The Stamp Mishap

After about 72 hours of straight invitation printing, cutting, stamping, pasting, addressing, drawing, scanning, fixing, photo shopping, inking, stuffing and sealing, Landon and I ventured out into the 92 degree heat to walk a mile to the post office where I'd finally get to say good-bye to our labor of love invitations. Yay!

Walking to the Post to mail the invitations!

Landon and I finally made it there, sweaty, but excited to have these beautiful, little masterpieces hand stamped. After all, why would I walk a whole mile to the Post if they weren't going to end up hand stamped? I could have just dropped them at the corner Post box, or give them to the local mail delivery woman! I stood in line waiting to be helped, trying to cool off. The new supervisor came over to me, and asked me if I had any special requests (odd), I told her that I wanted to have these 47 invites hand stamped because I didn't want them going through the machine. She informed me that even if they were hand stamped they would still go through the machine, so I might as well just put them in the machine anyway. ::Sigh:: Mission One, failed.

Mission Two was to buy 4 international stamps for two invitees living outside the country, two for the invites, and two for the Responding Envelopes. First the rude woman at the counter informed me that they were simply out of international stamps. Mission Two, failed. Then she looked at my small Responding Envelope and half smirked. "Are those your RSVP envelopes?! I hope 'day not in aalll dose invitations, cause you gonna need an extra 20 cent on dose!" What?! Shit. Wait, what?!

The envelopes that may never see their way back to Atlanta...

That same supervisor who told me there was no point in hand stamping came over after the woman called to her, "Maybe you can explain to her what's goin' on!" Well, here is what was going on. The envelopes, like the woman said, were to small, and apparently they cost an extra 20 cents to mail. I stared in disbelief. "Can you open them?" The supervisor asked me. NO, I CANNOT OPEN THEM! I JUST SPENT 72 HOURS ON THESE THINGS! THEY ARE SEAL, AND WAX SEALED, HAND ADDRESSED, ON HEMINGWAY-PAGE-LINED ENVELOPES! ... No, I did not say that to her, though I thought it. I said, "Well, no, that's just not going to happen." To which she replied with attitude (I think trying to shift the blame, though, I wasn't blaming anyone), "Well your Printer should have told you!" ::Deep Breath:: "I AM the printer!" I said, "But, I'll make sure I go ahead, and tell myself that next time!" She laughed. I didn't. Shit.

So, where does this leave me? With three options:

Option One: Mail and additional 20 cent stamp to every invitee with a note appoligizing for the mishap, which will also require another 44 cent stamp to get to them.

Option Two: Email out to everyone that RSVPs are now online, because I didn't know that the envelopes require and extra stamp.

-or-

Option Three: Call all 75 guests on the "Due Date" of July 1st and tell a funny, little story about today, apologize and then ask, "Accept? Decline?" and "Chicken, Fish or Vegan?"

I'm thinking that option three will be happening, I'll let you know about the delegation of that task soon! ::Hysterical Laughing:: Oh, goodness. Please still fill your respond cards out and mail them back to us, so we can see if MAYBE they will still get back here. Where does my hope come from? I went back to see if the fact that they have a Forever stamp on them would help. The one sweet woman there told me that she's seen many come back, if they get to their Post Office they'll deliver them. We shall see! Cross your fingers and toes, maybe it will all work out.

At least I had a good 2 mile walk today, and the invites are on their way!! Watch your mail for them, and once you all have them in hand, I will post about how we made them. I hope you love them as much as Derek and I do. Truly. 

From 60 to 15.

Last night we had the pleasure of skyping with The Honorable Sid Espinosa. The plan was to run through the ceremony and talk about the outlined ceremony. We all thought it would only take an hour. At the beginning of the conversation, Sid asked Derek and I how far we felt we were into the whole process of the wedding. We together answered, quite confidently with, "About 60%." Sid, almost devilishly, threw his head back and laughed while replying, "I'm gonna say you're at about 30%."

