Nanny's etiquette guide

Hello dearies, Aunt Nanny here to answer all of your etiquette questions. I've recently come to learn that a lot of people are forgetting the rules of when and how to either invite or be invited to a wedding.

Apparently it's become quite popular to use this new fangled thing on the spider webs called muzzlebook or OurSpace. It saves the bride some much precious coin she can put towards a new still in the backyard (always a good choice) but there arise some issues with going the cheap and easy route.

First off, people feel really cheated of not being able to finger your beautiful tissue paper and see if it can go with the almanac in the privy or not. Then you have that one Uncle who will get lost unless he has the card with the exact time and address of the church, the one card with a map hand drawn to show where everything is in the town, and he's carpooling with someone who's already been there.

It's also doubly important to send an actual invitation to people who will be "helping (better known as working)" your wedding. If for no other reason than you can be sure they'll show up on time so you can boss them around. You also want to be careful in making this group thing on the facetome as any old ladies could see the opportunity for free food and booze and show up taking my fair share.

On the other side of this invitation stickle is for the guest themselves. If one actually does in fact recieve a paper invitation with those double envelopes and someone had painstakingly drawn out a pretty approximation of your names on the inner one, don't assume that that means you can invite your kids, your cousins, and that one uncle who does a really good impression of Pop-Eye every chance he gets.

Trust me, the bride has worked quite hard and gotten into a few fist fights in order to get the guest list widdled down to those who are coming as well as any ol' Nanny's that dispense advice. Inviting your whole brood will just throw off the seating chart so if I wind up far away from the bar there will be hell to pay.

I hope this episode of Nanny's etiquette has helped to clear up any misconceptions with a wedding. With my help you'll have the perfect shin dig complete with those little bits of cheese on the pointy sticks.

A geeky rehearsal invite

After catching a post about people using their Wii Mii's (or something with lots of i's) on their wedding invitations I had the idea to make our rehearsal dinner invitations using a fancy pancy Lego character creator (I wasn't allowed to play with Lego's when I was little but my guy loved them).

First I downloaded a really fun program from Lego.com that lets you build kits that you can later buy (if you so choose), then to make the characters I used a simple program on-line.

I haven't gotten much further than this, but I thought I'd share.And yes the groom is dressed up as Han Solo (closest I could get to a tux) and I don't have DD's now to just come up with some wording.

They're gone

So after months of fussing over them, getting them all dressed up, then watching them squat on our table for weeks it's finally time to send out invitations off into the wide blue yonder.

We had a very simple system for putting our invitations together. My fiance and I each took half of them and then raced to see who would finish first. I would have won too if it weren't for that meddling tissue paper.

Then it came addressing time, which thank God for that JC Penny planner we got. It had a nice listing of who to call what and also served as a nice lap table. Maybe it's tacky but postmen all across the nation will thank us as we printed off the addresses on the outer envelope on my handy dandy printer (we only lost like 25 envelopes or so in trying to figure the damn thing out).

Writing on the inner envelope was a whole new kind of challenge as my mother's list was, well, sparse to put it nicely while his mothers was already set up with every one who just hit 18 getting their own invitations and a guest (we did it but I really do not understand the point of sending three invitations to the same house). But as I could fake nice handwriting better than my guy (or so he claimed, but he's probably lying so he can seem cool) I got to write them all out while he stuffed.Then came the worst part, the licking of the envelopes. Like most envelopes these tasted terrible so I switched to the sponge method halfway though (not quite the same as the birth control, in fact as far from the idea as possible). Rather than buying one of those things I just got a cup of water and a new dish sponge. It would have worked out really well if it weren't for the fact that half of the envelopes seemed to barely have any glue on them so it just got the paper all wrinkly and I had to tape them.
But now they're gone, off into the world all alone. Some may get lost in the shuffle and spend the rest of their lonely days in the letter kennel, others may make it to their destination just to be shoved under the growing pile of mail. It is out of my hands, so time to celebrate.

Free turkeys for all!

Map Maker, Map Maker

Make me a map, find me a find, catch me a catch. . .

Apparently one of the drawbacks of having over half of your guest list coming from a few states away means that they're gonna have no idea how to find that place (or possibly the state depending upon how early they start the celebration).

