The post office finally comes through!

Econo Boy's parents called us last night to share some good news -- our invitation arrived in yesterday's mail! In fact, we've heard from family members as far away as LA that the invites are arriving.

Wow, this is really happening. People are getting our invitations. My mom will soon be receiving an avalanche of RSVP cards and logging them into our Google Docs spreadsheet. (I swear, I should have put a note on our invitations -- "this wedding is brought to you by Google Docs." Econo Boy and I are spreadsheet addicts.) People are buying plane tickets to come to our wedding!

When did it hit you that the wedding was for real?

Edited to add: I just saw this and couldn't resist!

Image from someecards.com

This week in wedding minutiae, Part 2

We delivered our first invitation this week!

While it's not strictly correct to hand-deliver wedding invitations, according to Miss Manners, in this case it really was our best option. See, our best man, T, is sort of a globe-trotting international man of mystery. We have 3 addresses for him on 3 different continents and it is impossible to keep track of where he is at any given time. Hence, when we met him for dinner in NYC, we decided that we needed to take advantage of the fact that we knew where T was for one whole evening and deliver his invite. He was appropriately complimentary about our design, and it was so much fun to see our first little invitation actually reach its recipient!

The next day, as we addressed a pile of invitations, I jokingly asked Econo Boy what the odds were on T actually sending in the RSVP card as he jets between international adventures.
Econo Boy: "Oh, I told him he didn't have to."
Me: "You WHAT?"
Econo Boy: "I told him he didn't need to RSVP, we know he's coming."
Me: "But ... but ... but ... MENU OPTIONS!"
Econo Boy: "Oh, I forgot about that. Well, I bet he wants beef."
Me: "So let me get this straight. You've been telling people not to RSVP to our wedding?!"
Econo Boy (now sensing danger): "No! Well, I mean, I told T that. But no one else. I promise."
Me: "OK." (Long pause) "Because you know, they need to RSVP, or we won't have a count for the caterer."
Econo Boy: "I know, I know, I promise everyone else will RSVP."
Me: "And it's not that hard to send in the card, that's why we're putting stamps on 'em."
Econo Boy: "Yes, sweetie. I completely agree. People need to RSVP. I swear I will not tell anyone else they can skip sending in the RSVP card."
Me: "Good."
(Long pause as we address more invitations)
Econo Boy: "T probably wouldn't have sent it in anyway, you know."
Me: "Yeah, I'll give you that."

Image from Sweet T at monkeywed.blogspot.com

As promised!

Our invitations!

Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a better look.

A couple of observations:

1. I think I may be a contender for Worst Photographer Ever -- I apologize to any real photographers who may be reading this for butchering their art, and for my lame attempt at photo-editing out our last names and wedding location. In real life, the blue is much more vivid than it looks here, but I think this gives a nice hint of the simplicity of the design and the crispness of the letterpress printing.

2. I love them. I really, really do. I couldn't be more pleased with what we're going to send out to our guests. So if you happen to spot any misspellings, please don't tell me! :-)

I know I said I wouldn't post about this anymore ...

... but today's happy occurrence requires an exception. They're here!! Our invitations actually arrived!!

And how are they, you ask? They're great. Exactly what we wanted. Not the most expensive letterpress in the world (I've seen other sets with much thicker and more luxurious paper), but it's letterpress nonetheless, with our custom design.

Now, an ethical question: the seller sent me a PayPal refund for a bit of my money for the inconvenience. Should I accept the refund? This whole process has been super-stressful, and there's no reason I should have had to wait 4 months (!) between payment and delivery, but I do feel a little bad about taking her money. The shipping date on this box is the date she said she sent it, so it looks like a lot of this was a Post Office screwup. (Then again, the shipping date on the box is still almost 3 weeks after the promised April 15 deadline.) Any advice?

You're not going to believe this

I still don't have my invites in hand. And today, when I contacted the seller to ask her to follow up and warned her that I would have to report this as a non-delivery if I didn't hear from her ... she changed my Etsy purchase status to "Declined"!!

