Weddingbee

This morning, I brought my invitations over to the Rockefeller Center Post Office. It feels great to have them out of my hands, but now I have to worry that the mail-stealing elf doesn’t wreck havoc on me (he often does a number on my pairs of socks).

A few lessons learned:

1) My parents are hosting (and paying for) the wedding, so I put their contact as the return address on the invite and as the RSVP address. In hindsight, I should have used my address for the RSVPs since I’ll be the one keeping the tally. My parents live a few blocks away from me, so it’s not a big deal to pick the RSVPS up every day, but something to think about if your parents live in another town.

2) At some point in my wedding planning process I saw these envelopes and fell in love with the interoffice ties (the “do-hickies”). I thought they were the coolest. I needed to have them. I got them. And they’ve been a total pain in the arse.

First, I was planning on having addresses on the envelopes computer “calligraphered” by Inkspun for a whopping 39 cents each. It only occurred to me after I had the envelopes in hand that the do-hickies would probably jam a printer.

With only 2 weeks to get the invites out, I did a frantic search on The Knot message boards. I emailed a bunch of calligraphers. I went with the first person to get back to me, Melanie at Sugar Dipped Designs (she was in California, so had a leg up on the competition and emailed me back that night). I have to say that I LOVE the results. The cost wasn’t too bad either — $1.50 per envelope, although after you factor in the FedEx charges, it probably wound up costing $2.00 per envelope.

Lastly, the do-hickies took forever to tie — probably added over an hour to the invitation assembly process. Now I’m worried that they will untie and get caught in a sorter.

3) Postage: I had a full invitation set weighed several times at the post office and the invite weighed exactly one ounce, meaning that 39 cent postage was enough. I wish I had gone with 63 cent stamps instead… just in case. My nightmare is that the invites will be returned to me for insufficient postage.

… And a few things I did right!

1) I mailed myself a fully stuffed invite. It came in one piece. The do-hicky stayed tied. The postage was apparently sufficient. But I’m still worried.

2) I numbered the addressee list I sent to the calligrapher. As I assembled the invites, I penciled in the corresponding number on the back of the RSVP card so that I can identify the responses even if people don’t fill out their names.

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