August 6, 2006 | Filed under: wedding bells, un-vlogged
I’m just flabbergasted by this.
I actually get a kick out of Weddingbee nyc. I like that they’re in New York and they have some terrific links to neat DIY projects and nifty cost-cutting ideas that I’m way too lazy to scout out myself. And I like that it’s a friendly blog managed by real live ladies with no corporate agenda. We’ve all heard stories about well-intentioned, sensible women who start planning weddings and suddenly careen over the deep-end, but o’ sweet cheeses! Trotting down to the post office to request that they cancel each and every stamp on each and every wedding invitation is a whole new brand of Super-Crazy. All for the trivial fear of…dare I even say it…smudging!?
(okay…I also understand that there is widespread worry regarding those chubby invitations getting caught in USPS sorting machinery…well, between the invitation, the RSVP card, the tissue paper between the invitation and the RSVP card, the SASE, the map, the local hotel list, the tissue paper between the map and the hotel list, the dried rose petals and the velvet bow tying it all together there is reason to worry! How about just an invitation and an RSVP? Mail the rest separately! Sure, it would cost more in postage, but at least you could sleep at night knowing your expensive envelopes wouldn’t get disembowled! The tissue paper is a real stumper for me. Is it in poor taste to have all those cards rubbing up against each other freely like they’re in some kind of stationery orgy? And really, what’s with the bow? Isn’t holding all the papers together why envelopes were invented in the first place? I just don’t get it.)
How does this happen? How have we created a whole generation of women hell-bent on this kind of perfection? It’s an invitation! An envelope! I realize that it may be a relatively expensive envelope, as far as envelopes go, but hey–no one held a pistol to your head and forced you to buy them. It’s not like the recipient is going to reach into their mailbox, look at the machine-canceled stamp and shudder
“Oh, God, no. They seemed like such nice people, it’s too bad I can’t attend their wedding. This invite is just too smudgy.”
I guess what I’m really asking is not “How does this happen” but rather, “Will it happen to me?”
August 7, 2006
@ 4:03 am
“Smudgy invitations? Try our new Smudge-B-Gone! 9 out of 10 soon-to-be-married couples prefer it!”
Very odd behaviour. No, I don’t think you’re that neurotic… YET
P.S. you’ve just been tagged.
August 7, 2006
@ 6:45 pm
Is it wrong to think she should die licking her wedding invitation envelopes like George Costanza’s fiancee Susan on Seinfeld?
August 9, 2006
@ 9:52 am
You know, I recently ordered stamps from stamps.com because I thought it would be fun to have stamps with my dog on them. I was so excited, I sent things to everyone in my family and nobody noticed.
Anybody who spends time minute checking the cancelling job on an invitation needs to get a life!
August 9, 2006
@ 9:04 pm
Bek, it could be worse. You could work for a boss that insists on hand written invitations for your agency’s annual fundraiser. I kid you not.
JVI
August 11, 2006
@ 11:00 pm
bev is right–
i can’t remember ever looking at the stamp on any fancy invitations i ever got.
and by the way, the fanciest was for a friend’s _sister’s_ wedding in india. i had never met the sister. this was big-time fancy invitation. amazing graphics, beautiful calligraphy.
August 14, 2006
@ 8:39 pm
I am going to have to disagree with Bev (and I hate to do that because she seems very wise) but when I sent out the Christmas cards last year with E’s picture on the stamps, I spent the next 3 months seeing him on everyone’s refridgerator. Of course, no one read the Christmas letter…
As for the invites, the chick that was so stressed about the hand-cancelling had spent $4 just for that envelope and God knows what for the calligrapher. Trust me, that envelope will be just fine on the other end.
I just finished making handmade invitations that turned out gorgeous for a friend’s wedding. All 250 of them. English on front, Chinese on the back. When I got mine in the mail, the address was on those sticky address labels you do on the computer. 1 month of my life and she did my address on a sticker. So there has to be some ground in the middle.
Did I mention she only needed 100 invitations? And that she gave me $.06 over the entire cost of the project? No, I’m not bitter. But I would have noticed hand- cancelling.
August 26, 2006
@ 9:02 pm
Do you know the history of the tissue paper? It’s quite interesting, but I am a geek about that type of thing.
I agree - it’s a freaking invitation and RSVP. Why get so worked up over it? I don’t understand.
Check out my friend’s web site. She does a bunch of wedding stuff:
www.fortunehearts.com
So when is the big day?
Carl
July 25, 2007
@ 8:14 am
It’s crazy alright but insanity is a prequisite to being a full fledged member of the wedding planning cult (Martha Stewart being the leader of course). =)
As I said in that post you link, I didn’t care so much about the smudgy factor but was concerned about mangled envelopes as our invitation was on the thick side. We actually got a few bounce backs that looked awful. If you think about it though, hand canceling is supposed to be free so what’s so crazy about opting for that?
To Slag: My post is about a year old so I’m sorry I didn’t die licking my envelopes (which no one does anymore, hello - sponges!).
July 25, 2007
@ 11:49 am
If you were “flabbergasted” by that, you have bigger problems than Mrs. Spider.
July 25, 2007
@ 12:19 pm
Oh, I’ve heard crazier, for sure! Perfect envelopes are just the tip of the whacky-wedding iceberg!
Which is why, nearly a year after I wrote this post, my fiancee and I still haven’t started planning our wedding!
July 26, 2007
@ 8:06 am
I had my invitations hand canceled because I a lot of care into the invitations. They look much better hand canceled than with a bar code over an elegant invitation. No most people wouldn’t car if it did have a bar code, but I did. I cared that it did look the best that it could. I want people to have a glimps into what the wedding will be like. A barcode is a bit tacky. It’s a once in a life time event, why not expect it to be as perfect as can be? AND no… it is not crazy. Some people just enjoy this sort of thing and other don’t why criticise?
July 26, 2007
@ 9:06 am
sept, I’m sure they looked lovely. As you can see, I’m not the kind of girl who cares about this sort of thing. I’m not the kind of girl who thinks that barcodes are tacky because I’m not the kind of girl that thinks about barcodes no matter the circumstance.
For my once-in-a-lifetime-event I want to relax, enjoy myself, watch my friends and family have a good time and not give a crap about what anyone thinks of my choice of stamp canceling.
By reading the varied responses to this post you’ll see that some people think this whole stamp issue is crazy, and some don’t. Surely you realize that there’s an entire industry built around “Brides Gone Bananas”. Movies, tv shows, etc.
It’s because there’s truth to it.
September 11, 2007
@ 5:21 pm
I’m a few years away from even seriously thinking about marriage, but being the perfectionist that I am about certain things–I’d go that route as well. It’s all just a matter of to what degree you care about details.
September 5, 2008
@ 3:04 am
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