How bad could it be? ...

While I haven't been in the medical field for an overly long time, I have come to realize one cardinal rule. Never utter the phrase, "how bad could it be?" The first time that I uttered that phrase, I was working as an EMT for a transfer company. My partner and I were responding to a call for a "stable" labor patient who required transport for monitoring. I uttered that famous phrase and not an hour later, my partner and I were holding a beautiful baby girl that we had delivered in the back of our ambulance. In the years that have passed, I've uttered those words nary a few times and have discovered in the process - how deep tunneling abscesses can go and how exciting life as a nurse can be. However, this post isn't about work, it's about the DIY process Matt and I have encountered while doing our invitations and the envelopes.

"How bad could it be to print our own envelopes to send these beauties out?"

   Matt has a great eye for design and has some excellent skills working with design programs. As someone who once painted their room "green screen green", it seemed obvious which of us would be the primary person working on the invitations. We had an awesome experience working with Colonial Printing in Manchester for our Save the Dates, that it was obvious to us that they would be the perfect choice to print our wedding invitations. Seeing as we have an overall "nerdy" theme to our wedding, we also wanted to include the other activity that has brought Matt and I together - cooking. Matt had sketched out a basic design based on recipe cards that take me back to my grandmother's kitchen (mom's mom) during the holidays or during a routine visit - she would take out her box of index cards and we would look through them together and decide what to make. Playing on this theme, Matt designed invitations that resembled cards. Danielle from Colonial Printing worked with us and we were on our way. The cards came back perfectly and we were all set to begin the DIY part of the invitation process.

We knew we were in trouble when we couldn't even get the envelopes that we had originally wanted. For "nerdy" reasons, Matt had really wanted to send the invitations in navy blue envelopes. We had seen them at Staples recently and decided to wait on purchasing them until we had a confirmation on the size of our invitation. Once the size of the invite was confirmed, we returned only to find that they only had 4 packages of envelopes and we needed 5. How bad could it be to find more navy envelopes from Staples? There are several (5) Staples in a reasonable driving distance from our house. Well...very bad as it turns out. There were no more navy envelopes in southern New Hampshire. For whatever reason, Staples has opted not to restock this color. Matt and I are (still) totally miffed. As usual, Amazon came to the rescue and we were able to have navy envelopes shipped within a few days.

Now, as it's been 6 months since we've sent out the Save The Dates, I seem to have forgotten how difficult it was to print on the envelopes. It took several days to get those envelopes printed and many hours of huffing and cursing before the entire lot was printed and ready for mailing. Somehow, in the intervening months, I had forgotten the difficulty of this task and was determined to print on the invitation envelopes. Well, we had one day to get everything printed, designed (our seals), stamped, and correlated (we wanted to be sure that everyone got an invitation). After 3 hours of working with our printer, our business center printer, futzing with the design, and pouting, I gave up. I am not gracious in defeat, but I definitely was bested by these envelopes! We settled on printing up stickers with everyone's address on them and then a separate set of stickers for the return address.

Supplies for painting on the invisible ink RSVP numbers.

Once we tackled the addressing issue, we set out to number our RSVP cards. If you've received your invitation, you'll no doubt notice that there is no place to put your name. We labeled each RSVP with invisible ink - correlating the number on the RSVP to the list of addresses/invitees. Surprisingly, this was the easiest and most fun part of the day as it included playing with Matt's Sonic Screwdriver (it has a UV light on the end).

Finally, the numbers had dried and we were ready for assembly. Matt had designed special stickers to seal the envelopes to insure that invitees open the envelopes as though they would open a recipe box so that you get the full effect of the index cards in a recipe box. We had our labels assembled and we were ready for stuffing and addressing.

All of the RSVPs numbered and ready for assembly.

Not an intimidating stack...

Ready for action for labeling.

Matt and I began an assembly line and in no time, we had those babies stuffed and ready for mailing. While I was disappointed that we weren't able to print directly on the envelopes, I'm happy that the invites are on their way and that we'll start to hear back from everyone about attending our exciting day!!

The finished product!

The disappointing address labels

Assembling the invites!

 I launched the invitations out in the mail today and am looking forward to hearing back from all of you as you decide about joining us for our special day.

Totally finished and ready for mailing.