Berlinovo Wedding Blog

You have no other option but to come

The invitations sat, “airing out”. Mom and Dad came over for dinner one night and I handed them their RSVP card to have them fill out what they wanted for dinner. They gave me their RSVP and I tossed it into the RSVP box. Two days later, for some reason, that RSVP flashed into my brain and it occurred to me that I didn’t remember Mom checking a “will attend” box.  I went racing upstairs to the RSVP box to confirm my suspicions and it was true. We were so concerned with getting the food choices on the RSVP that we did not give the guests the choice to attend or not. UGH. Thank goodness that we ordered them early. I still had time to reorder, but not much.

I went onto the website again and reordered the RSVP cards. They said they could turn them in 5-10 business days. This put us mailing the invitations somewhere between 6-7 weeks before the wedding. Common etiquette tells you that you need to mail the invitations 6-8 weeks before, so we were cutting it close. The Indian site did get the cards into fed-ex very quickly and they sent me a fed ex link, so that I could track my shipment. It was scheduled to show up July 3rd. All was going fine until there was a storm in India. My shipment got delayed! Because of the July 4th holiday my shipment was not going to show up until the 5th. This meant that in order to get the invitations out with in 6 weeks of the wedding, we only had a couple of days to get them out. The troops mobilized. Mom and Dad came over for dinner (that Mom brought over, thanks Mom). We set up different jobs for each person. Mom put the invitations together and numbered the RSVP cards (see: Things I Learned), I put the numbers by the guests names in the master spreadsheet, Dad stuffed the envelopes and my fiance sealed them (I had already put stamps on them days earlier).

Things I Learned: Put little numbers on the back of your RSVP cards. Keep a list of which guest the numbers are assigned to. Then, if an RSVP card comes back without the guest’s name on it, you will know who that RSVP card was sent to.

 ”The envelope is not sealing”.

What? Yes indeed, according to my fiance the envelope had no glue on it. Hmm. That was interesting. Well, there were some gold seals included with the envelopes. Perhaps we were meant to use those. I thought it was a bit odd, but didn’t think much of it.

It wasn’t until a friend of mine called me after she got the invitation that I figured out what had happened.

“The invitations were beautiful” she said, “but I thought I should let you know, there was no glue on the RSVP envelope, so I just taped it”. No glue?! Then it occurred to me. There had been a box for “self stick envelopes” when I ordered the invitations. I checked “no”, thinking that it meant that the envelopes would have that strip of paper that you had to peel off to stick the flap down. I thought that would look a little tacky on the RSVPs, so I opted “No self stick”. Of course, I thought by opting “No” that was opting FOR normal glue stripped envelopes, but evidently not. I opted for NO glue. Oops!

My fiance’s solution? “Just tell everyone that tells you that their envelope didn’t have glue….’Really? It must have just been yours. Everyone else’s came back glued”.

Funny guy my fiance.

postal Efficiency part 2

When I first got the invitations, I fully assembled one and took it to the local post office. Yes, for those of you who read the blog on the stamps… it would be THAT other post office. I handed the postal employee my fully loaded invitation and asked how much it would take to send. She weighed it and tacked on a “stiff envelope” charge of 17 cents and told me that it would be 75 cents. So I bought 75 cent stamps.

Fast forward. We got the correct RSVPs, created an assembly line to put together the invitations, and got the invites out the next day. Phew! A weight was lifted off of my shoulders. Two days later, the weight was back, and heavier than ever. There was a wedding invitation in our mailbox, which would be fine, except it was OURS with a big red stamp on it of a hand with a pointing finger that said “Insufficient Postage” with handwriting that said Large envelope price of 98 cents, 23 cents due. 

NONONONONONO! I did everything right! I checked went to the post office ahead of time! I had visions of 80 invitations coming back. So much for the 6 weeks before the wedding… AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGG!

So we went online to see what the definition of a large envelope was and sure enough, we qualified by 1/8 of an inch. My fiance kindly put “take invitation back to post office” on his honey-do wedding list, knowing that I might “go postal” on the postal employee.