So I set out to map this territory. After driving around with a piece of paper and some crayons I realized that this isn't gonna work. Especially after we got turned around and wound up in a pasture (Be careful, cows can be mean).

I was really happy then to find a program for free that would make my Map for me. It's Wedding Mapper.com and it essentially uses google maps or yahoo maps (I never asked the maps their affiliation) to place dots down where your sites are. Then you can click on them to get directions to and from one area.

But I realized that may be too complicated for some guests who aren't as big into clicking on random things and finding the Llama Llama Duck song. So I used the magical powers of photoshop and image capture to take a picture of the map, then two sets of directions (one from the hotel to the church and then one from the church to the reception site), combined them together and put that up on our website.Sadly our sites are too far apart for us to print off a really useable map to put in our invitations (plus it will save on shipping costs). So hopefully those who don't like my really pretty map can use their own GPS to tell them where to go, or just ask someone else who's heading that way for a ride.

If that doesn't work we can always get them all a bunch of state maps for free from one of the rest stops.

Don't do as I do

This weekend I got it in my head that I should start to put the invitations together. We're not ready to address them but I thought, hey it'd be easier if we already have everything in that first envelope (maybe that's why they encourage two).

As I was on about my third stuffing I realized that we had completely forgotten something, stamps for the RSVP's! And this was late on a saturday when all post offices would be closed. So my guy and I formulated a plan to get $20 from a bank and then go to a local retail store to buy postcard stamps.

We knew it was gonna be a bad day when the sky was pitch black at 8 AM and raining pumas and wolves. But still we left earlier than usual and I taught my guy how to use a drive up ATM (don't ask) and we discovered that it was all out of money or something. There was a major error that may have had something to do with all the rain and hair that got into it a few hours earlier.

After church (which we did make on time, I fear what they'd do to you if you're late to mass but I imagine it involves holding dictionaries for some reason) we headed to the local mall to pick up a groomsman gift that we'd had personalized the day before (and also stopped at a hobby store to get Star Munchkin) and stopped in the middle of the food court to try to get that ATM to work. (Though we could have used that money we just got to ride the carousel in the middle of the mall there was too long of a line)

Then after a few wrong turns (I hate those stupid islands) we eventually got to Shopko where we found a huge pallet with some deck chairs on it in the the way. We moved the thing out of the way and found the only option for postcards is a set of 10 and we needed 80 total stamps. So began a long trial and error of putting in B2, having the machine make its whirring noise, spit out a set as well as a horde of dollar coins, putting those back in, and starting all over again.

I'm pretty sure when it comes time to get ourselves the invitation stamps we'll definetly go to the post office, even if I suddenly decide we need them at midnight on the fourth of July.

Screw you printer!

My printer and I got into a huge fight over the weekend. I was trying to get it to print off our reception cards that I'd slaved on (well worked kinda hard on) but it refused to line it up right, or feed the paper through, and one time it even threw its ink cartridge at me.

After taking some time apart and doing a bit of soul searching we both made up, went out for ice cream, and I got my damn reception cards printed.
I can see why everyone says "Don't print your invitations unless you are on a good standing with your printer and oh have a PC" (I hate those free templates they give you that are so out of date they'd never work on my Mac). We never had any intentions to print off the real invitation, but I thought, hey a reception card is a simple thing and we wanted to put pictures of us as kids in our halloween costumes on it (If you're wondering, I'm an elf. I have no idea why I am an elf, but I had to be an elf for two years. I suspect there was an elf sale or something).

So I got myself lots of cute pictures of us as kids, scanned them in, put together a passable but simple info card and then got into the long fight of trying to convert something on screen onto a special card with a fancy pants border. I think my fiance feared that I was going to throw the damn thing across the room.

If you are going the DIY route, for sure get lots of extras. I had to go through a good 3 or 4 cards before getting it about right and also realized that thanks to the ever growing guest list we needed more in general. But I came to find out they were all out of our cheaper ones so I had to get the pricier ones with a different border.

*Sigh* And there began another fight with the printer that this time ended in some broken glass, a lot of tears, and me threatening it with a hatchet.

But the good news is we have enough cards leftover for being able to print off maps. The printer and I will just have to have a little talking to.

