Mpix Wedding Album

Now that the wedding is over, I think it's time to start working on our wedding album.  Pictures mean a lot to me, so our album will be something I'll look at for years to come.

I've heard a bunch of great reviews about Mpix, so I decided to try making an album with them and see how I like it.  They're reasonably priced at $50 for a 20 page 10x10 book.  You can add more pages if you would like, up to 50 pages.

Here's some more information about Mpix if you're interested.

About Mpix

Mpix is a division of Miller’s Professional Imaging. Miller’s was founded in 1939, and is the largest professional photography lab in the United States. The company has production facilities in Pittsburg, Kansas and Columbia, Missouri.

Commitment to Quality and Turnaround

Mpix has unparalleled quality of products and services in the photographic printing industry. Mpix doesn't stop with quality, our turnaround is equally as impressive. Almost all orders ship in 24 hours. Most orders in by noon ship the same day. Everything you order from Mpix is produced with the same professional care and attention to detail that professional photographers have experienced for decades from Miller's. In fact, Popular Photography gave Mpix top honors in overall quality of prints during their review of online printers last year. Don't take our word for it - read what our customers have to say.

How Mpix Works

Ordering from Mpix is easy. All you need is your photos and then we'll help you turn them into beautiful prints and products. With Mpix, a photographer is able to upload images to a secured website, store and share images in albums, and order professional prints, professional finishing services, and specialty products.

I'm going to start my album this weekend, so I'll write a blog post next week about the process of making an album on their website.  A lot of companies make you design the pages in Photoshop before you put them in your book, but Mpix has their own software, so hopefully that makes it easy.

Where did you order your wedding album from?  I would love to see pictures if you have them.  I'm going to need all the inspiration I can get!

I am receiving a free album in exchange for my review.  All thoughts on the company and the product are 100% mine and have not been altered in any way.

Seating Chart

I was originally going to design our seating chart myself, but after much fuss with it, I decided to just have someone else design it for me.  So, I contacted Double Trouble Designs and they did it for me and it's gorgeous!  Definitely couldn't have done it myself.

I'm having it printed as a poster and then adhering it to foam board and then setting it up at the reception.  I thought it would be a nice way for guests to be able to find their table.

RSVPs are coming in!

We're already starting to get RSVPs for our wedding.  It's so much fun running to the mailbox every evening to see if there are any new ones.

I put to use our program baskets by making them yes or no baskets for the RSVP cards.  As soon as I receive the card, I insert their response into our excel spreadsheet and then put them in the basket.  That way they're easy to find when I start the seating chart later on.  Left is yes, right is no.

Here's our tallies so far up to today:

This is for the rehearsal dinner

103

14

4

This is for the actual wedding

103

29

4

The total for the wedding is higher because that includes some verbal RSVPs and also our bridal party.  I'm not sure if everyone is able to come to the rehearsal dinner yet, so I'm waiting to include them in that count until I'm 100% sure.

Embossed Cocktail Napkins

I love the look of professional quality napkins, but at the price of $20 for 100 napkins, I couldn't justify buying them for myself.

So, I went out and bought the supplies to emboss my own napkins and I think they came out beautifully.  You can make them even more personal if you want to buy a custom stamp from an etsy seller.  I just got a C stamp from Michaels and then borrowed the bird stamp from a previous knottie.

Here's what you need to do to make your own.  Really simple after you get the hang of it.  It took me about an hour to emboss 150.

What You Need:
- Stamp of your choosing
- Slow drying stamp pad (I used Delta Embossing Ink Pad from Michaels)
- Detail embossing powder in the color of your choice (I used Stamp n Stuff Detail Gold from Michaels)
- Embossing heat gun
- Cocktail napkins

1. Start off by saturating your stamp with ink.  You want to make sure the ink covers the entire stamp.  Then, press the stamp firmly on your napkins, wiggling it a bit to make sure the entire stamp is set.  It took me about a bunch of trials to make figure out the best way to wiggle the stamp to get it to come out perfectly.  You might want to do trial runs on paper first.

