Two weeks ago I told you that the invites were here and that they were mostly ready to go out. Well, now they're out and we've started getting RSVPs back! Since all but a handful have been received, I can now share with you what our invites and RSVPs look like.
As mentioned previously, we ordered from VistaPrint.com because we were able to get half off with my UPromise account and we didn't have to spend a lot of time picking out colors, fonts, and inserts. Douglas and I had more fun announcing our wedding with Save the Dates than we did with the invitations. No matter what idea we came up with or which place we looked, we just couldn't really get into the invites as much as we got into the STDs. This made it both really simple and really difficult to commit to a specific invite. We browsed through the wedding invitation section and the regular party invite section. We found a ton of great ideas in the party invite section, but those cost more (go figure) and it was more difficult and costly to do RSVPs for those cards. So, at the 12th hour of us being fed up with dealing with invites, we made a decision - really, Douglas just gave into my leading favorite.
So enough already! What did we go with! (I hear you)
Here they are!
So what were some of the decisions we had to make with the invites, besides which design to go with?
1) Would we do the formal wording with Mom & Dad inviting the guests to attend? - since Mom & Dad are footing the bill, we decided to leave this decision up to them and gave them final approval on the complete wording of the invitation. They were so excited about it that we were able to place the order right after they saw the initial proof (hooray for email!).
2) When should the RSVP cut off be? - This decision became really easy once Douglas got offered an internship (more on that later). We are handling the RSVPs so I wanted to make sure we would be at the address on the invites for as long as the RSVPs were coming in. It's not that I don't trust mail forwarding, I just didn't want to add an extra variable that someone could use as an excuse. "I sent it, they must have lost it in the mail." Because of this, the end of July made sense. After deciding on that, we then realized that by having the date be the end of July, it would give us August and September to viciously hunt down people who didn't RSVP or to follow up with those who forgot to fill out the top section of the RSVP (just because you say "no" to the scavenger hunt, I can't assume that it's also a "no" for the ceremony). The hunting down unknown RSVP responsibilities will be passed off to family members as we may/may not be moving during the fall.
3) Why no kids under 13? - Way back at the beginning of all of this when we put together the initial guest list, we realized just how many kids under the age of 5 would be invited to the wedding if we allowed children: enough to fill up a regular classroom! We love kids. We would love to have kids at our wedding. But this was going to be waaaaaaaaaay too many little ones running or crawling around for anyone to handle. Once we figured out that it was going to be very difficult to accommodate the little rugrats (and there are some really cool ideas out there on how to keep kids entertained at weddings) we also realized that since there were so many young ones that their parents might enjoy some adult time away from the kids for a night. So why is the cut off at 13? We're not looking to be lewd or anything, but with beer flowing and our adult sense of humor, we didn't want to have to mind our tongues (or worry about anyone else minding theirs). Hopefully a good time will be had by all and no one will get offended because their toddler started walking around the next morning quoting dirty limericks.
4) Who gets +1s? - This was the ugly part of the whole decision making process. Everyone feels more comfortable having the option of bringing a plus one. We had gone into the guest list process assuming plus ones for everyone who wasn't already paired up. Unfortunately, we never actually noted that in our list so we didn't realize that it would take our guest list near 200 instead of the already bloated 150. So we had to sit down and see who all would desire a plus one - big number. We weren't comfortable with simply picking and choosing, so we narrowed it down to engaged and married couples - much smaller number. Having that number, could we make any exceptions for other plus ones? Only one exception was possible - the wedding party. That only knocked up the count by about 4. Totally doable. Funny enough, as soon as we made this decision (but hadn't told anyone yet), we found out one of our chuppah holders got engaged! Way to get in at the buzzer! We're hoping that by August we'll have a really good sense of what our actually numbers are looking like and if they're low enough (talking about looking for over 20% not attending) we may be able to make a few more exceptions for plus ones. So sit tight folks, you never know what could happen!
5) How do we word the RSVP? - We knew from day 1 that our RSVPs would not have typical wording. Cruising the wedding blogs, I had found a lot of really fun examples of wording folks had used. Of course, as we were playing with the wording, we realized that we had to make it very clear to folks how they were responding if they marked option A over option B. Always include some clear designation of YES, NO, or MAYBE. Very important!
The invites didn't take us too long to put together and get out the door. Once they were gone, it officially marked the end of the "big" things we had to get done. We had booked nearly all of our vendors and invited all of our guests. So what the hell do we do now?!?! After a few minor freak outs, I sat down with Douglas to create a new list of what we had left to figure out/do. Now we start getting into the details.
Those details are for another day. Let's discuss the second topic of this post - Douglas!
You may or may not know that Douglas has done a lot of the heavy lifting with this wedding - dealing with the phone calls to vendors, putting together multiple versions of the Save the Date CD, and helping the girls with the bridal shower (you go boy!). Recently, Douglas decided that planning a wedding so far away was not really working for him and that he'd be able to do his job more efficiently if he lived in the area. So, on May 23rd, Douglas will be a temporary resident of Blacksburg, VA! Ok, ok, so the real reason is that he kicked ass at his interviews and was hired as a full time paid intern at a hot new company, Modea! It's for three months and they're not sure whether they'll have enough projects going on to hire him on full time immediately after his internship ends, but they seem to really like him. So I will be staying behind in CLT while Douglas goes to work in VA for three months. Should they be able to offer him a full time gig, I'll pack up and off to VA we shall go! If not, Douglas comes back to CLT and continues his search for work until Modea tries to tempt him back (please tempt!). We're both very excited at the prospect of living in the Blacksburg/Roanoke area since it's A) Freakin' gorgeous, B) in the mtns, C) near some of his family, D) closer to my family, and E) an even cheaper cost of living than we're already maintaining! Yes, please!
Of course this makes wedding planning both significantly easier and difficult at the same time. Douglas will now be able to meet with vendors more often (we've just starting looking for a DJ) in person instead of just via email or phone. However, most of our decisions/discussions have taken place during our night walks with Kaylee. While we can still do that over the phone, it's not quite the same. So there will be a lot more back and forth between us. I don't think it will get too bad until July/August, where the panic starts to kick in. My first fitting will be in August! AH! Full gear! *breathing* The good thing is that Douglas will be working again and in an environment that is perfect for him. While he's off doing that, I will have my office to myself and will be able to sneak off during my lunch break to the newly built on-site gym. I'm so excited about the new gym! The current one is too small, cramped, and doesn't have many windows. If more than one person goes in, you'll be rubbing elbows during workouts. The new one is a newly built free standing structure with LOTS of windows and looks out onto the pool! I've spied new equipment in there lately, so now we're just waiting for them to announce the opening and tell us how to access it!
Enough about the gym. Douglas, gone, 3 months. Of course we'll see each other every so many weeks. There's Memorial Day weekend, the Charlotte ComicCon, Father's Day, bridal shower, etc. I won't be able to go up to see Douglas unless Louis is planning a trip since Doug is taking our car. So sadly, the Roanoke trip next weekend will probably be my last one for a while (which will drive me nuts, btw). I will be so much calmer being IN Roanoke as we get closer to the wedding instead of being in CLT and feeling like I can't do much. :-p
So let's all wish Douglas well! This is a great opportunity and I'm so excited for him and proud of him!
No comments:
Post a Comment