Sunday, June 29, 2008

Can You Tell It's from the Dollar Store?

As you can probably tell from my lack of daily or nearly daily postings, I've been rather busy lately with pre-wedding events. Yesterday was the bridal shower hosted by two bridesmaids for my immediate family and some friends.

Early on, I told the bridesmaid who was in charge of the shower invitations to make sure she didn't spend a lot of money on things like invitations. To me, it's just completely unnecessary (as you may remember from my save-the-date cards). I told Whit that I had previously done some baby shower invitations with cards I'd gotten from Dollar Tree, and they turned out very cute. And they were super cheap. She said she'd look into it.

When it came time to mail the invitations, Whit mailed one to me too so that I'd have it for my scrapbook. I looked at the really nice card she sent and thought, "Why didn't she listen to me and go to the dollar store?" I didn't ask her about it because it was her business, not mine. I just hoped that at least she got them on sale somewhere.

Then, Friday Whit came up to stay with me the night before the shower. She saw the invitation hanging on the refrigerator. I told her some friends of my sister had seen it there and commented that they thought it looked really nice. Whit finally said, "I have to tell you a secret about those invitations." She proceeded to say that she did take my advice and went to the Dollar Tree. She thought I was kidding. She couldn't imagine she could find something nice there, but she went to look -- maybe to just prove me wrong. :-)

Whit said she was surprised to find some invitations that she really liked. Still hesitant and not wanting to look cheap (even though I gave her my permission to do so), she bought a pack and took it to work. She showed 5 co-workers and asked them if they liked them and where they thought she got them. They named a bunch of nice stationary stores but never guessed the dollar store. When she finally told them the truth, they couldn't believe it. Their reaction convinced her it would be okay to use them.

It turned out really cute because she got matching gift boxes for the favors (pictured), thank you cards for me to use, and stickers for the invitation and thank you note envelopes. Of course, I know it cost much more, but the other hostess, who was in charge of the cake, had one made to complement all of the stationary for the shower. And they spent money on other nice touches, but hopefully didn't break the bank since they took the less expensive route on part of the planning...except you couldn't tell at all. Now that's my kind of party!

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2 comments:

Kate said...

Score! That's great. And sometimes when you save on things like invites it's okay to splurge on things like cake. I love all things paper, but cake trumps paper. Cake trumps everything. =)

Seriously, great idea. We're going to have some baby showers to throw soon and this will help a lot. I usually print my own on "good" paper, but this would probably be much cheaper and still super cute!

Betsy said...

Kate - I just got some pictures from the shower, including ones of the favor gift boxes that matched the invitations. For some reason the first picture won't enlarge properly, but hopefully you can see them good enough to get the idea that they were nice.

Good luck with hosting the baby showers! I'll have to post some of my tips on that in the near future.