He took it back to “that” post office where the employee put the envelope on their little guide. My fiance said that the line was designating envelope sizes was pretty thick (about an 1/8 of an inch, I would imagine) and that if you went by the inside of the line, our envelope was too big, but if you went by the outside of the line, we barely fit. The employee stood by the previous person’s decision of 75 cents. She tore off the bar code sticker placed on the envelope by the post office that sent it back, crossed out the big red hand and the other writing and plopped it back into the outgoing mail. She explained that the postal service was going through a big reclamation project in effort to get all of the lost revenue from people using incorrect postage. We just hit an over aggressive mail handler.

“Does the fact that the stamp has been postmarked stop it from going?”, asked my fiance.

“No”, she said, “It did not reach its destination, so it is fine.” Huh? I hadn’t heard that before. Perhaps she was one of the big revenue losers within the post office. We fully expected to see that thing back, as well as a few others.

I am happy to report while that invitation had to be the ugliest one that we sent, it did not come back, but an RSVP did. We did not have any other invitations sent back to us, thankfully.

post office efficiency

If you have not figured it out, I am a list maker. Early on in the wedding planning process, I started making lists of errands to do. Early on that list was get wedding stamps. So, one Saturday my fiance and I were at the mall and we saw a post office. We decided to buy our wedding stamps, 300 of them to be exact. Cross that off of the list!

Literally, the next day, as I was driving into work, I heard that the US Post Master had decided to increase the postage from 39 cents to 41 cents, effective May something-or-other. $#*&#@)!! My invitations were not supposed to go out until late June. So the next week, we went BACK to the mall post office, with the receipt, to return the stamps. The postal employee told me to just hold on to the stamps until the 41 cent stamps came out and we could do a swap. Okay, no problem.

The 41 cent stamps came out and off we went to the post office, but this time, we went to a different one (because the mall is further away). I explained what happened to the postal employee and she took the receipt and the stamps. She scanned the receipt and the machine beeped. “I am sorry”, she said, “You can’t return these, because we cannot resell them. You can buy a 2 cent stamp”. Um what?? She confirmed this with another postal employee who dutifully agreed with her. RSVP envelopes are not that big. Two stamps would over power them. I was not happy.

My fiance, in his calmness, said, “Let’s go back to the mall and see if we can get the same guy that we got last time”.

“Okay”, I sulked.

We got to the mall and the guy that we had talked to a few months before was there. We got into his line. When we got up to the front, we explained what had happened with the 39 cent stamp purchase (no mention of the previous post office). He took the stamps and the receipt to scan. The machine beeped when he scanned the receipt. He looked quizzically at the monitor. Looked at the stamps. Tick tick tick on the computer, “The difference is six dollars more.” FABULOUS! Thank you very much! Disaster averted. Now why that OTHER post office could not manage that transaction is beyond me, but I should have learned not to use that “other” post office. Did I learn? No.

Simple yet elegant

We ended up choosing invitations that were simple, but elegant. I lean a little more to the exotic, but my fiance leans more towards simple patterns. Thus, our invitations were born. It is a nice combination of simple and a little exotic. For those of you who received invitations, and find this hard to believe, you should see the runners up.

Once we chose the invitations, we had to order them. I have to say, this process is not for the weak. Ordering was pretty easy, go online, chose your card and all of the extras that come with it. Extra pages behind the invitation? Yes. Thank you notes? Yes, please. Address pre printed on the invitation envelopes? Yup. Hand calligraphy of names and addresses of guests or laser printed or none? Self stick envelopes or not? Menu cards? And the list goes on. You then need to send in the wording for the invitation, the RSVP and anything else you want in the invitation. This actually takes a little bit of work. Because the site was Indian, there weren’t as many examples of what typical American invitation wording was. My fiance and I searched the Internet for a while looking for proper wording and designing our cards. Then we had to figure out how to design an RSVP card that would allow us to let each guest list their dinner choice (we are having a sit down dinner). We needed to be able to provide the dinner choice of each guest to the event director by table, so it was important to get this information on the RSVP. Once we finally nailed it down, we sent the documents by email to India. Now here is the beauty of outsourcing… the next morning there was an email from the company with proofs for us. We changed a few words and the font and sent it back. The next morning the changes were made.

THINGS I LEARNED: Make sure you have multiple people proof your invitations, RSVP and guest list to try to catch all of the errors before you send them off to the printers for the final run. The company is not going to proof it for you, even for basic mistakes. Now, this could be one of the hazards using an outsourced invitation vendor to be sure. I don’t know what the American invitation companies are like.