OK, you can't finish the order. Annoying, but OK. But you ignore my communications and passive-aggressively cancel my order 4 months after accepting my money, and don't offer to refund any of it?! Aargh!!!

Let me re-iterate the major lesson from my mishap, friends. Never, EVER pay in full for a custom order up-front. NEVER. No matter how nice the seller seems or how glowing her feedback is. NEVER. An honest, experienced professional will not object to a half down, half upon delivery payment plan.

The good news: Econo Boy and I spent some time playing around with some blank A7 cards and we think we've come up with a nice, cost-effective way to print our invitations ourselves. I've asked the seller to refund enough money for us to rush-order invites from Wedding Paper Divas, but if that doesn't look likely, we'll probably go with the lower-cost option.

I'm kind of venting right now, but to be honest, I've spent so long being upset over this that I'm pretty much over it. The weaselly move she made in canceling my order confirmed for me that this woman is profoundly unprofessional, and while it was foolish to pay up-front, this is her fault, not mine. And most couples I know had at least one awful vendor, whether it was a photographer or a florist or a caterer. Hopefully this means I got my mandatory wedding disaster out of the way, and the actual party will be nothing but fun!

Good news, and a funny cartoon

I'm going to cement my geek rep here by posting this link to a Penny Arcade comic: Mr. Period's Forum Tips . Apparently the wedding world is not the only place you'll find people who act like jerks on the internet! (Shocking, I know. Also, language NSFW. Also, if you don't play video games, the comic won't make much sense, except for the joke about the backslash.)

And, on a totally unrelated note ... I have a tracking number for my invitations!!! I am so happy and relieved. Part of me is still worried that they'll send the wrong number of invites, or that my box will be intercepted and eaten by angry beavers or something, but I really do feel like a weight has been lifted. We may actually get to invite people to our wedding in a timely manner! Phew!

How many excuses does it take to change a light bulb?

Aaaaand we're back to here.

My recalcitrant printer agreed to mail my invites on April 15 and send me the tracking number. On April 16, having heard nothing, I contacted her to ask what my status was. She replied that she was out of town for a family emergency.

She returned on the 21st, and when I contacted her, she told me my new delivery date is April 30 ... more than two weeks after what she promised me in March.

Sigh. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, I really do, and I don't question that she's had some bad luck of late. But after three and a half months of terrible communication and multiple tales of woe, she's starting to remind me of that student who always has an excuse for why she can't turn something in on time -- "my grandmother's sick," "my car broke down," "I'm super-busy and so stressed out," etc. etc.

It's gotten so bad that Econo Boy and I have already chosen and customized the Wedding Paper Divas invitations that we'll rush-order in mid-May if the Etsy invitations don't come through. If May 15 rolls around and we still don't have a tracking number, all we have to do is click "buy."

A couple of people have contacted me wanting to know this seller's name so they can steer clear. I don't feel comfortable trashing her by name, but I will advise anyone looking on Etsy for a printer to read the recent feedback *very* carefully (i.e. look for neutral as well as negative feedback -- neutral feedback doesn't get counted in the feedback score -- and make sure you're looking at feedback from fellow buyers, not sellers who sold things to the owner).

Update, and some great self-print invitations

An update on the invitations: on Monday morning I sent the designer an e-mail pointing out that it had been a month since I'd heard from her, mentioning the recent negative feedback on Etsy, and saying that I was becoming anxious that she would not finish my project. The result? Proofs, by the end of the day, of every single element of our invitation suite, and a promise to have the invites in my hands by mid-April!

I really hate being pushy or demanding, but in this case, my sweet little "how is the project going? An update would be great! When do you think I will get them?" attempts to find out what was going on were totally ineffective. It looks like I'm just going to have to be pushy on this one if I want to get what I paid for in time to send them out. We'll see what the situation looks like in a few weeks, but I feel much more hopeful now than I did this weekend. This is probably a good lesson for me in the importance of being assertive.

