Ah, such a misleading title for such an innocent little post. Ha!

Okay, so as you might (or might not have?) guessed, J n' I really aren't into the whole idea of spending tons of money on nonsense. Nonsense encompasses many things... one of those things being professional engagement photos.

I mean, I've seen some really gorgeous photos that our friends and relatives had taken... but I dunno, I personally just don't see the point. Maybe engagement photos are automatically included with wedding photography packages, and so folks assume it's a "must have"? Or maybe people get them done because they're following the steps outlined in one of those popular wedding to-do checklist books? Or perhaps it's simply because the only photo they have of them n' their honey was taken at last year's summer keg party, and they just need something a little more presentable to send off to granny n' gramps?

I really don't know what the deal is... and while I'm not totally dissing the idea, I just know that it's not for us...

I mention this because we've been asked a couple times if we were going to get our engagement photos done and put an announcement in the paper. I totally had to laugh at J who looked completely confused when he responded, "Put our picture in the paper?! Why would we do that? Do people actually do that?" I guess he has never checked out the announcements section before. You'd think he would've seen them at some point though -- after all, they're usually right next to the Funnies.

Another thing that people have been asking us is when we are sending our invites out. Jeez, I hadn't really thought about it. I have been pluckin' away at a wedding website that'll have all our info on it, but I guess people are expecting to actually receive something "official" in the mail. Fair enough...

However, I've received many wedding invites before, and they always look like a lot of friggin' work! Ribbons, and lace, and fancy paper, and waxy stamps. Who has time for that? I mean, maybe if I had a bridal party to lend a hand... but we're eloping, which means no bridal party, and I'm sure as heck not gonna try tackling that sh*t myself! I don't need the stress.

Soooo... being the clever girl that I am, I found a way to feed two birds with one hand (because I really don't want Peta down my back for killing them with stones.) You see, J n' I have this fun photo strip on our fridge that we had taken during our first year of dating. I thought it might be cool to revisit the ol' photo booth at the mall, and bring along four signs -- one for each flash of the bulb: Save. The. Date. 09/27/08.

There ya go -- instant engagement photos AND reception invites!

A few weeks ago, J n' I got dressed up all nice and headed to the Orchard Park Mall. We squished into the tiny booth where I sat on his lap and proceeded to put our change into the slot. Well, wouldn't you know, that damn photo booth swallowed my loonies, spit out my toonie, and refused to take our friggin' picture. Ack! I blow-dried my hair for this?!

We went to the mall service desk to see if anyone could fix the photo booth. The girl took down our names and number, and told us that when the repair man came to fix it, they'd give us a call and we'd get our money back. Sigh.

Well, a couple weeks went by and there hasn't been a call from the mall yet, and people keep asking about invites. (Okay, well maybe only two people asked -- but still...) So we decided enough was enough... we were going to fake it.

J figured out how to set the timer on our camera, then we propped it up in our living room and took our pictures. When we were done, J brought the pics into Photoshop, and cropped them to fit into a photo strip style. Then instead of inserting the usual photo booth curtain background, he put in pictures from a couple of the countries we'll be visiting during our weddingmoon, including Austria, Italy and France. The result was something way cooler and more creative than what we would've ended up with if we had just waited for the mall to fix their stupid photo booth.

On the back of the photo strip, we're going to put the URL for our wedding website where people can find all the details about our elopement and reception.

What I really like about our photo strip idea is that it can also double as a bookmark -- oooh, pretty handy, huh? I mean, I get so many of these fancy invites from people that I know were a lot of work to make, and so I always save them for a good year or two because I feel guilty about throwing them out... but eventually, they just amount to nothing but clutter. So then I either end up recycling them or they get buried in a shoebox in the back of my closet. I figure that this way, if folks feel like saving our invite, it can at least serve a useful purpose.

Oh goodness, sometimes I am just *so* clever, I really do surprise myself. Ha!

Anyhoo, we haven't printed our bookmark invites off yet because J still hasn't finished the URL part on the back, but I figure I can't write a whole blog about our super-fun invites and then not show them to you! So without further ado...