At Last, It Works!

Don't they look good together? The interplay of colors, cohesiveness in theme? The way they are strangely entertaining?

The Hershey's Kiss stamps are no longer on the website, but that did give me an incentive to order the homage to Yoda for our invitations when the website finally let me order this afternoon.

I even called Andrew to confirm that it was okay to order Yoda instead of the Tiffany stamp that I've been using for all my other mail for the past year, but he was as enamored of the idea as I was.

Love him, I do.

Updates!

Andrew's wedding band arrived today, looking stellar in its pretty black velvet box that was shipped in a white jewelry box inside a Fed-Ex box. For free 3-day shipping for all wedding bands, it arrived a full day early. Great customer service so far and I can't wait until Andrew tries it on. The engraving on the inside of the band is clear and perfect. Couldn't really be happier with it.

Contrariwise, (since I couldn't resist using this term Andrew's housemates brought up a few days ago) the United States Postal Service is really getting on my nerves. Not only have they pretty much announced that they'll be raising rates every May from now on (hello, right in time to royally mess up wedding invitation stuff), but they've also had a broken postal store website for most of this week. Which is not good since I was finally planning on ordering my postage for my wedding invitations and getting them into the mail ASAP.

Of course, they were quick to inform me that I could always call and order stamps. But I'm not comfortable giving out my credit card information over my unsecured cell phone number. At least with my computer I can scour it for spyware and viruses before and after the transaction. Not to mention the fact that what would I be ordering?

It seems to me that the only place on the entire USPS website where you can actually see the stamp designs and denominations being offered is through the postal store. Not very helpful when you just know that you're trying to avoid the ugly-as-hell $1 that is the closest denomination offered to what you've been quoted each envelope will ship for.

Which is also just peachy. What is the point of saying that something will cost 97 cents to mail if you don't actually offer any reasonable postage way to create this magical number? I had it all figured out using the all-too-cliche 58 cent pink wedding stamp and the outdated 39 cent Hersheys kiss stamp, but the last time the website actually let me on the latter had already disappeared.

Not cool, USPS. Not cool at all.

Paying Postage

The stickers have arrived and look wonderful on the fourteen or so invitations I brought with me on my spring break, but I'll post pictures of those later. Today I tackled the task of finding out from the Post Office how much it'll cost to mail out my beautiful invitations.

And the magic number is?

97 cents apiece.

Ouch. I'm thinking large square invitations should become less popular...because I would have been just as happy with a rectangle with a bow on top as a square with a bow on top...and I would be paying a hell of a lot less on postage.

But this is where we are now: what to do about stamps?

The United States Postal Service is less than helpful on this count: they produce absolutely no stamps in this denomination. Here are my conventional options from USPS:

This would be the only stamp needed, with three cents to spare...but it's not doing great on the pretty scale. The figure is supposed to be Wisdom, but...again....not much with the pretty though probably more convenient.








Now on to the combination candidates: I would use the pink stamp that I honestly don't like with either the Hershey Kiss stamp or the Louis Comfort Tiffany stamp that I like much better. Hershey Kiss has the advantage of making the postage exactly what it needs to be, but the LCT stamp is the prettiest one currently offered by USPS.














Now on to the other possible option: custom stamps. Several companies now provide the opportunity to create photo postage considered legal by the USPS without the overwhelming ugliness of the USPS stamp offerings.

Zazzle: doesn't make a 97 cent denomination. 92 cents yes, 97 cents no. And if I'm doing custom stamps I don't want to have to make more than necessary or use ugly stamps I don't like at all to make up the difference.

Stamps.com: same denomination problem as Zazzle.

As in love as I was with the idea of custom postage, right now it seems like a lot of hassle and expense compared with the idea of going with stamps I can live with even if I don't love them. What do you think?

Silly Inner Envelopes

Archie went to stay with his daddy for a couple of weeks since I intended to fly out for my spring break (since Andrew would be driving to Kentucky anyway a week later for his own break, it didn't make sense to drive). While he's been away, I've been trying to get the invitations put together.

