HitchDied

Questions Arising as I Address Save-the-Dates

| 26 Comments

Why have I allowed my handwriting to get so atrocious?

Why did I ever think I should use Sharpies to write out these addresses? Why didn’t I realize it would just CLASH with the marker font we used and would exacerbate my handwriting issues?

Should I be putting the names of the unmarried/unengaged plus ones on these? I liked when my name was on Collin’s invitations back in the day.  But what if these people break up before the real invitations are sent? Do I then need to grant a generic plus one? Or invite the rebound?

Why do unmarried people have to be listed on separate lines? Why didn’t I know that before I ordered postcards with only three address lines?

Should families be invited as “The Guestenbaums” or as “The Guestenbaum Family?” The more I think about it, the more I like the second option. Do I need to re-do the ones that I already addressed to “the Guestenbaums”? Did I order enough extra postcards for this?

Why am I inclined to put the man’s name first when inviting a married couple that shares a last name? Wouldn’t a feminist put the woman’s name first at least half the time? Wouldn’t a slave to etiquette refuse to separate the man’s first name from his last name?

Is it creepy that I am using Google to fact check my mother-in-law’s guest list?  Is it possible there are two [NAME REDACTED]s operating medical practices in East Kansas, and one spells his name with one n and is invited to my wedding, and one spells his name with two n’s and is not?

Does that “MO” look like an “MD”?  Is there a St. Louis in Maryland?

How do all these wedding bloggers DIY stuff while drinking wine? Am I the only person who starts to make noticeably more mistakes after just one glass? WHY DID I ORDER SO FEW EXTRA POSTCARDS?

Is it really pathetic that I am lumping “addressing postcards” in with DIY?

From Collin: “Couldn’t we hire someone to do this for us?”

26 Comments

  1. Oh man, so many places to screw up or second guess yourself re: etiquette. Makes me even more happy that we aren’t doing save the dates. I only have to go through the addressing madness once.

    Good luck! Go easy on the booze!

    • The thing about save the dates is that they are so casual minor errors are no big. I’m even forgoing titles on all but a few!

      Also, I DID go easy on the booze. I need to go ZERO on the booze. /Lightweight.

  2. i say etiquette, shmetiquette when it comes to addresses…i literally cannot remember a single addressed envelope from any of the wedding invitations we’ve received.

    you’ll rock it, lady. i think you have to cross the booze threshhold on a non-handwriting project, eh?

  3. I wish I could help out! first, I bet your handwriting isn’t that bad. second, by handwriting it, you can say you wanted to give it a personal feel. I personally love the word ‘rustic’ when I make homemade things that come out shitty. it solves all my problems! ha ha. also, in terms of people breaking up, that happened the a friend of ours. We just called after the invites went out and told him to bring anyone else he wanted (we didn’t do assigned seating or seating cards). also, I addressed something to someone’s maiden name by accident. whatevs. best of luck! you can always do labels & cover up any you don’t like!!

  4. Dude. You stole the dialogue right out of my head (from about 9 months ago, but still). I’m so glad that someone else stresses about always putting the guy’s name first – I resolutely switched off on every other invite :)

  5. My handwriting is also horrible and my husband’s is worse, so we decided to print pretty (but basic) address labels for our invites and to use an attractive font. I have not regretted it, even over a year after the wedding. So thankful I did that. :)

    I used The Guestenbaum Family approach for whole families I invited. I also used the “John Smith and Guest” approach….right on the first address line on the outer envelope. (We skipped inner envelopes entirely.)

    When we sent out our email save the dates, we asked people to send us their current address. We used how they wrote their own address as a guide to how we would address them. (For ex: some people did the unmarried two line thing in replying to us, so we sent their invitation that way.) For older friends of my parents from the south, we used the standard Mr. and Mrs. HisLastname, since we knew that is what they were used to. For our friends, we got rid of the Mr. and Mrs. and just used their first and last names, like we usually would.

    Good luck with the addressing! It will all work out okay! :)

    • E-mail save the dates are clearly where it is at. We only went the print route because my mother-in-law thought it would be too much trouble to scrounge up emails for her guest list and one we had to print those it made sense to print all of them.

  6. I used to get the whole “You should be a doctor!” joke cuz my handwriting sucks so much! Well, soooorrry if you all don’t do cursive anymore and can read my beautiful calligraphy!

    My mom actually balked when we told her we’d be writing the names/addresses because she thought I would write them and they would all get lost. Turns out it was a great excuse for me to make someone else do it then! :)

  7. For couples that aren’t married I put it like this “Jane Smith & John Doe”. I didn’t know you were supposed to put them on different lines haha.

    As far as the married couple thing, I put whoever we knew best first “Jane and John Doe” if we knew Jane best, and “John and Jane Doe” if we knew John best.

    Good luck. I hand wrote all my save the dates too and it took FOREVER.

  8. I’m laughing so hard. Sending you strength!

  9. I am so glad that I decided to simply embrace my tacky and thereby avoided most of these problems (except the naming-of-the-plus-ones).

    I printed my envelopes using a script font. (Cheater cheater pumpkin eater.)
    I used first and last names and no titles. (Oh, the shame.)
    I named the kids on the envelope so they would know they were really invited, too (Kids LOVE getting mail), and it would be clear that cousin-so-and-so was NOT invited.
    I only put kids on second lines.
    I used the name of the individual we know best (or the name of the person who always is referenced first for those couples who are apparently only one person and always JaneandBob but never BobandJane).

    Only three people mentioned the save-the-dates to us. Presumably everyone received them. Maybe they didn’t want to point out how tacky we were? Or maybe it was a much bigger deal to us than them.

    • I don’t think I have ever mentioned a save the date to anyone. Now that I know how much angst goes into it, I probably will for every single one.

      • You sent me a twitter message when you got mine, i think that counts. I definitely appreciated hearing they arrived in the world from the few people who mentioned it.

        As you know, I didn’t even try to impose my handwriting on the mail service/our guest list; I also took the print on the envelops approach. That has its own set of problems though around convincing the printer to respect non 8.5×11 paper consistently.

  10. I’m sorry, as I know it probably wasn’t the intended effect, but you made me giggle so much as I read this. It reads like the contents of my head whenever I come to make a decision about anything and try to put it into action!

    “How do all these wedding bloggers DIY stuff while drinking wine? Am I the only person who starts to make noticeably more mistakes after just one glass?”
    I would like to know this too!! The wedding forums are full of people showing pics of what ‘they just threw together this evening over a bottle of chardonnay’ – how do they do that? What’s worse is that a lot of what they make is better quality than anything I could make sober! Infuriating ;)

    Your OH clearly thinks the same way as mine!

  11. I had a save the date returned because my handwriting was that illegible. And, although I am a wine drinker while crafting I drink beer (same rule for work functions and almost hitting my limit).

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