2. Immediately after you stamp the napkin, pour embossing powder of it.  Make sure you get enough to cover the entire stamp.  Dump the excess back into the powder container so you don't waste any.  Blow lightly on the napkin to get off any stray powder that is around the image.  If you don't get it off, it will be permanent as soon as you apply heat.

3. Turn on the heat gun and move it slowly over the image.  Hold it about an inch or two away.  You'll start to see the powder bubbling.  As soon as the entire image has bubbled, remove the heat.  If you get too close, it will burn your napkin.

Now you're done!  Very easy project!

The hardest part for me was finding the correct gold embossing powder.  I bought two different ones.  The first one I bought had too big of glitter and didn't emboss correctly.  It looked like the right color in the jar, but it just didn't come out right.  This powder was by Stampendous and it's called Jeweled Gold.

So, I went back and found another gold embossing powder.  This one looked way too brown in the jar, so I was weary, but I took it home to try it anyways.  As soon as I applied heat, it raised correctly and turned a very shiny gold.  Perfect!  This one is Stamp n Stuff Detail Gold.

I hope my trials helped someone who was wanting to emboss gold, but couldn't find the correct color.

Edited with cost of 150 napkins:
6 packs of 25 napkins: 99 cents each = $6
Embossing powder: $2.25
Ink pad: $3
Heat gun: $6 (I bought from another bride.  These run about $25 at Michaels and then use a 40% off coupon with it)
Stamp: $1

Total: $18.25

It seems high, but I would have bought the napkins without the personalization anyways, so that takes off $6.  So for the personalization, it came out to about $12.  Plus, I have tons of powder and ink leftover so I can do tons more napkins and then will be able to sell the extra stuff after the wedding.  So really the cost isn't high at all.

Invitations Sent!

I put my invitations in the mail today!  I'm very happy with how they turned out and I'm so glad for them to be done.  Now the mailbox stalking begins!

After I did the cost breakdown of my invitations, I was pleasantly pleased.
Design by Double Trouble Designs: Free for their portfolio = $0
Paper: 150 sheet for $6 at Walmart.  Used one package = $6
Printing: Free because we did it ourselves = $0
Cutting: Free because we did it ourselves = $0
Envelopes: 80 for $14 at Cards and Pockets = $14
Calligraphy: Free because we did it ourselves = $0

Total without postage: $20
Postage for invitations and RSVPs = $43

Total with postage: $63

So, that comes out to $1 per invitation after postage.  Not shabby!


Here's what the ended up looking like in the end.  The color doesn't show up very well in the pictures, but they're the exact same color as the envelope.  The map cards and the accommodations cards are two sided.

Finally, here's the breakdown of where they were sent to.
Local (Tallahassee): 18
Out of Town (Florida): 25
Out of Town (Other States): 11
International: 1

We still have a few to send out after we get some more information from them.

DIY Invitation Calligraphy

I love the look of calligraphy, but being a bride on a budget, I just don't have the money to spend $2 per envelope for someone to do it for me.  I came across a wonderful idea on Project Wedding about printing on your envelopes and then writing over them so it looks handwritten.  So, that's what I did.

I search on dafont.com for a script font I liked and finally settled on Honey Script.  Then, I did a bunch of trials to get the address centered on the invitation.  When I finally printed on the invitation though, the centering wasn't correct anymore, so I need to fuss with that a little more.  Then, I took a Uniball pen (can get them anywhere) and traced over the printed address.  It looks just like we paid a professional calligrapher.

Invitation Design

Woohoo! The majority of my invitation designs are done. They still have to do my accommodations card, but that's on hold because we haven't finalized stuff for our rehearsal dinner yet and that's going on one side of the card.

Double Trouble Designs did a fantastic job taking my inspiration and making it into reality. Take a look at their fantastic work.

I blurred out all personal information. It's kind of hard to tell in the small pictures, but the dots and then the lines around our names are a sage green.

I plan on printing these out at home and assembling them myself. I can't wait to show you the final product!

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