Contacted late last year by the founder of the site Faire-part-de-France. en who wanted to let me know about services for creating announcements for weddings and births mainly, I decided to revive an old habit here:the reader tests! Having no personal project. Well no. But finding the site rather nice and in particular the proposals of models of birth announcements, I therefore launched a call for testers on Facebook.
This is Helen who was chosen, she had an "urgent" need to create pretty announcements for the birth of her youngest, from a blended family, so I gave her the hand to test the site of end to end and to tell us about it here.
Make way for Hélène then.
(little welcome music)(or not)
In our blended family this little baby was going to be our 1 st together, 3 th to each, 5 th of the great tribe... in other words, an absolute exceptional news that his birth that we must announce in the forms to the whole earth (it is especially that we are not married so basically no one has ever received anything official about the two of us, maybe it's time).
So, for this important announcement, I had so many ideas.
The children were going to hold a sheet each with 2 letters of the first name (that's good, we have 4 children and there are 8 letters)… yes, but choose who is wearing which letter and take pictures of the 4 smiling people while holding a sign, it didn't necessarily have to be won!
And we'd put a picture of t-shirts drying on the washing line with a little baby bodysuit. It's a delicate way to announce the arrival of the baby and our friends will not fail to tell us that indeed, at 7, the laundry we had better be ready to do them. So I commandeered everyone's favorite t-shirt, which I ironed (quite natural the effect, everyone dries ironed laundry, right?), which I kept for 3 weeks while the weather was nice and we were in the countryside, took lots of photos with different layouts… for a mixed result… we were maybe going to put a photo of the baby in fact and in a small corner if at all the photo of the t-shirts.
The frame of the announcement should have been made at the beginning of maternity leave, before the birth of the little one... except that before the birth I was a bit in stranded whale mode... I told myself that after the birth with the dad during his holidays we would have plenty of time while the loulou would sleep….
In short, 2 months after the birth our long-awaited Home Made announcement (or rather "rolled under the armpits" in view of my abilities in manual activities) was still not done. I started looking at the price of nice paper to print on, envelopes… then finally, since we don't have a color printer and the nice sizes of invitations aren't A4, I thought to myself that 'I should go see a printer.
But the project of 80 shares to be printed with a little job as a model maker to take over my DIY works, that was not going to interest a printer… well, yes, but for an arm. And my arms I need them to take care of my little baby (who by now isn't so little anymore, he's doubled in weight in 3 months!).
This is where my savior, my angel, my fairy (I put a little too much, I know, but she needs it, it's always good for the ego) directed me to share France.
Great !!!! I was finally relieved to give up my personalized project, I doubted the result more and more. The dad was especially particularly delighted, I think he had not dared to tell me that I was going to embark on a DIY well beyond my abilities.
The same evening, with the dad, we connect.
The site is clear, whether on tablet (him), on phone (me) or on the computer (us to validate our preselection), we navigate easily. A birth announcement section exists, perfect!
At first we worry about the quantity of choices (15 pages, with 30 announcements per page!!!) … there are too many, we will never be able to choose… but, in the end, to find THE share that would suit our exceptional little man, we had to have all that… because, tastes and colors, it does not happen. don't argue... sure, but the dad AND the mum still had to share it... the dad liked to share them with very colorful animal drawings, and the mum with very stylized snowmen, we thought that we wouldn't make it.
All styles exist on this site… and, when we select an invitation, we are also offered the visual in the other colors available, which is practical.
To share them "classic" , the quality of the paper, in view of the photo, looked very good. Well-finished cutouts. In addition, you can even request a sample.
Others are much more original , with beautiful ribbons, strings to give a more natural side, holes, imprints in the paper, bright colors or on the contrary pastels...
We have selected a selection of 3 announcements at the end of the evening with the dad:
We asked the future godmother to help us choose, she loved the owl… so we chose the owl.
Then came the time to personalize the text . Either we keep the proposed text or we write our own. We didn't want to be particularly original, but we absolutely wanted to involve the big 4 in the announcement so we wrote our text.
With such a beautiful announcement, we couldn't send thanks on a small cardboard. At the same time, thanks, we knew we would have little to do, the birth gifts decrease over the births... at about the same rate as the invitations of our "big" tribe elsewhere. So, in addition to the 80 announcements, we ordered 30 thank you cards.
Less choice in thank you cards, but there was an owl themed one, perfect!! And there we have kept the text as it is.
After all these steps, we have, probably because we were unlucky, started an obstacle course to communicate post order with the site.
I did not receive the proof on my mailbox (spammed), on my account on the site I did not manage to validate the proof…
When we finally received the model of the announcement, we realized that we had forgotten to put the surname of our little Loulou (well yes, in a blended family the name cannot be guessed, we have 4 different ones for 7 members!). We asked for the rectification and the second version was the correct one.
Still not managing to validate the proof, good fairy e-zabel intervened again, the salesman Jérémy called me, and the announcements left during the day .
When you're a fisherman in logistics, it's all the way... I had chosen delivery to a parcel relay next to the house... the carrier told me that the parcel was finally available in another city, 6 km. In this second relay that I had not chosen, the trader had a terrible time finding the package, which was identified with the name of the other relay... In short, we finally received them!!
We were not disappointed at the opening . The dad spent a short evening setting up the announcements (without instructions, but he succeeded easily). Two had small flaws, but we have enough left to officially announce the arrival of our little Baptiste.
All of this would almost make us want to order wedding invitations… oh yes, but that would suppose that the dad agrees to put a ring on his finger and that’s another story…. If that's done, I promise, we'll send a note to the good fairy!
Pros:
Areas for improvement / our remarks and suggestions:
The small egg-shaped card is "hidden" inside the owl. On the front:the photo of the baby!
Products offered to the tester
