink shirt – since he likes this brand better, he should just buy it, even if it doesn’t match the groomsmen.  No one is really going to notice the difference.

P. S. - And we thought only the women went crazy with the little details!

Oy!  My aching feet!

Mr. Butterfly and I went to Macy’s today to register.  We must have walked around for 2.5 hours, and we only managed to register for 36 things!  Well, some of them are multiples, like towels, and Macy’s counted them as one unique item.

Anyway, we registered for mostly linens.  I went a little crazy with the laser gun in the linen section because all of the sheets were so pretty!  But we ended up with a pretty good selection of light yellow to beige to brown for the bedding.  For the bathroom, we ended up selecting cream and light blue colors.  We also registered for a couple of pieces of luggage, and a few kitchen items.  We will probably add more bedding and bathroom pieces later. 

I think Macy’s is a great place if you want a large variety of items.  They have everything!  However, we decided to leave the kitchen items, such as dishes and utensils, for Crate & Barrel.  I just like their colors and styles better.

One note about Macy’s: they have a dollar rewards program where 5% of everything your guests buy from your registry is added towards a gift card.  The gift card is then sent to you, and its basically free money.  However, you must sign up for a Macy’s card for this to work.  Our total registry was around $3,000, and 5% is only $150, even if everything is bought on the list.  I personally did not think it was worth it to sign up for a department store card (with its high interests, not to mention an additional credit line) just for a few hundred dollars.  But, if you already have a Macy’s card or a very large registry, I would totally take advantage of it.

Happy shopping!

There seems to be a trend on Weddingbee towards feet and feet related products lately.  I might as well jump on the bandwagon!

I’ve been researching ideas on the slippers for my slipper basket for the wedding.  I have no idea what people usually buy in these situations, but I know that I don’t really want those Chinese slippers that everyone wears.  I figure I only need 30 pairs, so I thought I would splurge just a bit.

Option 2

Please vote!!  Or, send me a link for other nice slippers/flip flops please~!  Hmmm – perhaps I should have sent in this question to the beehive. 

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Please comment on weddingbee!!

After the Men’s Warehouse fiasco(s), Mr. Butterfly and I decided to get our tuxedos for the groomsmen elsewhere.  The only option that he and I came up with was Zeller Tuxedos.  Why?  Because its right next to Bloomingdales, and I loooove Bloomie’s.

Anyway, back to tuxedos.

We basically had to get tuxes that would match Mr. Butterfly’s: Black, 2 button, notch collar with a vest and tie.  Pretty standard, actually.  All we wanted to do was go in, make certain that the store knew what we were ordering, then have the groomsmen come in and take their measurements.  Then, the week of the wedding, I wanted to be there when all the men tried on their rented tuxes, to make sure that it fit OK, and to make last minute alterations.

The sales lady at Zeller (on 60th and 3rd avenue) was so amazing.  We saw the tux that we wanted, picked out the shirt, tie, vest, shoes and cuffs, and then we were done.  Also, when you rent 5 tuxes, the 6th one is free.  And we were able to distribute the savings from the 6th tuxedo across the rest of them, so that everyone paid a little less.  The total rental price (with vest, shoes, and tax) came out to about $185 per person.

Not too shabby!

And they are very convenient.  You can basically get measured at any of their locations, pick it up where you got measured or pick it up all at one location, pay a deposit first or pay all at once, etc.  I paid for only 2 of the tuxes, and they make sure that these people don’t pay when they show up for the measurements.  Everything is so efficient.

Did I also mention that they have little ring bearer tuxes?

Final Rating: A