I had a calligrapher all set to go when we lived in NY. Wedding planners are great when it comes to having a rolodex full of local vendors, for any aspect of a wedding needed. When we started planning the wedding, we lived in Saratoga Springs, NY, and all I had to do to locate a reputable calligrapher was say, "[wedding planner], what calligrapher should I use?". She responded with, "[calligrapher awesome], of course". That was that. She was hired.
Then we moved. Far away.
We needed a new calligrapher.
Even before attempting to settle on a paper company, typestyle, or paper color for the invitations themselves, I was nervous about the calligrapher. For the last five months I have been obsessed with internet searches and attempting to locate the perfect, reputable artists for our invites. Having the invitations hand addressed is a one-time-deal. It's also expensive and time consuming. No one wants to hand over hundreds of dollars just to realize a so-called "artist" has a shaky hand.
Needless to say, the internet searches turned up nothing. How could there literally be NO calligraphers in our area? They are all over NY... OH needed to get with the program (or rather, the invitations). I then called the local branch of the company that is handling our (not yet finalized) invitations. Surely they have heard of someone. That was merely another dead end. According to the invite store, they had a calligrapher on file years ago, but she had since gone out of business and they have not found a replacement. I couldn't believe it... why was this process so difficult? How were local brides mailing invitations? As a third resort I started googling and compiling a list of all paper and invitation stores in a 30 mile radius of my home. Then I started calling... and calling.... and calling. I contacted approximately 25 stores, and asked them all if they knew of any local calligraphers that could be outsourced for wedding invitations. THREE of the 25 stores had a name. Two of them had the same name.
After two weeks of and countless hours of calls for an aspect of the wedding planning that I initially thought would be a breeze, I had two options for calligraphers. Neither of these people had "official" businesses, websites, or service reviews that could be found online, so I called them and had to go with my gut. I spoke with each woman and asked for samples. One calligrapher asked me to e-mail her a sample of the font style I would like for my invitations so she could send a sample of a style she felt would match nicely. This, of course, put me at ease and made me pleased as punch.
The next week I received a lovely ecru envelope addressed to me in practically flawless calligraphy. Inside was a sample sheet of all available styles she offered, along with a very nice hand written note and a price sheet.
After much stress and more work than should have been necessary to hire a calligrapher, she was hired!
Hopefully not all the final details will be this much work. At least it turned out well in the end, however, and it checks one more thing of my "to-do" list!
No comments:
Post a Comment