Transcript:
Hey, crafty fam, it’s! Alex, man, over and welcome back to my craft room and today. I want to talk to you about six different things that I do not think are worth DIY for your wedding and the reason that I don’t think these things six things are worth. It is because you pay for everything in life in two ways with either time or money. So you need to make sure that the things that you. DIY for your wedding are things that are really important to you, so they are either going to make your day more special because you’re gonna have these special memories, and you’re gonna love that you made these things, or they’re gonna really increase the guest experience. They’re gonna make your guests have more fun. They’re gonna be more memorable for your guests and things like that. So if you have that focus in my opinion, these 60i wise are a waste of your time. I think you should buy them instead. So let me explain my first thing is invitations, and now when I say invitations being a waste of your time, I am talking about the actual inner part of your invitation. I will show you guys this in a future tutorial. But if you want to do something really pretty with your Cricut like if you want to make a really pretty like outside like gatefold jacket out of cardstock and do like a belly band and things like that to really like up the look of your invitation. I think that that is just fine, but this inner part of your invitation, You guys you can order these online for, like a dollar seventy-five a piece or less If you’re buying more than that, so I actually ordered this off Zazzle, which I think is a great website for invitations and accessories like that so. I’ll link that in the description below for you. This actually has my old wedding information on it, but you can literally get these so cheap, because if you choose to print it, that’s assuming that you’re printing them if you’re printing and cutting them, they’re just gonna cost you a lot of money, so keep in mind that if you’re using a Cricut, you are limited to. I believe it’s like six and a half by, like nine and a quarter or something like that. I don’t remember the exact dimensions, but you’re limited to that on your Cricut when you print then cut. So if you are printing them that way, then that means you’re going to have to buy like the cardstock that you need the ink that you need potentially on the printer that you need if you need a new printer and the time to design and actually cut those invitations, that’s good, take you forever, so in the grand scheme of things unless you are just like you just like can’t figure out anything else that works check on Etsy and find a template and get them printed, even it like staples or Fedex or go online, fill in a really pretty template like this with all your information and get them printed and sent to you, and then if you want to do embellishments, That’s what I was looking for earlier. Embellishments, like belly bands and like cardstock folds to go over top of it. That’s a different story, but in my opinion, that is a total waste of your time because they come so cheap and item number two that goes along with that is save-the-dates you can do like save-the-date postcards, that’s what. I ended up using, and I think that we ended up paying. This is back in 2017 so not too long ago between like 80 cents and a dollar, a piece for them and so trying to make those either like printing them or printing and cutting them and even putting them in envelopes and stuff like that. It’s just a huge waste of your time when you can buy them so cheap, so I highly recommending I highly recommend buying save-the-dates and invitations from an online place. The third thing that I think is a huge waste of your time as a bride is addressing your envelopes, and the reason is because the first thing that somebody does, and I’m really sorry if this breaks your heart, but the first thing that somebody does when they open in your they open, your invitation is they’re gonna take it out of the envelope, and they’re gonna oh, and awe over it, and they’re gonna throw the envelope away, so by the time you type all of your addresses, you attach them to a rectangle and design space, and you get them to actually cut. Excuse me, right on your envelopes. That’s gonna take you a ton of time and so just handwrite them when I did when I addressed all my invitations. I got my mom and my mother-in-law and my best friend together and we split them all up. I had a list ready to go and they helped me. Do all of my addressing because people are just gonna toss it, so don’t spend your time. I’d only I definitely don’t recommend you hiring a calligrapher to do that. Just write it and send it and let people. Google over the inside of your invitation, not the envelope. Let me look at my list. Here item number four is a seating chart, and I know this is a hard one because seating charts are really trendy right now, but I want you guys to think about this for just a second before you start into all this and, like spend a bunch of your time on it. Think about this. Let’s say that you’re doing like a window with a bunch of different panes. That’s kind of the big, trendy thing to do right now. If you have like a hundred people coming to your wedding, you’re going to be cutting a bunch of text that is like this big right, and then you’re gonna have to apply it to all of those window panes, and that’s gonna take you forever. So in my opinion, the best most efficient way to do that is to go to. Etsy and buy yourself a template. You can buy one. I think my template was maybe, like ten dollars if I remember correctly, and then I filled in all the names and also while I’m on this tangent, please, guys do your guests a favor and please put the names in order in alphabetical order, Do not put in order of table because I think you guys forget. Sometimes that after you spend so much time on your seating chart, you pretty much remember where everybody’s going to sit because you’re the one who made those table assignments. So when you have 18 tables, you think it’s gonna be super quick and easy to figure out where people are going to sit, but for these guests, they come into your reception. You know, maybe they’re waiting for you guys to get pictures done. And then they have to look through 18 tables or, however, many you have to find their name. It is so much faster and