Postage

I read a lot of wedding blogs where brides are obssessed with invitation paper and designs and a lot of it seems really silly to me. I want our invitations to look nice, but I do not care the weight, glossiness, or ink. I do not care about pocketfolds and twine to tie them together, calligraphy, raised ink, wax seals, attached doo-dads etc. Let's face it, I am not that kind of girl (and Aaron is simply not that kind of guy). And for the most part I cannot remember what any of my friend's wedding invitations looked like - other than they looked nice at the time.

Aaron picked out the invitation design after I had looked at tons of designs and asked him if he liked about a dozen. He leaned over my shoulder and said, "I like that one." Sold. Hello little birds. 

We did emboss our envelopes because it makes them look nicer, embossing is pretty neat and makes a raised shiny image, and ordering matching envelopes (to me) was not worth the cost. And yes - we embossed - Aaron helped me. Together it goes by pretty fast and it was fun. They are not perfect, but luckily I am not a perfectionist and to me it's the thought that counts. Plus we have learned the embossing gun is an important addition to our tool collection. It has been used for beer brewing already (expanding tight tubing) and I know Aaron has plans for other uses. 

Aaron addressed them all in his awesome engineering handwriting so I did not have to learn how to run the envelopes through my printer or tone down my scrawl to make it more legible. They look awesome even though it took a bit of looking to find a pen that made the cut. 

One thing I was picky about was postage. I collected stamps when I was little (where are they now?) and I still love looking at new stamp designs. There are no liberty bells in this house, I will not buy stamps if I think they are ugly unless I absolutely have to, and I bought my Christmas ornament stamps (love em!) as soon as they were released to make sure I got them. I also don't really care for the wedding stamps made by the post office (rings, cake, etc). They are nice, elegant really, but not me. 

My stamp of choice was the "garden of love." Since they are forever stamps that was a bonus, but surprisingly hard to find. I picked up one or two every time I could here in Culpeper and then at any other post office I happened to pass by. Why the obsession? I liked them and you need a surprising number of stamps since etiquette says you include the postage on the return card envelope. So I get to see all these stamps again! 

I did not think that I would be able to use them on our invitations because the envelopes were big and the amount of stuff in the envelope might increase the weight. I was resigned to the fact that it was going to cost 64 cents to mail them and then I would have to choose between the dolphin, the butterfly, or the wedding cake (Aaron & I were thinking dolphins). So once everything was stuffed in the envelopes (and restuffed - thank you Aaron for corrections) and Aaron & I licked them all closed, I took one in to the post office to have it weighed. Luckily, it made the cut and we could use a regular stamp, unluckily I did not have enough garden of love stamps and the post office was out of them! So I sent my Mom and Carol to scattered post offices to get me some more, still ran out, and had to use a few Bonsai trees & celebrate stamps (which I think are equally "us" and beautiful - do not be offended!).

You may or may not know that postage went up this week. If not you will probably find out soon enough. Luckily for me these bad boys are not affected. However the one envelope being sent overseas was. Silly me - I had already gotten the correct stamp for it - correct as of last week. So she weighed it and weighed it again and said it would cost a dollar more. A dollar! I don't care how much it costs, but seriously a dollar? That's quite a postage increase. Aaron is always telling me that the post office is ordered by its foundation by the government to run at a deficit (and therefore not make a profit), so the post office must be really hurting!

This envelope got weighed at least six times on three different machines and sometimes it weighed one ounce and sometimes it weighed 1.1. A difference of a dollar. The nice postladies ruled in my favor waited til the machine recorded it weighing just one ounce, charged me seven cents for the additional postage, and whisked it away. They also agreed to hand cancel my envelopes and I am curious whether that whole tradition is worth it. So if you read this and get an invite, check out the envelope instead of ripping it open and throwing it away. ;)