Well, like pulling on that teeny tiny little snag on your favorite sweeter, once you start pulling, it starts unraveling, and unraveling, and unraveling. Now there are things on our new, upgraded, list that Martha Steward never mentioned or hinted even hinted at! And there's a reason for that, it's not pretty, and there isn't really a way to make a time lines,  photograph lists, guest bags, agendas, delegating, and seating  "pretty with a side of sparkle".

 After a four hour conversations with a lot of laughing and brain storming we decided that we were all wrong. We weren't at 60%, we weren't even at 30%, we're at about 15% done with our wedding planning and execution. There are so many little details that we might to give everyone a little role to play the day before or of the wedding.

I know in this blog I'm ragging on Sid a bit, but the truth is we are lucky to have him. He has been to so many weddings that if he wasn't so busy with changing the world I would totally hire him as our wedding planner. It was really great to have a look at all this now, because had we not even thought about this stuff till even a month from now, it's a possibility I would be pulling my hair out. Literally.

So... As  Calvine Coolidge said, "We cannot do everything at once, but we can to something at once." Let the delegating begin!

To-Do's and Compensation

Here we go, another venture to Key West! In early June Derek and I will be dropping little man in Miami and heading to Key West to finalize mostly everything... hopefully. Here's a list of what we hope to set up that weekend.

The Rehearsal Dinner Location and Contract

The Brunch Location

The Tent and Flatware Rental and Contracts

Linens or Table Runner Upgrade

In Miami we hope to accomplish this list of things:

Suit Rentals or Solution

Spraypaint all the Lanterns for the Centerpieces

Meet with Photographer and possibly have engagement pictures taken

Possibly pick out fabric if the runners need to be made

Buy needed jars

I guess this blog is just a way to sort some of the things on our To-Do list, not very inspiring, so I'll leave you with a little fun video to compensate.

No Keys to Type About the Keys...

I was hoping to do a better job at keeping up on this blog, and clearly I haven't. But it's not my fault... it's my computer that is quickly dying (it's missing about 5 or 6 important keys which makes typing next to impossible). And, I actually have a job now- how do people do it!? lol. Though, I am seriously loving my job, it seems to take up so much time that the wedding planning has definitely taken a back seat. Not really the best thing when it comes to a DIY wedding.

The last blog was all about feeling great with all that's been accomplished, but there is so much left to do, and a little back tracking has happened as well. Our heavenly brunch place, Blue Heaven, is actually going to be closed that weekend of our wedding, so we're back to square one with a brunch location. Our caterer lost our custom tailored menu when her computer crashed, so we are trying to figure all that out again... prices and all.

However, with the months decreasing and the day approaching, I'd like to focus on some positives. Derek and I have put together the majority of our ceremony this morning, which we love so far and are very excited about. It's very personal to us. I now have my wedding shoes, which I am getting used to wearing slowly but surely. We purchased one of the two wedding rings, and the invitations are in the process of being made by yours truly (and I think you all are going to love them). Derek and I finally have our honeymoon figured out. We're going to take a short cruise for a few days. Next year, when we're a little more rooted and there isn't so much going on, the two of us are going to venture to Italy for a longer, real honeymoon. This will give us more time to plan as well as save some money.

Yes, these are the shoes from Sex and the City.

Thank you to Doris and Don who have been so wonderful as to ship us two very big boxes of amazing vintage styled books that match our color palette perfectly, along with more matchbooks. Yay! Things are falling into place for the most part, and I really appreciate everyone being so supportive of Derek and I right now. Also, I'd like to say thank you to everyone for being so great about booking the hotel in that two week period we gave. That helped so much, I'm so excited that we'll all be in the same place, together, for the weekend's events. Also, thank you to my Mom who has been helping out calling places about tent rentals, flatware and anything else we've been throwing at her.

Future Centerpieces!!

 As the day gets closer I get a little more stressed about checklists, not going to lie, but I'm also so very excited. And how about this for exciting and awesome, we have new addition to the family!!
Miss Avery Elisabeth Butts! Congrats again Deb and Chris! :)

The beautiful little Avery.