so much more efficient for them. If you put it in alphabetical order, so that’s just my little random rant, but anyways, after you buy your template and fill in all the names, then you can take it somewhere and get it printed. I took mine to a Fedex Kinko’s store, and I believe I got it printed on 18 by 24 paper. I could be wrong, but I believe that’s the size I used, and then I even paid them a little bit more to actually mount it on to a little foam board. Just like you would buy so. You can totally do that yourself If you want to spend the time to do that, but I was afraid that I would like, wrinkle it or mess it up, so I just asked them to do it. And so I believe that cost me. Around twenty five dollars total to get that printed and mounted on foam board, plus like the $15 actual template itself, so it cost me around $40 and it’s. It cost me very little of my time because as I bribed, your time is valuable or even if you are the mother of the bride or the maid of honor, you have a lot to do, and you have a lot on your plate. So do spend time doing things that are not going to really, you know? Pay off because after the wedding. What are you gonna do with the seating chart? You’re probably gonna throw it away. You may hang on to it because you love it and that’s fine, but I’m just asking you guys for your sanity and for your organization and so that you can enjoy your wedding. Planning process do not spend time on your seating chart. Item at number Five is favors and the reason. I don’t think that you should make individual favors for every single. Wedding guests is because people may or may not really care about them. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt your guys. The ceilings with this video. But if you’ve ever been to a wedding? I’m guessing you probably weren’t hunting down the favorite able to see what you’re going to get for coming to this wedding. So even though it may mean the world to you. I really think that there are some better ways to do it. I think one great thing that people are doing is they are donating money like, you know, two or three hundred dollars or whatever they would have spent on favors to an organization. That means a lot to you and your future husband. I think that’s great because you are spending thousands of dollars on your wedding, so it’d be great to be able to use some of that money to give back to a great cause, and the other thing about donating is that people don’t know how much you’re spending so even if you donated like $50 which is probably a lot less than you spend on favors. Nobody ever has to know that then you can make a cute little sign and you can even put on every table if you want that says that you donated to an organization in lieu of favors. I think people think that’s great. Another thing that you can do is do a favor that kind of ups the guest experience. And lets your guests have more fun so at my wedding, what we did is. I rented a photobooth and that came in a package with my photographer, so though that was really easy for me to coordinate because it just all came together, they sent like a person they sent some props and I also Di wide. Some props and people had a blast. You guys, but if that is too over your budget, you could totally. DIY one yourself with, like a big drape and props and then put one of those in instatox Instax. I don’t know how you guys say that The Polaroid cameras that people are buying. I forget the brand name, but you can buy one of those cameras and some film, and even if that costs you like $50 or $100 to do, that’s still probably less than what it would cost you for your photo booth. Anyway, so we did that. People loved it, you guys. And then we bought a little like scrapbook album thing, and I had a friend of mine, Cut some paper to size and people had the option and they got when they got like the two photo strips out of the machine. They had the option to put it on a piece of cardstock and write us a note and since our bar or excuse me since our reception was an open bar, We got some pretty awesome notes to read the next day. They were so much fun to go back and read and so much fun to see how much fun our guests had at our wedding. So a photo booth is a great idea. A dessert table or like a candy bar or a popcorn bar? Those are all really fun ways to like up your guest experience. It allows you to like, make stuff for one table, but you’re not gonna be making like a hundred and fifty favors. Also, the people can leave them behind on their tables. I’m sorry to crush your hopes and dreams, but I just want you guys to spend your time on things that matter and things that really really help your guests make the night even more memorable than it already is and the last item that I think is probably a waste of time in my opinion to DIY is your programs, and when I say DIY, I mean, it’s a ways to make them with your Cricut. I think that programs are super easy to print on Microsoft Word or in InDesign or somewhere else so that they can be like folded into a booklet. Because if you’re going to be putting the text in design space, formatting it the way that you like. I’m either getting your Cricut to write it or printing it then cutting it you can do that just as quickly in Microsoft Word and then print like all hundred that you need at the same time, that’s just so much faster, so I just want you guys to spend your time on things that really, really matter to you and really matter to your guests, and I don’t want you to waste your time on things that I have seen at weddings or I have friends that have tried for their weddings that have just ended up being more of a headache. Then it’s really worth so. I hope you guys benefit from this in your wedding planning. And if you disagree with me. I’m perfectly cool with that. I totally understand, but tell me in the comments. What you think, you know? Did you do one of these things? And you thought it was totally worth it? You know, or are you not going to do some of these things after thinking it through and seeing that it’s maybe gonna take you more time. You really think it’s worth? Let me know in the comments? What you think about that? If you haven’t already, please make sure that you subscribe below for more wedding planning and wedding craft tips as well as other cricut crafting and fun stuff that you can do after your wedding. I hope we can craft again soon.