I was SO happy to mail my invitations and get them out of here I thought I was going to burst. We finished the invites about a month ago, but getting all of them assembled, numbered (I almost forgot to number the RSVP cards, even after lots of bee advice!), addressed and stamped took awhile!
My mom and my grandmother helped me to put the finishing touches on our envelopes. First, my grandmother carefully glued these liners into our envelopes:

We only used two different papers because we ran out of the first, but I ended up liking them both.
Then, my mom and her perfect schoolteacher handwriting addressed all of our envelopes in gold ink:

Does your calligrapher accept payment in the form of chocolate? Mine does

After all the stamp debate, we ended up going with the simple and pretty dragonfly stamp.
Thank you so much to reader Manda who suggested it!
I didn’t quite know what to expect when I got to the post office, since there have been so many varied experiences with asking for hand cancelling. Well before I could even open my mouth I nearly had a heart attack as the postal employee took one look at my envelopes and announced that I was “way off on postage”. She took a closer look and saw that the dragonfly stamp said 62 cents and changed her mind - I knew that I actually had 3 cents worth of postage more than what I needed, but I did get nervous for a second.
Then I asked about the hand-cancelling and she said that there would be a 20-cent surcharge for each envelope! I said that I was pretty sure that it said online that it was free. Then she said even if it were free, she wouldn’t have time to do it. Luckily I had learned from other bees that it was possible to do it yourself. I asked, and she moved me to an empty counter and handed me the stamp!
It took me about 10 minutes to hand cancel all of my envelopes, amid lots of funny comments from a busy post office line. My grandmother watched and said I should consider a job at the Post Office if this whole Optometry thing doesn’t work out
I’m a big dork and so I’ll admit that it was actually a little bit fun.