Stuffing and Stamping and Sending

3.05.2014

Are you tired of all the wedding talk going on around here this week? If so, I'm sorry to disappoint. You're in for one more day of all things wedding. If you can get through today, however, I promise to keep the blog wedding free for the rest of the week (that's probably a lie).

Our invitations were ready bright and early Friday morning (after the designer spent literally the entire day on Thursday printing them), so I picked them up and headed to the post office to get stamps before assembling and sending them. The goal was to get them out by the end of the week last week, and since I received them so early on Friday I didn't think we would have a problem getting them in the mail before days end.

That's where I ran into roadblock number one. I took the entire invitation (outer and inner envelope, invitation, and return postcard) into the post office to have them weigh it and tell me what kind of postage I needed. She weighed the invitation and in a very matter of fact tone let me know that it would take $1.19 to send each invitation. $1.19! Per invitation! I insisted there was no way that could be correct and left without any stamps.

I then did what any rational bride would do and called my mother in a panic. Obviously (since she was paying for it) she freaked out right along with me. Also insisting that price couldn't be correct, my mom told me to come to her office so we could weigh the invitation ourselves on the meter machine. When we weighed them it read $0.69. Much more reasonable. We then headed to another post office confident that the first place had made a mistake. They had not.

Because of the invitation size it was reading as a large flat envelope and it would most certainly take $1.19 per envelope to mail all 225 invitations. Yikes! Once we swallowed that news we had to figure out how we were going to get postage that equaled $1.19 (because obviously they don't make stamps with that exact price). We decided the only thing we could do was to get a whole hell of a lot of $0.66 stamps and put two of those on each envelope.

That's were roadblock number two came into play. We needed something like 450 "pretty" stamps to mail the envelopes. Needless to say, no one post office has that many stamps in stock at one time, especially an awkward $0.66 stamp. We bought out stamps at that post office (about 200) and then went on the hunt for 250 more.

We stopped at two more post offices in town and were able to scrape up about 150 more. At this point we had already lost nearly two hours and we were still about 100 stamps short of what we needed. Because we also had a venue site visit Friday afternoon, we had to cut our post office adventures short and head over to the venue (where we stopped at one more post office on the way).

Around 3:00 that afternoon we were finally done with our site visit and could get back to concentrating on invitations. We knew that if we could get the envelopes to the downtown post office by 7:00pm then they would be post marked Friday and sent out that night. Challenge accepted.

We passed one last post office on the way back into town (count them - that's a total of 6 post offices in one day) where we were able to purchase the last 50 or so stamps needed. Then we headed back to the office to begin stuffing the invitations in the envelopes (inner envelope and then outer envelope), stamping them (envelopes and return postcards), and sealing them. Thankfully we had gotten the names and addresses printed on the envelopes by the stationary designer.

Finally, with 15 minutes to spare, we were racing to the downtown post office to get rid of those suckers. We did it! 450 stamps (plus 225 $0.34 stamps for the return postcard) and 6 post offices later, we made it downtown in time to get them out and postmarked by Friday. I don't think I have ever needed a glass of wine more than I needed one at that very moment.

The mailing of the invitations may have been the biggest pain in my ass to date, but I couldn't be more excited about the design. I think that may have been another reason I wanted to get them out by Friday, I was so excited for our guests to see how gorgeous they are! The Oak Tree on the side of the invitation correspondence perfect with our venue (and with our Save the Date made out of Oak Wood). The tree is actually much lighter on the actual hard copy of the invitation making it stand out just enough to see without it being a distraction. I'm in love with them!
In the end, I suppose if this is our biggest hiccup we've had to overcome then we are doing pretty damn good. I just hope not to see another stamp for a very long time.

Linking up for Wedding Wednesday
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22 comments:

  1. Those invitations are so pretty. That is a lot of post office stops. Glad you finally got enough to mail them all out.

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  2. I love the invitations! Haha mailing that many things at once is always an ordeal. But hey, you did it! Whew!

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  3. These are so pretty doll. Invitations + guest list making is QUITE the task. I will be happy to wipe my hands of it :)! Xx.

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  4. First off - the invitations are so pretty!! I think you did a fantastic job with the design!! As for the little hiccup with the stamps - alls well that ends well right!? Now the fun begins and you get the RSVP cards back!

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  5. I love your invitations! They are so pretty! Going to the post office in general is a huge pain in the ass with usually RUDE people....so I am so sorry you had to endure so many encounters with different ones! At least that is over and done with!

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  6. Oh no, I'm so sorry about your stamp/post office issues!! That is so stressful. When we did our invitations, we had them all written out, sealed, stamped, everything...and then I took them to the post office and they told me I need more postage on all of them. I couldn't believe it! I never thought they would be over. So I took the whole box back home with me, along with many more stamps and added another stamp to all the envelopes. I was so mad...and that's not near as bad as your dilemma! So glad you were able to get it figured out and get those invitations in the mail.

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  7. even though I don't know if I ever want to get married myself, I NEVER get tired of wedding talk!! I loooooove weddings. your invites are gorgeous. the post office is always horrible. im sorry!!

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  8. invitations are gorgeous---what a nightmare of a stamp journey, but i'm glad you guys figured it all out!

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  9. the invitations are the one thing i am not looking forward to

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  10. Girl, I know that feeling! We received our sample invite, and when we saw that it was mailed with like $2 in stamps we had a heart attack because we have about 150 invites! We didn't take that into consideration when we purchased each custom invite at $12/piece not including the $2 each invite for stamps & without adding the .48 cent to place on the rsvp invites too! EEEP! def good advice for future brides
    Love the wedding posts! xoxoxo
    Showered With Design

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  11. WOW, yeah that's crazy! Thankfully, ours were $.66 each and then a normal stamp for the RSVP. I did have a ton of trouble with the Post Office when I wanted to have them hand cancelled. The first Post Office I went to told me no, so I went to another one who finally agreed. They made me do it myself though, which was fine, but it took a while and they were getting so frustrated with me. USPS is so frustrating! Glad you got it all worked out! Your day will be here soon!

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  12. Haha I remember this type of stress all too well! Just trying and enjoy each minute! These will be stories you look back and and laugh on. Your invitations are beautiful!

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  13. AHHH all of you are scaring me with these dollar amounts! Sheesh, just sending the invites is expensive.

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  14. Ah yes, wedding stress, how I don't miss that lol! At least your invitations are gorgeous!

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  15. They are gorgeous! I remember the postage debacle all too well! Spending that kind of money on stamps made me want to choke!

    thanks for linking up!

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  16. Wedding planning is SUCH a gem. I don't miss it;)

    BUT I am glad you got it all squared away, AND that you guys are so so s close! ahhh

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  17. Oh man what a pain! At least now it's over and done with!

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  18. Oh man! How scary! We still have 9 months to the wedding and I am cringing thinking about problems that might arise. Hopefully things go smoothly from now on :) Thank you for sharing :)

    http://neatly-packaged.blogspot.com/

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  19. That's exactly what I'm afraid of...how much it's going to cost to mail those suckers. Guess I'll find out towards the end of the month. Glad you got it figured out! Pretty invitations!

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  20. Oh goodness that sounds like a big mess! So glad you got them all sent out one last thing to check off the list :)

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  21. They are beautiful, though! We just ordered our invitations and we opted for something "less expensive" as I couldn't get over the fact that most people will trash them anyway. Sorry...I guess that probably doesn't help with all the work you're going through. lol. Call me Debbie Downer!

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