Wedding Blog
I debated for quite a while before doing it. The time had come to mail my invitations. Should I skip over to the post office on my lunch break or wait until the weekend when there is no time limit? I was zig-zagging between hand-canceling my invitations and just handing them over.
I pulled up to the post office, 45 minutes left until I was supposed to be back at my desk, stuck a few quarters in the meter and made my way inside. My invitations were all stamped. I’d taken them to two post offices prior to make sure the postage pricing was correct. $1.39 sounded like too much the first time but indeed, it was the same at the second post office. I could’ve easily dumped them in the big blue bin on the sidewalk since they were stamped, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
In line, inside, I continued to zig-zag in my head. Should I tell her I want to hand-cancel them? I had done it to my save-the-dates only to find that the ink takes at least 45 minutes to dry once you stamp them and you might get a parking ticket in the process because you didn’t expect them to take that long. I couldn’t find another excuse, though, to explain why I’d waited in line. Why I didn’t want to part with my beautiful, paper lovelies. Hand-canceling them seemed like a way to prolong the process, make it a heartfelt, lingering send-off.
But, once I got up to the counter, I could only squeak out that these were my wedding invitations and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay with them. She weighed one, then asked me how much postage I’d put on each. “$1.39,” I dutifully reported, the taste of vintage stamp gum rising on my tongue.
She took my two boxes, stacked high with thick, filled envelopes and took them… somewhere. I’m not sure where. And that was it. Now I can’t wait for RSVPs!
Did you have trouble handing over your invitations?
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Share this post: And, They’re Off…
congrats on getting your invites out! must be such a relief to be done with them….
They are just as beautiful on the outside…your guests are in for such a treat when they open those beautifully stamped envelopes.
Congrats! I mailed mine out last Tuesday. After the stress of DIY’ing them I was happy to see them go! I just got my first 3 RSVP’s back today and I did a happy dance at the mailbox!
Yay!!
It was a little bittersweet, but was so exciting when THE NEXT DAY I was getting texts and facebook messages from friends saying how much they loved them, and within a couple of days the RSVPs started rolling in. It’s so fun! 
Love the stamp selection on yours!!
Love the stamps! I did a similar thing on my save the dates, but I love how many you used (of course as result of $1.39 postage!).
Congrats! I hadn’t even thought of this. I think I’ll feel the same. where did you get your stamps?!
I know-I couldn’t let mine go either & they were nowhere near as complex as yours, but they were a labor of love we designed all on our own. Btw, I have a few of those vintage $.06 flower stamps in the top picture!
I totally had a hard time handing mine over. It seemed so anti-climactic!
@Miss Star: I agree about the anti-climactic feeling…so much work, gone in an instant! And to think that some guests would just throw them away! 
It must have been hard to stomach that postage cost, but the vintage stamps just look gorgeous!
haha yea, all that hard work and time and sweat and tears were finally being surrendered. I swore that people better frame them!!
We actually boxed ours up and sent them off to Bridal Veil, OR, to be hand canceled. Of course, I then spent my time in a panic until I actually started hearing they had been delivered.
rather than use numerous stamps did you think of printing your own postage?? the USPS has the availability to create your own stamp and then you print them up. it costs you the cost of sticker, but then there is only 1 stamp that you can creat with a personized message or design
I put mine in the mail on Friday July 31, too, and had an incredibly difficult time doing it. They’d been addressed and stamped and ready to go under our coffee table for a while, but it was hard to let them go. The invitations are very meaningful to me, and I’d gotten used to having them as a matched set.
Worse, though, was getting a mangled, empty, unsealed RSVP envelope in the mail the day after I’d sent them, proving that something went grievously wrong with at least one. One of my beautiful, personal invitations is crumpled in a dirty ball in some post office somewhere. 
The vintage stamps look great! The post office I took them to assured me they’d hand-cancel them — and I saw they were telling the truth when my parents’ invite arrived a few days later.
