Invitations - Part 3 - With a Little Help from my Friends

Part 1 - Inspiration
Part 2 - Color Crisis

You may recall that I was having some difficulties getting our invitations printed in a nice dark red. In my frustration, I did two things.

First, I decided to visit Papyrus and see what invitations they had that looked nice. We decided if the printing didn't work out, that we might order these:

By Tru Sophistication

But they would be substantially more than our initial invitations. And I'd already purchased our envelopes from Envelope Mall, and it was past the deadline to return them.

So I did what I think any bride who is connected on online forums would do: I contacted a couple of women I'd met. Specifically, Mrs. Emerald, who used a dark red color for her invitations, and Manchmal, a graphic designer and fellow indiebride who has her own invitation design business.

(Note: If you want to print your own invitations using Vistaprint or Overnight prints, but are unsure of actually designing them, you should totally check out Manchmal's etsy shop. She'll pretty much create any invitation for you, and give you the files to print them out yourself. It's awesome.)

With their help, I was able to figure out the problem and resolve it. Basically, Open Office has issues with publishing in CMYK, so that the full spectrum of CMYK colors is not available for use. Including dark red. So as many people had suggested, I downloaded a free trial of Adobe Illustrator.

And victory was mine. Check out how the next test print came out:

Perfectly red. With no indication of hemorrhoids.

I definitely couldn't have done it without the help of Mrs. Emerald and Manchmal. At the risk of sounding really cheesy, I'm really grateful for the ways the internet has connected me with other people.

Where have you found help planning your wedding from online friends?