Here’s just one part from our wedding invites:

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I’m just a beginner in dealing with Photoshop, but lately I can see a pretty nice progress from my shallow-Photoshop-skill, we decided to use my very own simple design for the wedding invites (yay!), instead of letting someone else design them for us (and give him a chance to charge too much).

Mr. H and I came up to a choice of brown hues for our wedding color (although at first I preferred white and green), simply because: (1) Mr. H is not confident to wear any outfits in either white or even green hues, and (2) My parents’ house, which is going to be the reception venue, is in brown hues. I don’t want to make my parents feel tempted to re-paint the house (and spend more money) only to fit in with the wedding color.

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But I don’t know why, my invite design always ‘popped up’ in white and green. They just look perfect together (especially after I found the tree clipart as pictured above). In order not to go out from the ‘brown hues rule’, I added dark brown color as well in the invite. Apparently, white and green and brown look gorgeous. And that’s how it’s decided in the end: brown and green are our official wedding colors

download I Sell the Dead Mr. H’s friend will do the final setting of the design before the invites go to print. And since I seemingly have a pretty low quality of printer, we might either borrow a laser printer and print the invites ourselves, or let his friend do the printing as well after doing the final setting. We’re still looking for acquaintances who own a laser printer and comparing the charges. Oh, but we have decided on the type of paper we’re going to use. Just the simple one. I believe in simplicity in terms of wedding invites, as most people here will usually throw away any invites they receive once they read the who, when, and where parts of the invites.

Speaking of which, I’m planning to add a “Please recycle this invitation” line or something on the invites. But guess what, the city doesn’t have a place to recycle papers (we only have one spot to recycle plastics—plastic bottles and cups only, to be exact). Well, there are a few places that are willing to receive and/or buy used papers, so we will consider that option.

Wedding outfits—let’s fight again
Apparently Mr. H, as I do, doesn’t really agree with most of my stepmom’s ‘conventional’ ideas in regards to our wedding. He kept telling me that, unfortunately, numerous Indonesian couples usually have to eventually do what their parents want them to do in their wedding day. Okay, I get it. But what I want to say is that we decided to try to talk again with my stepmom, explaining to her that having only one wedding outfit for each of us (for both the ceremony and reception) would be the better option we desire, etc., etc. My stepmom is a seamstress, so she intended to make my wedding kebaya (the traditional/national dress in Indonesia), while I wanted to wear everything that I already have, but we’ll see later.

Invitations—almost ethical and DIY
After perusing some pictures of invitations I like from the internet, we made our final choice to model this one below (I apologize that I can’t mention the source, as I no longer remember from which website I found it), but we’re going to use only one paper (instead of three pieces like pictured beneath) and one ribbon (and maybe plus a small piece of paper on the back, containing the map that shows routes to my parent’s home as the reception location). We plan to buy the papers only and then print everything using my HP printer. My country has not yet familiar with vegetable-based printer ink, so no such thing as that is produced in mass, and we’re just using the conventional kind of ink.

Favors—this is ethical, I suppose
We came to a decision to donate a portion of money (his money) to a local environmental organization (we haven’t decided which organization) in our guests’ honours. We plan to ask the concerning organization to make a kind of ‘receipt’ or something (or we will) that will be given to the guests when they come to our reception. I actually have proposed this donating idea since months ago, so I’m glad that he lastly agrees.

Groom’s gifts—bring this topic back
Earlier, I said that Mr. H and I made an agreement not to have any kind of gifts (seserahan/antaran—goods given by the groom to the bride when he proposes formally and when groom and family first come to the ceremony location, to be used by the bride at and/or after the wedding, such as clothes, cosmetics, toiletries, shoes, cakes, cookies, etc.). But apparently both sides of our parents insist us to have at least a few. So, in order not to burden Mr. H, I request goods that can be used by both of us after we get married—one springbed, one cupboard, one stove, one pan, one wok, toiletries (for both of us), and several other that are still in plan.

Looking forward to another great progress

In a bid to reduce the amount of resources consumed for our wedding, I’ve been busy making an invitation website, rather than traditional invites. The website will include details about the day, information on local accommodation, and an online form for people to RSVP.

I also wanted to provide a map of key locations such as the church, reception venue, nearest train station and local accommodation, and I’ve found a useful website to help me do this, which I wanted to share with you.

Wedding Mapper lets you create a personalised online wedding map, on which you can pinpoint any locations that you think would be useful to your guests, such as the ceremony and reception venues, hotels, restaurants and bus and train stations. As the site uses Google maps, guests can see where everything is using either the satellite picture, normal road map or a hybrid of the two, which they can move around and zoom in on as normal. Guests can also use the map to get directions between two marked locations, such as from the church to the reception, or from their home to their accommodation.

The site has a sample map so you can get an idea what your map might look like. The basic service is free and it’s easy to use – especially if you’re familiar with using Google maps already.

I hope others find this as useful as I have!
Kate