Alterations, Invites, and Mom

Let's just say I totally underestimated the time it would take to address invitations. What seemed like a fairly simple project turned into a 4 1/2 hour job! The good news is that my partner was my mom and yes there was champagne, candy, dessert and chatting throughout making it fun.

My mom came down Saturday and I took her over to see our new still in progress house. It was so cool to be able to share that with her. She is so happy for us. Then, we went downtown for a nice lunch. On the way home we stopped over at David's Bridal so I could have my dress alterations done. They had to take it in on the sides in the area between my waist and my hips so it will fit better, shorten it, and add the bustle. Grand total....$224.00!! Ouch. I am shocked that I of all people will be wearing something that cost $700 bucks. For one day. The under $500 dress is technically no longer which I am kind of bummed about but it had to be done.

The fiance did his homeworK and delivered with a nicely organized excel spread sheet of addresses. Mom came armed with her address book and we got to work folding, stuffing, sticking, and writing. My RSVP's were messed up because I did not include a line next to Name(s) _________ and so Name(s) ended up smack dab centered with no room to the right to write. It looked really goofy and I was really upset with myself for making this mistake but I had an online chat with Invitations By Dawn and they were really great about re printing them at no charge and shipping them out within days. On the inner envelopes I stuck labels I made wIth our website info and wrote the guests names. We used all of those free address labels that we have accumulated over the years to put on the outer envelope instead of writing out our return address. I didn't use any special pens or monograms. My mom so kindly volunteered to do the mailing for me and will pick out nice wedding stamps to use.

Mj and I got into a bit of a debate about including a stamp on the RSVP envelopes for those that we know use the Internet regularly. Our label clearly says to check out our website where they can RSVP online and is prominently placed on the outer envelope so I chosing not to include stamps for my Internet savvy friends. I just didn't see the point and at .40 cents a pop I wanted to save my mom the expense. Mj felt that he could not determine who is Internet savvy nor could he guarantee that each and every guest would look at our website. I told him that I don't care if they choose not to....they will just have to pony up a stamp because we did give them the option to go online. He seemed uncomfortable with not including stamps so I told my mom to put them on all of his RSVP's.

We took a dessert break then finished up. Mom didn't leave until 11:30 pm. Our planned guest total is 75. No babies or kids and for the most part we did include plus ones if they were married or had a significant other. We sent out a total of 72 invitations that include 116 people!! Are we taking a huge risk? There are a lot of out of state/out of town folks. We know that our wedding is the most sought after event of the Summer season-but of course. Even so, we expect that a lot will not be able to attend. We just went ahead and invited who we wanted and hope that it will all shake out in the end at around 75-80. If not...we're in BIG trouble!!