Things I have learned:
1. Tying ribbon bows onto 125 folded invitation cards is extremely tedious.
2. I cannot tie a bow as nicely as Martha Stewart. After spending several hours trying to match her classy knot, I settled on the nicest bows I could tie, which involves the hangy part being on top of the bow part on one side and the entire bow lining up against the top of the card. Not exactly what I had in mind when I ordered the invitations, but I figured I could spend the next month on grad school or tying perfect bows.
3. Because the entirety of the bow is at the top of the card, the flaps on the inner envelopes will not stay closed.
4. The flaps not staying closed annoys the hell out of me.

So what to do about the flaps (not to mention putting 100 more of the 125 invitations and reception/info cards into envelopes)? Where there is a problem, I shall find an impulse-buy solution.

I've thought about using photo stamps for the invitations since square and ribbon=expensive postage the USPS doesn't actually make stamps in the denomination required. If we do that, I'm thinking about putting a bow tie on Archie after his next grooming visit and using that picture for the stamps to involve him in our day (more later on the complications of wanting to share wedding with puppy pseudo-child).

So what did I figure out to do? Keep the picture love going!

I ordered Kodak photo stickers, after cropping one of our engagement pictures to a square, and selected the "Sea Glass" border option for the 2" x 2" Martha Stewart stickers (30 on a sheet for $3.99 at KodakGallery.com). I shipped them to Andrew's house in Fulton (where I'll be for the next week on Spring Break--so exciting, I know) via the FedEx 2-day option.

Hopefully they'll arrive early next week and we'll be able to deliver them to all our college friends (who hopefully won't mind that they're getting hand-delivered invitations). In addition to packing for my flight tomorrow and doing last-minute laundry I need to go over our guest list and figure out how many invitations I need to take with me in all-but-done format to hand out/get postage cost estimated for the rest of the batch.

Now back to the packing planning for the rest of my work time, since I have to finish up tomorrow morning early and have yet to determine if I'm going to check two or carry-on two (the definite carryon is my backpack). Since I'm taking three flights to get from Lexington to St. Louis, I don't want to have to haul excess baggage through my two layover airports. However, I also don't want my luggage to not make a plane transfer at some point in these journeys, so I'm still conflicted about what to do, especially since I'm flying Continental for 2 flights but American for the last leg. Too easy to see stuff going horribly wrong, but discomfort of constantly dragging stuff around is also not appealing.

The Invitations are Here!

After collecting and correcting email proofs of the text for my invitation, reception card, and printed outer envelopes, it only took a few weeks for my invitations to arrive from Davids Bridal.

I have to admit they're not really the invitations of my dreams, but those dream-invitations are letterpressed and crazy-expensive, so for the moment I'm not even thinking about them. They are exactly as I proofed the text, and the ribbon will exactly match the blue that runs through the rest of the wedding theme in the form of my sash and the bridesmaids dresses.

Overall, I'm happy with them. They fit the theme and the overall image I was aiming for, without breaking my budget to pieces. Though I wish I'd found rectangular rather than square cards, simply because of postage concerns. I may just do custom stamps, or look at international stamps since I think those would actually cover the cost of the mailings.

Though I am dreading all the assembly fun I have ahead of me...and have already started practicing my best handwriting (need to work to make the numbers match the lettering) for addressing in the future.

Now to collect actual addresses for people on our guest list.

Did anyone else have to settle on wedding invitations that they liked rather than ones they were completely in love with? It can't be that uncommon.

Invitations

To continue the color-branding of our wedding, Andrew and I picked out invitations from David's Bridal that featured ribbons in our shade of blue, to match my sash, the bridesmaids dresses, the cake, and all the other blue stuff.

Here's an example of what our invitation looks like:
Except on ours the reception cards are crammed with our website information (where we want people to RSVP) as well as the reception information. For the non-tech-savvy I'll print everything from the website off and mail it, but I figure everyone is much more likely to not lose a website that has all the relevant information.

I'm waiting until the wedding to spring on people the orange accent color that'll be the color of all our flowers, predominantly roses. Or maybe I'll get an orange dress to wear to the rehearsal dinner, which I'll be looking for tomorrow when I go to test my wedding dress to see if it still fits. Except that it'll also be the dress that I'll wear to my friend Nicki's wedding in March, and so orange might be a bit much.