But I do have some cool finds to share in the print-your-own-invites department (since I spent a good chunk of Sunday trying to figure out a viable replacement if my custom invites didn't come through).

1. The Sonoma invitation from The White Aisle.
Unfortunately all of the pictures are on Flash and I can't post them here, but these DIY kits are gorgeous and totally unique. The vintage/vineyard vibe of the Sonoma is my favorite but there are other great options at The White Aisle too!

2. Ivory Letterpress Look kit from Target

Image from Target.com

Conservative but classic. I've heard mixed things about Target's software for the actual printing, unfortunately, but I still really like this kit, or at least the picture of it online. And you can't beat the price -- $30 for 50 invitations, RSVP cards, *and* envelopes!

3. Celeste Wedding Invitations from InviteSite.com

Image from InviteSite.com

A commenter on my last post pointed me to this site, and I really liked the Celeste portfolio invitations. I haven't strongly considered pocketfold invites because I was afraid the extra postage would be super-pricey, but I think folders and pocketfolds are a fun, modern touch -- a great way to make flat-print invitations shine.

Lastly, for anyone who finds themselves in need of invitations ASAP but doesn't want to print them at home, Wedding Paper Divas has an incredibly fast turnaround -- about 10 days -- and very reasonable 2-day and next-day shipping costs. They've also made vast improvements to their online editing software, and they've got some great designs. It's more expensive than doing it yourself, for sure, but I will definitely consider this option if I need last-minute invites and just can't deal with another project.

Lessons learned the hard way

It appears I may have spoken too soon about our wedding invitations.

In the past two months, I have sent our invitations designer 5 e-mails requesting further information on the project. In return, I have received exactly 1 e-mail from the designer, explaining that they are "backed up" but promising she would send me the proofs and have my design on press the next week. That, by the way, was 4 weeks ago; I haven't heard anything from her since. I also noticed that last week, a buyer on Etsy left her negative feedback reporting non-delivery of a custom item. At this point, I am almost certain that I will not receive the invitations that I ordered and paid for, and I am wondering when I should panic and order something else instead.

I feel utterly, utterly foolish. I am *way* past the date when I can dispute the initial transaction on PayPal; at this point I don't think there is any way I can get my money back, unless Etsy is able to assist me or unless my credit card company can do something. I'm going to push the designer to send me proofs and get me the invitations, but I don't really see it happening, at least not in time to actually send them out. (The way things are going, I half expect them to show up on my doorstep on July 26, the day after the wedding, thus enabling the designer to justify keeping my money because hey, she sent them.)

I'm normally very cautious about online transactions, but I really screwed this one up. My advice from this episode?

1. DO NOT pay for a project in full up-front. Yes, I know, "Duh." But it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of seeing a cool custom design, trust that 100% positive feedback rating, and decide that you don't want to be difficult by asking to split the price into a down payment and a payment-upon-delivery. Be a bit difficult. It's OK. A quality professional will understand the preference for a split payment.

2. When faced with an unacceptable situation, be demanding. I have been way too nice about this whole thing, waiting weeks for a response and telling myself "just be patient, it will all be OK, don't be a Bridezilla." But the only response I got from the designer was when I was semi-demanding and expressed "concern" at the "poor communication." Of course, when I read her sob story, I immediately reverted back to Nice Mode and told her how sorry I was to hear about her troubles. The result: being ignored for another 4 weeks.

I'm not advocating bitchiness in all online transactions, but when someone's not measuring up, don't be afraid to let them know it, and don't back down when they come up with excuses. Politely but firmly insist that they do what you have paid them to do, and if they don't follow through in the agreed-upon amount of time, start pestering them again, and continue being a pest until you get what you want.

3. Create a paper trail via e-mail and/or Etsy Conversations, in which you are highly specific about what you expect and when you expect it. This may end up being your only recourse if your seller flakes on you.

