How to save the date? - Part II

When I last left you, I was armed with my doodles and heading off to visit some vendors who might be able to help me with our paper products. As fun as it might have been, I did not think that I had either the talent or tools (no Cricut or Gocco for this girl) or time to conquer them on my own!

I started with a trip to the new Paper Source store in Center City on my walk home (dangerous...dangerous, I tell you).

Source

When I walked in, there was only 1 employee in the store. She was helping a customer with thank you notes, so I perused the invitation books and waited. As I was waiting, a number of other customers came in, so I maintained my spot, but tried to catch the employee's eye, so that I would be helped next. About 10 - 15 minutes had passed at this point. No other employees had surfaced and although it was getting a little frustrating, I was still hanging in there. There were a lot of pretty things to look at, after all.

Source

However, at the 30 minute mark...waiting had gotten old. Thank you note employee was doing a great job of pulling "the bartender" (you know, how they somehow manage to always avoid eye contact). I decided maybe I should leave, so I walked to the front of the store. Miraculously, there was another employee! I asked her about speaking to someone about invitations. Register employee indicated there was someone in the back. I told her about the situation and Register employee said she would come back to help.

In the end, despite looking at a lot of beautiful options, I still left. I learned there was not a lot of flexibility with the offerings at Paper Source (or their vendors). Even though some of the invitations allowed for personalization with a monogram or artwork (like what I had), you had to find your own graphic designer to do the work...and still were charged on the back end to insert it!

Don't get me wrong, they have great options, but I had gotten certain ideas in my head and there weren't templates that matched. Some of the templates I did like didn't come with a matching program or menu card or . This meant I'd have to either pick from a suite that had all the components we were looking for...OR...(horror!!) not have them match. It was at this point that I realized I would be better off at a custom print shop...and would likely be paying a LOT more money. The price you pay for being crazy Type A picky, I suppose.

I had purposefully not looked at invitation suites before visiting, thinking that having drawn out our thoughts first would be best. In hindsight, I think evaluating existing options first would have changed my mindset. The gorgeous circle save the dates, for example, would have looked a lot better if Mr. Turkey and I hadn't gotten so excited about putting a photo in.

And so, off to the custom route I went...

Did anyone else go into the paper planning process backwards? And have you ever had anyone pull "the bartender" on you??