Weddingbee Blog

I love love LOVE the holidays. Yes folks, I am one of those freaks who, much to the (very vocal) chagrin of her coworkers, busts out the Christmas cheer mid-November. Lucky for them, this year I was away getting married mid-November, so they got an extra-long respite from Burl Ives’ rendition of Silver and Gold, and hallways festooned with chintzy dollar-store tinsel.

Me & friends at the office last year

Among the reasons we planned our destination wedding for November, such as that it would be just a little more than one year from our engagement date, that  it would be around the same time as the birthday of our relationship (5 years!) and that we could be fairly certain we would not be dealing with an unwanted guest by the name of Hurricane Gustav (or his friends), there was one more very important one… our wedding’s proximity to Christmas would help me deal with the post-wedding blues! Because hey, we all know that after planning such a huge event for a whole year and having it all of a sudden be OVER can throw even the most rational brides among us into the ‘depths of despair’.

So I thought a November wedding would cover all the bases. One thing I did NOT account for, however, was the card conundrum.

See, not only am I a Rudolph-watching, mistletoe-hanging, eggnog-chugging dork, I am also single-handedly (or so it seems, sometimes) trying to uphold the dusty old tradition of sending Christmas cards. And I don’t mean e-cards or emails or, “hey, Merry Xmas!” on your Facebook -type cards. I mean old fashioned put-pen-on-paper-and-put-it-in-the-mail cards.

Mr Breezy thinks I’m totally crazy, of course. And I don’t really blame him. But we have a deal - he will put up with the expense of it (stamps ain’t cheap, yo!) and I won’t force him to write any of them. I do get to remind him what an amazing girlfriend he has, though… wait, make that wife!

So here’s the problem:

… or…

?

A very large percentage of our Christmas-card list is also on our Thank You card list. If I send them a Christmas card in the mail, won’t it be weird to not mention the wedding or thank them for their gift? And if I do do that, does that mean we write the same thank yous in the actual Thank You card that we’ll be sending?

And here’s an even bigger problem: Mr Breezy thinks we should get all the Thank You cards done STAT… as in, by this weekend. We (read: I) haven’t even thought about what kind of cards to get/make yet - there are so many things to consider. I’ve tried telling him that people don’t expect cards right away, that we need time to just breathe. We’ve only been back for two weeks and I feel just as stressed out as I did before the wedding. He is of the mind that there is no time like the present.

So I have no clue what to do, and no clue why this is upsetting me so much. I mean, am I turning a little thing into yet another big deal just because it’s wedding-related? Would it really be that bad to go buy some plain ol’ cards at Michaels and throw in our photo slideshow DVD (which Mr Breezy has done an amazing job on), write a few words and call it a day? I wish I could say yes but some part of me (the perfectionist part, perhaps?) is having a hard time not planning this too, down to the very last detail.

So what do I do, dear hive? Do both Xmas cards and Thank You cards this week? Ditch the Xmas cards for one year, suck it up and have a horrid week writing Thank You cards every evening but be done with it? Somehow pray that Mr Breezy comes to his senses and relaxes his timeline? (Any hints for how to convince him? In a nice wifely way, of course.)