Weddingbee

Guess what came in the mail this Wednesday afternoon after ANOTHER exciting round of “Where is Miss Cherry Pie’s X?“

Our awesome letterpress invitations!

Unfortunately, the Post Office had decided that “Priority” mail was not really a priority and we spent a few long days hand-wringing while waiting for them to arrive. After I stayed home and accosted the empty-handed mailman yet again, we called the post office to file a claim and they located the package in Olympia, WA.

After his 10 AM visit (sans invitations), our gracious postman actually went back to the depot to look for my package and returned at 4PM to deliver it directly to our door. I didn’t even ask! He must have seen the desperation in my eyes when I ran out to meet him with face cream slathered all over myself and taken pity. Honestly, I thought he’d flee in terror never to return. Ever.

But besides our great postman, brides beware, the Post Office is the embodiment of the phrase “good enough for government work!” If you can at all help it, always ship time-sensitive packages with UPS or FedEx, if just for their superior tracking.

Because out invitations were so late arriving (today is the last day our blocked rooms are held and our RSVP date is July 30), we had to rush them out the door. After spending only a few precious hours with our invitations, we’d assembled the whole batch. First thing Thursday morning, I took them around to post offices looking for one that would hand cancel. The main branch of the Seattle PO obliged me, but I’m only half convinced that they won’t show up machine canceled anyway.

Now, they are on their way. With luck, the first will arrive today.

Before I say any more, let’s give the invitations a chance to speak for themselves.

Above, you can see the complete suite, with custom tri-fold enclosure, main invite (secured with photo corners), lined invite envelope, RSVP card and envelope, custom paper sash, and Thank You notes.

Here is the main invitation, up close:

The invite secured in the center of the tri-fold enclosure:

The outside panels of the tri-fold (Which, if you recall from the last layouts I posted, contain our wedding story, lodging/registry information, and directions with a map):

The closed tri-fold with custom paper sash and letterpress envelopes lined with chocolate paper. You can see some glue reflected on this one, but that wasn’t common. The sash you see here is horizontal, but we actually spent a hour or so carefully redoing every one vertically. It was just way too hard to get the sashed invites into envelopes safely and without the sash staying in the envelope when the invite was removed. Vertical looks just as nice!

Our double-sided RSVP cards with letterpress envelopes. One side has basic RSVP questions. The other has space for a note and lodging information:

Our matching folded thank you cards with wheat design. The return envelopes for these have my new last name. Eeeeeee! I totally love it.

The invites came out really well, with only a few flaws carried throughout (some slight press misalignment and image ghosting). Realistically, I only noticed these things because I work in design. And I’m anal-retentive. I think Kristin (of Twin Ravens Press) does great work, especially considering that her letterpress business is new, and our huge custom job must have been a real handful for her to tackle by herself!

It’s such a huge relief to have these sent out, even if the end result of the delays was that we had to call or email most of our guests to let them know our lodging information (the Park Service only holds rooms until 60 days prior to an event and gave us 2 extra weeks anyway. Oh well, a little extra personal attention never hurt anyone!

We have some lovely extra copies sitting on our table at home, as well as a nice custom tag to fill in the hole in our mailbox guest book.

How are your invitations coming along?

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