First Invites Out

Because my law school friends are scattering to the 4 winds, we distributed some invitations early (by only a week) last week at my Champaign Shower (will post on that soon). It was surprisingly stressful to get everything together. Stuffing the invitations was surprisingly time-consuming. I know I keep saying "surprisingly" but I guess I figured that since the addressing was so easy (and Erik stamping the return addresses and sticking labels on the RSVP envelopes was easy for me - not so much for him) that I assumed that putting them in the envelopes would be easy. Nope. Thank you, Martha Stewart, and your crazy "good" idea to number the RSVP cards for the silly guests who forget to write their names! This added a level of complexity to the invitation stuffing — especially since the addressed envelopes got out of alphabetical order. That was an unintended consequence of delegating the return address stamping (with our awesome embosser) to the groom.

Oddly enough, this kind of snuck up on us. Erik had ordered the paper for the accommodation inserts several weeks ago, and we were in a holding pattern until that came. Bad news: The paper didn't come in time. Result: Scrambling to get some decent paper at Kinko's and printed enough to give to the people heading out of town! Erik went the morning of the shower to pick them up. Can you say stressful?

At any rate, the ironic part was the paper came the next day! E is picking up the finished product today from Kinko's — I can't wait to see it on the Cougar 80 Cover paper we got. We plan on using this paper (we ordered 100 sheets) for our seating cards too - waste not, want not.

Sealing up the invitations was also a momentous occasion. I made Erik lick them since I was running late getting ready (have to look pretty for my shower). Here are the photos (you can see they obviously tasted bad):

You can see the pure yuckiness of the envelope glue. Just keep in mind - they were sealed with love. Again, we thought about that Seinfeld episode with Susan & George's wedding invitations. Please try not to notice the crazy mess in the background of the photo. I thought about cropping it out and then reconsidered. It was finals week. Judge if you want but it was spotless by that weekend!

Doesn't he look happy to not be licking the envelope?

Anyway, the rest of the invites will go out this week. I'm going to ask the Post Office hand cancel them; however, I'm a little worried that they may not (see the link). I'm thinking since this is a relatively small town they might. I'll keep you updated. As for the stuffing, I'm having a girly-wedding-help-day with Bmaid Steph. We're renting Bride Wars and stuffing the invitations/ painting the guest book — there may also be some day drinking involved (we'll see if I can convince Steph).