Wedding Blog

For the past couple weeks I’ve been sporadically Google News searching something that I never thought I’d care about…the proposed upcoming postage increase.

The USPS has requested an increase from 39 to 42 cents for a standard letter, and a decrease from 24 to 17 cents for each additional ounce. (Most wedding invitations are either 2 ounces or must include the surcharge for oversized or square envelopes. So the usual wedding invite postage would actually decrease from 63 cents to 59!)

The postal regulatory commission (whew, never thought I’d type that!) has recommended that they only raise the base price to 41 cents, though, so we might not have to go up quite as much! Right now, the ball is in the court of the Board of Governors of the Postal Service who are deciding whether to accept the 41 cent recommendation or keep fighting for 42.

What difference does that penny matter to me, you might ask? Well, honestly, I reeeally don’t care. If I save a penny on every one of my RSVP cards - cool! But if I have to pay it, that’s fine too. Seriously, Post Office, postal regulatory commission, and board of governors, it doesn’t matter to me!!

My problem is simply that the original timeframe for the increase meant that the rate change would be in effect “as soon as May first” and now I’m concerned that the negotiations could push it even a week later…and the later the WORSE for my wedding! We were planning to set June 1st as our “RSVP by” date, so we wanted to get invites in the mail prior to May 1 if possible….but then we might not be able to stamp our RSVP cards with the correct postage so they’ll be returned to sender (i.e. our guests) when they try to reply to us!! And as much as that penny doesn’t bug me, I’d really rather not pay a 10 cent extra buffer per RSVP “just in case,” you know?

Our current plan is to get everything assembled and addressed, buy correct postage stamps on May 1 itself, and get them out that day or the 2nd. But if there’s a delay in the rate increase…we’re on a real time crunch!! My only hope is that they might come to the final decision on the stamp increase in the next few weeks and then make the new rate stamps available for purchase prior to the effective date. Then we could mail our invites at the end of April (at the current rate) and only have to worry about increased rates for the rsvp cards. Sigh. So we’ll see. Don’t let me down Board of Governors of the Postal Service!!!!

PS. In other post office news…there will be a new wedding stamp set coming out soon!

‚© 2006 USPS

They are currently showing the 39 cent and 63 cent denominations…so hopefully they’ll update that for the rate increase!

PPS. One more bit of post office trivia that doesn’t relate to weddings! Another item on the agenda for deciding about the rate increase is that they might create a “forever stamp” that could be used to mail a regular letter forever - even after rates increase tons of times! This would be incredibly handy since no one likes 2 cent stamps!

Okay that’s about all the postal service news I’ve got for today! I’ll keep you updated on the increase date in case there are any other summer brides for whom this is falling at an inconvenient time!!