I love the stamps you used! They act as the perfect introduction to the rest of your suit.
your cards look great, I also went to the post office and had my invitations hand canceled in front of me, all that hard work, I even got a blister! (50 local, and 4 International). I hope you have better luck then I did….I’m finding out several ppl have not gotten their invitations yet I’ve only gotten 2 back with the incorrect address =( it’s quite frustrating……and is it just me or is anyone else having trouble with RSVP’S? I find it so rude that ppl can’t just check a line and send away, I mean c’mon the stamp was included…..my rsvp deadline was yesterday and we haven’t even gotten half the resonses! =
(
Don’t feel too bad about not hand-canceling them. They will usually still be machine-canceled if they leave town. Your local guests will get the nice hand-cancellation, but people from farther afield will likely have machine marks and cancellations on the invites where they are processed along the way.
congrats! beautifully addressed.
wow i never knew you needed so many stamps!
Newbie bride-to-be so forgive the question: “hand canceled”? What does that mean? And along with the others, can I have the stamp source pretty please. I am doing a vintage glam wedding and those stamps would be fabulous!!!
@Miss Yap: “Hand canceled” means that instead of putting the invitations through a machine to cancel the postage stamps, you have it individually done by hand. Here is an example of a normal machine canceled stamp:
http://www.postalhistorycanada.org/images/sg04a.png
By contrast, we had ours hand canceled by the Bridal Veil, OR Post Office. Here is what the cancellation looked like:
http://sites.google.com/site/2dbride/paper/Postmark.jpg
As you can see, the hand cancellation tends to come out neater. In our case, the cancellation was also from a town that does cute cancellations, in honor of its name.
There is some question about how worthwhile this is. Ours actually turned out beautifully, and were not further canceled by machines along the way. However, some have had bad experiences in which the careful hand cancellations were later overwritten by the invitations going through machines anyway. YMMV.
I love the stamps,the envelope look even more beautiful with all that different stamps!
@Sulli301: Hiya Sulli! I got my stamps off eBay. For some tips on finding stamps you’ll love, read this post I put up when I was looking for stamps for our STDs. http://www.weddingbee.com/2009/03/24/mission-vintage-stamps/
@Miss Yap: Hi Miss Yap! Check out the link I just shared with Sulli (above) to find vintage stamps that suit you best!
It was SO hard for me to hand over our invitations, I feel your pain!
Thank you Miss Cowboy Boot. That was really helpful!
And I had no idea you could hand cancel mail. lol
Having trouble handing them over? Try the trouble after the wedding, when all the agonizing over which stamp and image and wisp of hair goes where is over, and no one is shining the wedding spotlight on you…i found this blog looking for regional ideas, of which there are many, and this wedding sounds beautiful, but what about the groom? Family? Vows? The MARRIAGE?? Argh! How about a bride who puts as much thought into that? Yep, you have some nice ideas, but the egocentric pondering and foot-stamping here…staggering.
Meghan, this is a site to discuss weddings. For many of us, it is the one place that we CAN talk about small details of our weddings, because we don’t want to bore our friends with those. So, for all you know, she is putting “at least as much thought into that,” but is discussing those issues with the groom, and thus not feeling the need to discuss them here. And the urge to share the little details with people who can get support and ideas from them, instead of with friends who will be bored, is far from “egocentric.” To judge her based on that is ludicrous.
I love all your vintage stamps! It would’ve been a pain to hand cancel, since you have to get the ink on each individual stamp.
So exciting to have them out! How did you address them? I love the way they look!
@AnamCara: The addresses were printed digitally by our stationer, Sarah Parrott. I tried to use a balance between serif and script.
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Mrs. Cowboy Boot, Santa Fe
Age and Occupation: 25, Magazine Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Artist and Whitewater Rafting Guide
Engagement Date: April 28th, 2008
Wedding Date: October 2009
Venue: Devil's Thumb Ranch, Colorado
About Me: I grew up in Los Angeles and have since lived in San Diego, Boston, Italy, Hawaii, New York City, and Santa Fe. I speak Italian and love pasta. My real passion is the outdoors, though. When I'm not at work, I'm snowboarding, hiking with my two dogs, mountain biking, surfing, cross-country-skiing, or boating New Mexico's rivers. Despite my boyish love for adventure, I'm a girly-girl at heart and am overly-excited to pull off the romantic, vintage-inspired, country wedding of my dreams.
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