The back and forth went on for a few more turns until we were done. We then ordered the invitations a month ahead of when they were supposed to be sent. They arrived a week later. I was thrilled, they were well ahead of when we needed them. Remember the smell I referred to in an earlier post? Well it was strong! We separated all of our invitations and envelopes and let them air out. I was very glad we had gotten them so far ahead of when we needed them. Little did I know, that I was going to need that time.

Favors

There are many options for wedding favors. We all have them: ice cream scoops, ice tongs, CDs of the bride and groom’s favorite songs. The Internet is full of trinkets that can be engraved, boxes of candies, you name it, they have it. What I wanted was traditional. I just wanted old fashioned Jordan almonds, tied it tulle. My mom wanted ribbon with my fiance and my name and the wedding date. Simple right? Not once you start looking.

There are these amazing Jordan almond flowers that are created in Italy. They are beautiful. However, in the spirit of saving money, they are not doable. Unfortunately, after seeing these lovely flowers, I was no longer as happy with just wrapping my Jordan almonds in tulle. I wanted to create flowers (my mother and fiance cringe whenever they hear that I want to “create” anything. I am convinced they would both outsource the whole thing.)

So I went in search of ways to create my own Jordan almond flowers. I am going to compile the list of sites I found, because if any other poor soul is looking for these items, I would like to help them out.

http://www.confettipelino.com/

http://www.jordanalmondflowers.com/rachetti.htm

http://www.weddingfavours.uk.com/?page=shop/browse&category_id=d4507d863d9eeef28e67fe4bc22333d9

http://www.myitalianweddingfavors.com/Italian_Ribbon_Confetti.html

http://www.giftfavors.com/Tabledecor5.html

After much searching I settled on ribbon that pulls into a flower. I chose this mainly because of ease. There is not quite as much “creating” involved with these flowers (Mom’s suggestion, surprisingly).

Jordan almonds were the next thing to tackle. I learned that there are different grades of Jordan almonds. The better the grade, the less candy coating there is on the almonds. Did I want colored almonds or white ones? I decided to order the highest grade white almond and to have them delivered close to the wedding so that they would be nice and fresh. These means that in week 2 before the wedding, we will be making favors.

outsourcing is good!

Invitations. Someone told me that they set the tone for your wedding. They are the first thing that people see. Now while I generally do not subscribe to wedding hooey, I did want the invitation to be unique and me. I went to traditional wedding invitation stores (back to sticker shock land). I went to a shop to which a printer friend of mine told me had good prices. I was a little wary when the store was located in a part of the city that I had never been to, the signs were not in a language that I understood ,and when we called for directions, the sales lady asked me if I was Vietnamese or Chinese. Hmm…I think we got the white people pricing package. Since I am not much of a haggler and it was obvious that haggling was going to be required here, we quickly checked that store off of our list.

I ordered sample invitations that were in my acceptable price range from well known invitation catalogs. They came. They were boring and drab. They were flimsy card stock. They did not seem uniquely me. I happened to be talking to a friend of mine and she told me that she had found really good invitations on the internet. I had been to her wedding and I definitely remembered the invitations. The trick was, the invitations were from India.

I went to Indian Wedding Card and started to look at the hundreds of invitations. I even engaged my best friend in the invitation search. She and I searched the site simultaneously and sent each other links over IM chat of the ones we thought were pretty. In the end, I ordered 14 samples. The samples got to me in a week. They were exotic, colorful and uniquely me. They smelled a little odd, but I looked over that. I loved them all. Of course, some of them were a little too Indian for our wedding, so they were quickly eliminated, but there were at least 4 in the running.

Mom has kicked into high gear

I think Mom is starting to see cracks my calm facade. Or perhaps she has been talking to my fiance. Or perhaps, since I gave her access to our google wedding calendar, she can see all of the things coming up in the next few weeks. No matter what the reason, she has kicked it up a notch, and I have to say she is right on time. When the wedding is 7-8 months away it seems like you have plenty of time to iron out all of the details. And in truth you do. At least, you have the time to iron out the details that you KNOW about. The trick is that there are a whole bunch of little nitty details that don’t crop up until way late. Add to that all of the details that you have (eh hem) procrastinated on,  and suddenly you feel like the only guy wearing red at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. So Mom has graciously offered to take care of some of those pesky details, and I am one to say a hearty “Thanks, Mom”.

