Bombs Away!

So we mailed out our 80 invitations this week. It was quite the relief because pretty much every piece of those things was handcrafted by yours truly. This was by far my most ambitious wedding DIY project. I'll post later with pictures of them and some tips on what I learned, but for now, I'll give you some pictures that tell the story of our mailing saga.

We had quite the drama over what would be the correct postage for these puppies. I delegated to Mr. Star the arduous task of taking a finished invitation to the post office (which is ALWAYS crowded in New York, despite the fact that there are about 5 within a few blocks!) and getting it weighed to find out how much it would cost to mail them.

He went to one postal worker who told him it would be nearly $2 to mail each invitation and while this seemed high to him, he didn't know how much I was expecting to spend and went ahead and bought $160 worth of postage.

When he came home and told me what had happened, I freaked. Hoping to have spent somewhere in the $60-$70 range and knowing that USPS would be unlikely to give us our money back, I was distraught. Mr. Star quickly went to another nearby post office and was given a much better .61 cent quote by two different postal workers who both thought that the original guy was crazy.

To make a long story (and about 8 visits to the post office and 5 phone calls to the USPS complaint line by Mr. Star), we did end up getting our money back and were given the correct stamps. It did end up delaying us getting our invitations out by about a week, though, which may not seem like such a big deal to anyone else, but to me it definitely was. I had just seriously busted my butt to get all the calligraphy done quickly and then had my finished invitations sitting around my kitchen for a week -- it was frustrating.

So that might be why Mr. Star looks so happy and relieved to be carrying the box of invites to the post office:

Isn't he cute?

I felt a little sad because I was handing the pride and joy of my wedding paper crafting over to the postal workers whom I know will not treat my invitations in the manner I would like. I told Mr. Star that after all that work there should be trumpets or something. At which point, he proceeded to make loud trumpet noises as I walked down the crowded sidewalk. This is my reaction to that:

But in the end, we were both more than a little happy to have them in the mail and on the way!

My message to you is this: please, please, PLEASE have your invitations weighed and priced at more than one post office if you think there's anything wonky about the quote they give you.

What invitation mailing snafus have you run into?