Ugh. I'll keep you updated on this whole situation, but right now I am so disappointed, both in the designer and in myself for being so gullible and losing a fairly large chunk of money. In the grand scheme of things, I know it won't matter if we send out self-printed invitations from a Target kit or high-end letterpress from a designer featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, but I was excited about this and I can't help feeling bummed, and also pretty stupid.

Rethinking the invitations

First, an update on the dress: It fits. Almost perfectly. It needs to be taken in up top (no surprises there) but otherwise it's amazing! I'm so relieved :-)

Like I said in an earlier post, I've always loved paper and stationery, and with the possible exception of the dress, the invitations may be the wedding item I've spent the most time thinking about. I've poured over invitation websites, ordered lots of samples, and eventually I thought I'd made a decision: go with a pretty, colorful, flat-printed invitation.

But I couldn't quite shake a certain disappointment at the idea of using flat printing. I love the feeling of raised print, and I extra-love the old-fashioned texture of letterpress. I also couldn't shake a skeptical voice in the back of my head. "Digital printing?" the voice whispered. "You *could* print something like that yourselves, you know. Why not just buy some nice card stock or a pretty DIY kit and put the extra money into the food?"

When I asked Econo Boy for his opinion, he admitted that he'd been thinking the same thing about flat printing but hadn't wanted to say anything. Together, we decided that we'd go with one of two options: one, print them ourselves and save money, or two, beef up the invitations budget and choose a more exotic printing method.

Mmm, pretty paper! Image from Dauphine Press, one of
many wonderful letterpress printers who's way out of our budget.

Inspired by Sweet T, I began considering a combination of flat and letterpress printing -- letterpress (preferably 2-color) for the invitations, and flat printing for the RSVP cards and envelopes. Unfortunately, few of the major invitations websites offer matched sets of mismatched printing. Hello!Lucky was the exception -- they now offer all of their letterpress invitations and RSVP cards in less expensive, digital print versions, so we could have ordered a letterpress invitation and a matching flat print RSVP card. But none of their invites seemed to fit quite what we were going for, and even their one-color options were slightly out of our price range.

So I decided to take a chance. I posted an ad on Etsy explaining what we wanted, what our budget was, and decided to see if there were any takers. I half expected to get a bunch of responses saying "that's not a realistic price for letterpress, but I can do it for $X more."

Instead, a printer with her own letterpress contacted me and said she could do exactly what we wanted, at exactly our price point! She even designed the perfect two-columbines motif for the top of our invitation. I'll hold off on an official endorsement until we have the invites in hand, but so far, so good.

For any other couples on a budget who are interested in letterpress, I absolutely recommend Etsy's Alchemy advertising board. I got lots of responses from printers -- some weren't quite what we wanted, but they were all professional and quick to respond. Even if you think no one could possibly work with your budget, give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised to find out you were wrong!

Dude, labels are, like, everywhere

I must be kind of psychic or something. Very shortly after posting about how I was refusing to use labels for our wedding invitations, I made a visit to Weddingbee and was hit with not one but two posts from brides using labels, and countless comments in support of said practice. Using computer-printed labels seems to be much more common than I thought -- in fact, it seems downright fashionable!

Image from Martha Stewart Weddings
via www.weddingbee.com.
Invitation suite by Hello! Lucky

OK, uncle, I give! I will admit it: the labels above are very, very pretty. And no, my handwritten addresses will probably not be as pretty or flourish-y as the ones people print using computer script fonts.

But somehow, I just can't see myself using labels, even ones as pretty as these. There's just something about a hand-addressed envelope that I think is kind of, well, special. Almost everything I get in the mail these days has a computer-printed label on it -- 90% of my mail is either junk mail or financial documents, pretty yawn-worthy. But when I see something that's been hand-addressed, I get excited, because I know it's a card from a family member, news from a friend, or something else out of the ordinary.