Bridal Fair Hell

There is nothing more overwhelming and eye-opening than a bridal fair. The Sunday after the Friday/Saturday bridal shopping extravaganza, my best friend and I went to our first, and last, Bridal Fair. First of all, you actually have to pay to get access to all of the people whose job it is to get the most of your wedding budget. For our $6 ransom, we got a bag to put all of the wedding brochures and propaganda and we got a “free” Brides magazine. We were then ushered in to two large rooms full of caterers, photographers, djs, wedding destination travel agents, bakers, florists, make up artists, videographers, favor creators, and anything else wedding related you could think of. We could taste anything from cake to beef stroganoff. We must have killed at least a tree worth of paper. I came home with videographer samples and dj samples. It made me realize all of the different vendors that went in to a wedding. I think the ones that most shocked me that day, were the photographers. Pardon me, the “artists”. For the price of some of their packages, you would of thought they were selling you a hand painted Monet of you and your betrothed. While I understand that photography is an art and that you should pay for the skills that the photographers have honed, please! I do not think that 10-20% of my wedding budget should go to photos. I think the big issue I had was with the negatives (or jpg files, I should say). In my mind, they are my photos, I have paid for them to be taken and they should belong to me. This is not the case. Some photographers will not give you the files. If you are allowed to have the files, you have to pay for that privilege, and often, you have to pay a healthy price. One guy said he would release the files to me for free after a year. My pictures should not be held hostage, especially for the price of the photographers. I should not be forced to purchase a wedding album at exorbitant prices. THEY ARE MY PHOTOS! I was going to have to find a photographer that perhaps was not a “wedding” photographer. They were a bit entitled.

On a positive note, I found my DJ there. His name is DJ Earl. I liked him because he ran his own shop. He was who you hired, not some guy who works for him. He has been doing it for 25 years and had a very warm friendly personality. We have a winner in DJ Earl.

Every other aspect of the bridal fair just reinforced my desire to not get ripped off by the bridal machine.

nutter butters are not my friend

How is this related to my wedding you ask? Follow me….

Most brides start dieting immediately to fit in that “perfect dress”. Well, my “6 hour dress” has a corseted back, thus allowing me to justify procrastinating on the typical wedding diet. I was happily eating anything I wanted until a friend of mine, unknowingly sent me into diet overdrive by announcing “only 6 more weeks until the wedding! Can you believe it?” NO, as a matter of fact I can’t! When did that happen? Is it possible to lose 20 pounds in 42 days? That’s around 1 pound every 2 days, if I calculated that right. I might be able to do it if I ate steamed vegetables and brown rice every day. We did get a really cool rice cooker from Mom… Okay, wait…slow the panic train down. My seamstress pointedly asked my if I was planning on dropping dress sizes. Even with the corseted dress, she seemed to frown on this idea. Okay, so 20 pounds, not such a good idea. How about a more reasonable amount like 5-7 pounds. That was more doable. A pound a week. I could lose that. So for the first few weeks, I was pretty good. Then hell week at work hit. Hell week at work has culminated in my sitting here in the airport at 9pm waiting for my redeye back east, which has now been delayed for 2 hours. Enter the Nutter Butters. I needed solace and for some reason, I thought the Nutter Butters could provide it. And to be quite honest, they have done a good job (don’t tell weight watchers). I have managed to only eat half of the package (don’t ask the obvious question) and I think I will stop now. But to bring the story full circle… my wedding diet was blown today due to the plane being delayed and the pull of the Nutter Butters.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

Box carnage

Our house is turning in a graveyard for boxes. One corner of our living room has opened presents that we don’t have places for yet. The other side of the living room has empty boxes and gobs of peanuts for which we don’t have room in our recycle bin. I have a vague recollection of a list item that was “order a bigger recycle bin”, but I don’t know where that list went. The upstairs bedroom is “wedding central” with leftover invitations, bridal shower presents that haven’t migrated to their homes yet, multiple pairs of wedding shoes (I finally found a comfortable pair today). The kitchen table was the scene of wedding favor creation today, so it is a bit chaotic. I have a feeling that is only going to get more and more chaotic in the lead up to the wedding. One day the house will return to normal…one day.