invitation sensation!

done and done

i am so pumped to say that my wedding invitations are no longer in my possession or in control of my brain. stuffed, stamped and shipped the hell out, they now take up residence in our guests homes.
having made their way through the hands of almost everyone i love, these invitations were an all-consuming, all-controlling, all-everything part of my life, and as over the moon as i am with how they turned out, i can finally move onto the other crafts and projects i have been dying to work on.

when i made a deal with the devil (aka paulie) to make our invitations in exchange for our amazing videographer, i never realized what i was signing up for. i thought a max of 2 or 3 craft dates, maybe $150 dollars and i would send out the baddest invitations i could possibly dream of. i was so wrong it ain't funny. if i made an educated guess, i would say a total of 45-50 hours were spent turning a few stacks of scrapbook paper, a roll of lace and some photo booth pictures into the invitations we sent our guests. although i tried to pull the dutch out of me and purchase all my supplies when on sale (god bless {michael's} and their frequent 40% off sales and online coupons) i still spent approximately $400 on the materials needed.

sending them out was the biggest fiasco of the wedding planning process thus far. we stamped them, brought them to the post office to ensure there was enough postage on them, and of course, the girl there advised there wasn’t. we spent 10 minutes at the counter putting another stamp on them, dropped them into the bin, and were advised they would be sent out around 4pm the next day. cue the next afternoon. i had two more invitations to drop off as i wasn’t positive about the addresses i had written out. at another post office location, i handed over the last two invites to the clerk, and said a prayer of thanks. “ok miss, i just need to grab a few more stamps to put on these”. “ummm….exsqueeze me? i already added extra postage” i told the girl at the counter. “oh. it’s not enough. have you sent out any others?” she asked me. “yes. but only 78 others” i said, about 2 seconds away from punching her in the smile. “yeah. those are all going to come back to you. and that usually takes some time. then you have to put the right amount of postage on them, and then send them out again”. i turned around, left the store, got into my car and started screaming like a mad woman. i’m pretty sure the old couple in the car next to me were too terrified to get out in case i started my car and drove over them.

so i called my mom. like i was 4 years old.

LUCKILY, she works two stores down from the post office i dropped all my invites off to the night before. remembering i had until 4pm before they were shipped out, i sent my mother on a wild goose chase-pick up the envelopes, weigh them (again), threaten the girl at the counter with her life, buy more stamps, add the postage, realize she didn’t have all of them, go back to the post office, pick up the missed envelopes, buy more stamps, add them to the envelopes, bring them all back, threaten the girl (again) and drop them off for good. ciao. peace. hasta la wago. arrivederci.

i have to thank the amazing people who helped me make the wedding invitations of my dreams. my mom, bridesmaids and fabulous girlfriends-you never once said "amanda, this is going to take an entire work week of hours plus some OT to complete, can we dumb it down a wee bit?". you poured me wine and fed me chips and smiled your way through every snip of your scissors and peel and stick square. you are all such hard workers and are so creative, and i love you all for that. paulie too. we spent several nights at the dining room table, baseball on the tv and a rye and coke in hand. we got through all the dirty work, and the finished product speaks for itself. if you get the chance to make your own wedding invitations, i say go for it. the satisfaction of knowing no one else will ever have anything like it is worth the work all day long.

one bit of advice: no drinks on the table when crafting.

"if i was the bride, there would be a no drinks on the table rule. but that's only if i was the bride"