I'm not crafty; I won't be hand-weaving any tablecloths or painting any murals for our wedding. But I do love pens and paper and getting old-fashioned letters in the mail. And so come April, I'll be busting out my fountain pen, turning on some music, and addressing my envelopes by hand. Yeah, I'm a square. But I'm OK with it :-)

Miss Manners and invitations

The other day, Econo Boy and I were filling addresses into our guest list on Google Docs (yes, we have a spreadsheet. Yes, we are nerds), and we returned to a topic of conversation we've discussed before: how we will be addressing the invitations.

Econo Boy: "This spreadsheet will make it so easy for me to do the mail merge when we print our invitation envelopes." (Note the sneaky tactic of pretending I've already agreed to doing this!)

Me: "Nice try. We need to hand-write the addresses. If we use the tea-length envelope, printing the address on a laser printer will make it look like junk mail."

Econo Boy: "People will know it's not junk mail. The paper is too nice."

Me: "How would we feed the envelopes through the printer? The paper's too thick and soft, the printer will chew it up. Besides, feeding the envelopes through one by one will take almost as long as just writing the addresses by hand."

I foolishly believed I had unveiled my trump card, the "we'll ruin the expensive paper and/or it won't save time" argument. Then Econo Boy uttered these words.

Econo Boy: "I have a bunch of white labels, I was just going to print the addresses on those and stick them on the envelopes."

What?! Ugly, mass-mail, laser-printed-in-Times-New-Roman white labels on our beautiful ivory, hand-milled Italian paper envelopes? I managed to control the twitch in my eye. "That would look awful and tacky and we will not be doing it," I told him primly.*

In search of support, I Googled "Miss Manners handwritten invitations," certain she would have just the right pithy sentence to explain to Econo Boy that printing address labels on a computer was not the way to go. Instead, I got a shock: apparently, our invitations will violate proper invitation etiquette before they're even addressed!

From Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, page 391:

"The world is full of nasty people who examine the backs of wedding invitations and run fingernails over the front in order to tell whether the thing was properly engraved. Miss Manners is one of them. Handwriting and engraving are equally correct; fake engraving and computer-generated fonts are imposters."

Well then!

I've always been skeptical of people who say "we're not bothering with that stuffy old 'etiquette' nonsense." Personally I'm a fan of old-fashioned etiquette. What's so awful about writing prompt thank-you notes and not treating your guests like ATMs or robots whose sole purpose is to produce presents? But I have to say, in the above passage, Miss Manners does come across as a bit behind the times, not to mention financially clueless. Engraving is incredibly expensive! Is it really "incorrect" to spend less than $10 an invitation? (Miss Manners, I'm sure, would tell me that if we cannot afford to have the invitations engraved, we ought to hand-write all of them. The mind boggles at the thought of hand-writing 102 invitations.)

So I guess our invitations will be falling somewhat short of "excruciatingly correct." But I've decided I'm OK with "mostly correct." In other words, we're still using flat printing, but Econo Boy will not be spoiling our lovely envelopes with laser-printed white labels!

Which probably means I'll be hand-addressing all 102 invitations myself. Ah well. I can pretend I'm actually DIY-ing something!

In other invitation news, I'm in love with the White Aisle's new printed vellum inserts, like this one for the Hong Kong invitation set:

Image from http://whiteaisle.com

I haven't decided yet if I'll splurge and add them to my own invites, but how pretty are they?

* Note: If you and your sweetie laser-printed labels to address your wedding invitations, and calling it "tacky" hurts your feelings, my apologies. I just prefer hand-written envelopes, and you should feel free to ignore me and my opinions as you see fit!

some random wedding planning observations

Is it just me, or does wedding planning come in waves? One minute I'm ignoring everything wedding-related (except for the chance to ramble on my blog), and the next it's all wedding all the time. Thanksgiving weekend definitely fell into the latter category. Between ordering the bridesmaids' dresses (which shipped today! Nice work, J. Crew!), discussing the guest list with Econo Boy's parents (more on that soon), showing off my gorgeous White Aisle invitation samples (the tea-length Blossom invitation is the front-runner), and trying to coordinate both a shower and an engagement party with the hosts of said events, I'm kinda wedding-ed out.

