Invitations, Round I

I spent all day working on wedding invitations. First thing this morning I was off to the post office with a mocked-up invite to see what total postage would be. "Fifty-eight cents" was the answer. So I purchased 80 of the 58-cent heart stamps and 80 of the standard 41-cent heart stamps. I think it'd be dandy if the post office had heart stamps with an anatomical drawing of a heart. I'd use that for wedding invitations in a hot second. But alas, they had only frilly heart stamps, so those are the ones I bought. Then it was home to start in Round 1, the 30+ invitations we'll send to those we are pretty sure won't be able to make it, but whom we couldn't imagine not inviting, plus some folks we're sure will say yes. Their RSVP date is Jan. 10. Round 2 will go out on Jan. 11 or 12 after some follow-up phone calls to the inevitable non-responders. The invitation line work started with self-addressing and stamping the RSVP envelopes, and addressing the exterior envelopes. Return addresses were handled last night, when Bob used our embosser on all envelope back flaps. He has better handwriting, so he got to wield the gold pen for today's effort. While he did that, I assembled the invitations, reception cards, at-home cards in their holders, RSVP cards and RSVP envelopes into neat little stacks, wrapped them with 4" widths of gold-foil tissue and secured that with double-stick tape, wrapped brown satin ribbon around the tissue and secured that with more sturdy double-stick tape, then attached the name tags that coordinated with those on the external envelopes. I'm too tired to upload the photos we took of the big operation. I'll upload them tomorrow when I finish this roundup of wedding-invite production notes. Tomorrow morning I'll take this first batch to the post office and have them hand-cancelled, or swipe their stamp and cancel them myself. Then they will swim free in the postal stream. I pray that the Jan. 1 postal shutdown won't delay them too much. Once I'd finished today's work and cleaned up the dining room table, I calculated my per-invitation cost. Less than $3 per completed envelope, including postage, or less than $250 for 80 total invitations. Not shabby.

My dear future husband and I did manage to swing by the gym today for another aerobic workout. I did not feel up to it, being as I had a simmering headache and whomping cramps. But 45 minutes and 300 expended calories later, I felt a bit better. Bob whipped up a big pot of soup when we got back, and that helped even more. Now I'm mightily fatigued. Time for sleep.