Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Voices in My Head Think I'm Tacky; To Which I Say: "Suck It, Voices." :)

So, after much deliberation (which, fine, mostly took place in my head - and for about five seconds with Bridesmaids, Lawyer and Dentist via G-Chat) I decided to go with the "Seal-and-Send" invitations. The deliberation was mostly the WIC getting all up in my head space and telling me that people would find my invitations tacky because they didn't have inner envelopes. And tissue paper. And also they aren't letter-press. If I'm being perfectly honest, I don't know what letter-press actually is. I think it's engraving? Maybe? I dunno, but the wedding blogs say that you have to have letterpress.

My invitations are not letterpress. Also, apparently wording invitations is hard. There are rules. Here's one for you: For a marriage ceremony to take place in a church you say "Request the HONOR of your Presence" where as if your ceremony is NOT in a church you say "Request the PLEASURE of your Presence." Subtle, right? What if I'd gotten that wrong, guys?! You don't know. I googled a lot of stuff about invitations. Like A LOT. Also a bunch of stuff about the response portions. There are rules about that too. I'm breaking a lot of them. Whatevs, man. Sorry, but no, random guests do not get plus-ones. We are like three years out of college (HOLY SHIT! THREE YEARS! God, that just made me feel super old) and I'd say 99% of our guests, if not actually 100%, will know someone else at the wedding.

Here's the thing about reading wedding blogs - and I read a lot of them. Just because I bitch a lot about wedding planning doesn't mean I don't think it's important to know what Martha (that's Martha Stewart to the rest of you. We are on a first name basis) thinks about my choices. Oh, and also I read like a lot of rando blogs about weddings. And I feel like I'm being judged. By the pictures in the blogs ... Okay, yeh that sounds crazy. But I do feel judged. Here is the number one wedding rule I'm breaking: VERY LIMITED PLUS - ONES.

Our RSVPS will say "We have reserved ___ seat(s) in your honor." Also, the invitations will be addressed to BOTH members of a couple, BY NAME even if they don't live together. The only exception is wedding party. You peeps can invite whomever you damn well please and I will happily pay for them to booze it up and feast - because you have to like buy things you'll never wear again and you have to be sure I'm tipsy enough but not too drunk until after the ceremony. It's a lot of responsibility. So, I'm sure lots of people will think "God, that's so tacky, everyone should get a plus one" to which I say: 1) I can't stand the word tacky anymore after researching invitation etiquette and also 2) Weddings are expensive. Random Cousin - you want to take a girl out to dinner? That's cool, but Bitch, PLEASE I am so not paying for that. Ergo, I am not paying for your rando date at my wedding.

I reckon that's enough bitching for now. So, without further ado: check out my invite proofs! I couldn't upload the actual file because it was too big? So this was printed out and then photographed with my digital camera. Then I corrected the picture in iPhoto. So the invites are like ivory/cream colored - not pink. So, adjust your vision accordingly:

3 comments:

  1. I love this post. It made me laugh out loud and read portions to boyfriend. Also, you used the word 'ergo,' which you know I love and always associate with you! :) happy days!

    ReplyDelete
  2. A word about etiquette (a French word that is hard to spell correctly):

    The only rule of etiquette that counts it the Golden one. This means that you should treat those you choose to invite to your wedding as you would wish to be treated. If you think to yourself, “gee, if I don't send this person a “letterpress” invitation, she will fly around the room backwards with steam coming out of her navel,” then this is probably not someone you want at your wedding, anyway. You would not want her to endure such an ordeal nor alarm your other guests, so it would be cruel not to meet her expectations of stationery.

    A note on perspective: really, do you think that a hundred years from now you will be on your deathbed and think to yourself, “gosh, it would all have turned out better if I had bitten the bullet and gone with the letterpress.” And, you know, it might have! You may be sending a non-letterpress invitation to a secret billionaire wedding guest who would put you in her will, if only you would send her a letterpress invitation. But not likely. If I had a billion dollars, I would be thinking of amusing and creative ways to get rid of it and not be so concerned about satisfying convicted felon Martha Stewart's feelings about tissue paper in envelopes with all that other expensive paper that is made out of other people's worn out underwear (really – I could elaborate, but not now). (By the way, that's not really fair. I think she was chosen as the sacrificial ewe lamb to distract the press and the public from The Shrub's buddies and high administration officials, who were far guiltier than she was of miscellaneous rich folks' financial no-nos of the early 2000s – the penultimate time they got caught stealing the not especially hard-earned money of the middle class.) (Rule to Live By: Never miss a chance to use the word “penultimate.”) But, I digress (several times, but at least I avoided nested parentheticals – using a dash instead).

    Back to etiquette, you've probably heard this story, but your legions of readers have not, so I will let fly. At some time before I went to college, I found myself at my grandmother's (Nanny Dobbs') house without reading matter. I was not particularly discriminating in my choice of reading matter, sometimes reading ketchup bottle labels in restaurants, so I settled for a Book of Etiquette by some rich white lady who must have had A LOT of time on her hands. Among the lessons in this authoritative tome was what a Gentleman should do, if a Lady boarded a bus or other public conveyance in which he was riding and she was unable to find an empty seat. The Gentleman was advised to rise and offer his seat to the Lady, and, if she accepted the seat, to retreat quickly as far away as possible so as not to appear to loom over her, waiting to recover the seat should she disembark before him.

    AT THIS POINT, I MUST POST ANOTHER COMMENT -- STUPID CHARACTER LIMIT.

    ReplyDelete
  3. INCREDIBLY LONG BUT HIGHLY AMUSING COMMENT CONTINUES:

    Not long after reading these kindly and wise words, late one afternoon in my freshman year at the University of Richmond I was on the Westhampton 16 bus, which started at my college bus stop on its way to downtown Richmond. At this point, I should say that this was in September, 1967. This bus was mostly used by University of Richmond students, staff, and faculty, elderly rich white ladies, and domestic servants, who were always black ladies in those days. Not far down the route of the Westhampton 16 the bus was full. At the next stop, a very tired looking and elderly lady, who appeared to be one of the said domestic servants, boarded the bus. I looked around and saw that there was no vacant seat. I thought, Ah! Here's my opportunity to be A Gentleman. I rose and offered the Lady my seat. She looked at me as if I were about to turn into a unicorn, but she took the seat promptly. I then beat my gentlemanly retreat to the back of the bus. Upon turning round to face the front again, I was rather surprised to see absolutely everyone on the bus looking at me as if I had just removed all of my clothing and then turned into a unicorn – a chartreuse one. Although I had been aware of the civil rights movement as part of the historical background of my childhood and teen years, I had no idea that I had done anything worthy of notice. I thought manners applied to everybody. I was still pining for my high school girlfriend and was pretty much oblivious of most other matters, thinking them largely irrelevant to my own inner “Sorrows of Young Werther.”

    I am not sure what happened next, but I think the bus driver braked suddenly, causing everybody, color and bank balance notwithstanding, to turn back around to see whether they were about to become statistics. I went back to reading Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding, to see which randy female English aristocrat was going to be next to comment upon how “well-formed” he was.

    I guess that my observance of Mrs. Vanderbilt's rules was not a high point in the history of race relations in America, but I have to wonder what might have happened if I had been born a little earlier and had been on the bus when Mrs. Parks was commanded to surrender her seat. Would I have offered her mine after reading an etiquette book at my grandmother's house?

    So, do not worry about rules made by people like Martha Stewart. She probably never rode a bus in her life.

    ReplyDelete