The art of TP

My invitations came in over the weekend and as I picked through the numerous boxes (who knew pieces of paper could weigh so much) and checked it to make sure all the names were spelled right. (So far so good, we're hoping it doesn't suddenly change over night).

As I was digging through the boxes I found two packs of something white and sort of soft. That's when I realized that it's tissue paper. Really, tissue paper?

Our invites are pretty simple, just a nice printing on some cardstock. I don't think we have to worry about the text all vanishing (unless the gremlins who hide in mail boxes pop up again). It doesn't help that the invites are rather long while the tissue paper is about one sheet TP size.

Since there's no way it could actually be used in assembling my invites, I've set out to figure out just what I am supposed to do with the tissue paper.

My MOH's first suggestions was I had to cover myself in it before starting to fill out invites. It does make some sense, being left handed I do have a habit of covering myself in ink, marker, glue, and spray paint.

I realized that that wouldn't really work as I usually just rely on Magic Eraser from Mr. Clean, so then I wondered about using it as a craft project for all the kids that will be running around. But I have a funny feeling all the dipping into paint will only lead to green and blue children covered in glitter. Though they will probably be really excited about it.

I could give everyone a really tiny gift covered in the tissue paper, but all I can think of that would fit is some gravel. (It would be an interesting twist on the ol giving people a sapling to plant, instead they can start their own rock quarry).

For now, I think the tissue paper is just going to sit in the box waiting and plotting. Is anyone else not sure what to do with any TP they receive?

It's Shipping?!

So after a few different messages back and forth to our Invitations provider (e-proofs are a wonderful thing) I just got the e-mail that our invitations are shipping.

These would make some interesting invitations

Apparently according to the UPS stalker website they'll be here tomorrow. I don't know if I should be really excited, really freaked out, or really hungry (I've become a huge fan of a Blue Bunny Toffee Temptation ice cream). I still need to sit down and make our reception cards (as well as actually put in ink and offer our first born child to our reception site). Put that along with the cheap RSVP cards I already got and then weigh them.

If they don't come in under the 42 cents mark I'll have to set them up on a series of crash diets, have them lose all their self image and then pay the extra anyway. People just need to accept invitations regardless of their size.

It's kinda scary, another step in reminding me that in less than 6 months I'll have to be the center of attention. I'm doing my best to share the attention, but it doesn't really seem to be taking. My best friend is making it really difficult what with her not willing to wear a veil and tiara, or even a giant bullseye.

Wish me and my guy luck as we attempt to put together the invitations, realize we can't find a pen, then give up and go play some tennis.

Come one, come all

We've bitten another bullet and after some hemming and hawing we finally went and ordered our invitations.

After pimping around for lots of invitations catalogues including from Rexcraft, Ann's Bridal Bargains, Seasons of Love by Dawn, The American Wedding, Now & Forever, and for some reason a Country Wedding one, we eventually settled on one that is on-line. So we've never seen it in person, held it, asked it how it feels about being mailed, seen it's taste in movies or international cuisine. (I will add that you do get free samples from some of the places listed above if you do feel you should love your invitation before setting it free).

But the ol' fiance and I decided on the one above based upon, well it was sort of autumn like without being too sappy. It is really really hard to find non sappy invitations. Flipping through catalogues it's easy to see how little guys generally have an input in invites considering how much pink and roses and hearts there are.

I think they should make a good ol fashioned beer and polka embossed wedding invitation. Think of how much fun could be had doing the chicken dance, and making your bridal party wear lederhosen.

Anywho, after getting a finalish count of how many people our parents are forcing us to invite we could finally order our invites.

Shouldn't be too hard right, we already picked everything out after all? Oh how I wish I knew then what I don't know now.

First you have to pick a font, and there are always a ton of options. Personally I thought that the webdings was a bit much, but it would put an interesting spin on things in the future if you calmly explain to people that you did in fact invite them but it wasn't your fault they didn't take the time to decipher it.

We just went with the easiest to read one that had a zed as there will be a prominent Z all over the place.

So we got a font, they words will look all pretty dressed up and everything. Then we realized, awe crap we have to come up with the words!

Here are some fun examples of all the damn options.

For any idea you need

If you're all formal

Something a bit more offbeat

As for us, we just eventually came down to

Yo, we's gettin' hitched
And no one's making us
So you best get your butts here
Or we'll just elope to Vegas