Here's my favorite invitation so far!
Image from http://whiteaisle.com;
click the photo to see this invitation set
on the White Aisle website.

Ah yes ... the guest list. Based on my totally scientific reading of 3 wedding magazines and various bridal blogs, it seems that the major source of stress for most wedding planners is the dreaded guest list. Econo Boy and I knew going in that it was extremely important to his parents to invite not only Econo Boy's sizeable family, but also their sizeable social circle (we both grew up in Colorado and so it's a hometown wedding for both of us).

So practically the first thing we did after getting engaged was ask both sets of parents to come up with a list of all of the people they might want to invite to the wedding. The final tally, including our own pals, was 190. Based on that number, we estimated that we'll have less than 150 guests, but we chose a venue that can hold up to 200 people so we don't have to stress about getting enough "no" RSVPs.

So we're happy, our parents are happy, it's all good, right? Well, sort of. A fair number of our married friends are horrified that we're letting our families have any say at all in the guest list. "You don't have to give in to that," they say. "It's stupid to invite a bunch of people you barely know just because your parents want them there. Trust us, we've been through this wedding thing. Your parents' friends don't belong at your wedding."

Hmmm. On the one hand, yeah, in my ideal world we'd have an expected head count closer to 80 -- I'm worried about our wedding feeling giant and impersonal. But on the other hand, this is important to our families as well, and many of our parents' friends have watched us grow up, helped us with school projects, given us graduation presents, and generally been part of that whole "takes a village to raise a child" thing. Plus, Econo Boy's parents gave us a very generous gift towards the wedding fund to ensure that inviting their big guest list won't mean everyone is eating bulk-purchased pretzels for dinner. So I'm OK with the "big tent" approach to our guest list. Not thrilled, per se, but I think everyone will be happier with this strategy.

How much say did your parents have in your guest list? Was this at all influenced by who was paying? Are we insane for throwing open the doors and letting our parents invite whoever they want, or smart for prioritizing family happiness?

My new internet obsession

For a while there, every time I turned on my computer, I couldn't resist looking at wedding gowns. Now that I've put down my hefty deposit on my gorgeous La Sposa, however, I've quit gown-surfing cold turkey. Instead, I have a new obsession: invitations.

I'm kind of a stationery addict. I absolutely adore Crane's, that grand old stationery store (I always hit up their sales for lovely thank-you cards), and when I was a kid I requested personalized stationery for Christmas or my birthday several times. I didn't have anyone to write to, but that wasn't the point. Eventually I printed my own on our crummy Canon inkjet, but it wasn't the same.

Now, finally, here's my chance to have my own gorgeous personalized bits of paper! I quickly informed Econo Boy that the invitations, like the gown, would be my domain. (He wanted to buy plain ecru cards and print them on our crummy HP inkjet. "It will convey the same information," he said. Econo Boy is always ruining my fun by being concerned with things like logic and functionality.) But a visit to Crane and Company killed my dream of ordering my invites there -- over $1000 for just invitations and RSVP cards, folks. Much as I love stationery I just couldn't justify spending that kind of money on an item that (let's be honest) will almost certainly end up being thrown away by most of my guests.

So I'm looking for something with a vintage vibe, preferably with a subtle floral design. I'd like to spend $4 or so a set (a set being an invitation, an RSVP card, and all necessary envelopes). And I'd like the color theme to be blue. So far, here are my candidates!

Two Econo Boy-approved favorites are from the amazing Wedding Paper Divas:
I also love the invitations at The White Aisle, including this one (which can be ordered in blue).


Finally, a Weddingbee reader alerted us to Glidewell Press, a printing company that does affordable letterpress invitations. (Letterpress is a printing technique that presses the ink into the cards for a very cool, old-fashioned look. Gorgeous but normally quite expensive. The rest of the invitations I've posted here are flat printing.) I'm a big fan of this design:


But I could probably only afford to have it done in the single-color option -- would this look OK if I did it in all navy or all sky blue?

Tell me which one's your favorite and why!