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 I had it all figured out using the all-too-cliche 58 cent pink wedding stamp and the outdated 39 cent Hersheys kiss stamp, but the last time the website actually let me on the latter had already disappeared.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?