Save-the-freaking-date

Ok, I'm going to rant. These save the dates have taken me to the end of my rapidly fraying rope. I mean, seriously. I leave my house at 5:30am and get home at 6:30pm and have no access to a car (I'm friends with numerous bus drivers now- they know me), so I had no time to get to any card stores when they were actually open.

After weeks and weeks (actually, months) of putting it off, I finally went to a stationery store where I just had somebody print a card for me. Great! No worries now about printing it myself. So they print 100 cards and...they are all off-center. Every single one! This makes me want to drink 16 Coronas in succession (I'm drinking one now). But of course, I don't have the time or money to wait for another print up, so I'm just going to send the god-blessed things out. They don't even look good, but at this point, if people judge us for having off-center postcard save-the-dates, they can jump off a bridge.


So I just addressed all of them and am ready to send them out. I asked Mr. Livalittle to lend a hand in this process, so he picks up postcard stamps and what does he bring home? Polar bear stamps. We are getting married in September. In DC. If we were getting married in an ice hotel at the northern tip of Swedish Lapland during the time of the year when they have a santa village, well then a sweet and cuddly polar bear would be effing perfect. But as it turns out, we're not going to be anywhere near Jukkasjärvi or any other arctic/polar region, so the bear just looks like it's sweltering. Mr. Livalittle had the great sense to point out that the DC zoo probably has a polar bear, which was really, really helpful of him.



Maybe the real solution is to change the entire plan and just get married in Sweden? I'd have to get elves though and added to my already ridiculous crew of 11 bridesmaids, a brigade of elves would be a bit excessive. But hey, you only get married once. We hope.

To Invite or Not Invite...THAT is the question

Dearly beloved bloggers,

I have a quandry. I have just moved to Hawaii where I am making a new life for myself and am forming friendships. This is not the problem- this, theoretically, is good. However, because I am living in bizarro world (i.e. planning a wedding), I can't help but think that new friendships are just making life more complicated.

Should I invite these new friends to our wedding? There are several that I can foresee being long-term pals. Will I regret that they weren't there or weren't invited years from now? All of my new friends live in Hawaii, but the wedding is in DC. Most of them probably won't be able to come anyway, so does that seem like we're just asking for a gift? Oh I just don't know! I just want people to be included in the celebration if they can make it, but I don't want to inadvertantly send the wrong message!

Bestow your wisdom, fellow brides and blog-readers!

Distressed in Lanikai,

Samantha Livalittle

Alright, so I might be OCD.

I have a notecard system and nothing could make me happier. I got the idea from the book How to Have an Elegant Wedding for $5000 or less: Acheiving Beautiful Simplicity without Mortgaging your Future given to me by a fellow bridesmaid in Kristina's September wedding (thanks Kristin!). While I will certainly not be staying under the title amount, the book is FANTASTIC and gives some great ideas on what to remember, how to organize things and how to save money on each aspect of the big day. Anyway, on to the notecard system--- voila!

As you can see above, on each notecard there is a space for the names of the adults/parents (what goes on the outer envelope) full names of any children (if applicable), mailing address and email. That way, when it comes time to write the invitations or send out a save the date, all of the information is right there. Each notecard represents an invitiation, so that you can count all of the notecards to know how many invites are needed. In the top right corner is the number of people that the notecard represents- this way, you can count all of the top right numbers to know how many people you are inviting. In the top left corner is the number of the actual invitation which you will note when you are physically addressing. You can put the same number on the back of the reply card so that you have a tracking system in case someone does not write their own name on the card and just checks x on the YES. On the bottom of the notecard, you can leave space for a gift (to fill in when that time comes) so that when you go to write thank-you notes, you have a note of what they gave you--- and guess what? The address and names are right there.

Wait, it gets better. So say you've written out all of your notecards and you have alphabetized them. What to do now? Where to put them? Pull out one of those old notecard boxes (for me, these were storing my old vocabulary cards, which I treasure- I'm weird). Make five dividers for yourself that read Invitations, Accepts, Regrets, Thank-You Notes To-Do and Thank-You Notes Done. That way, you can update the status of the cards each time you get a reply and each time you get a gift. You can also keep track of who you've written and who you still need to write.

Another variation on this system (which I didn't do) is to give different colored cards to different sets of people who have the addresses and contact info for those they want to invite- yellow to your parents, green to the groom's parents, pink to yourself and blue to the groom. Then you can combine, alphabetize and get rid of duplicates. A fine idea, indeed!

I, for one, think that this is an utterly brilliant system and have already implemented it. I'm definitely putting my notecard box in my carry-on when I travel back to DC!! Oh, organization!!

Saving it for marriage

That would be October 24th, people.

This weekend, a few thoughts popped into my head [however, for the most part it was pretty empty up there during my awesome four day weekend, thanks MLK Jr!!]:

1. We have a date set, should we, you know, officially tell people to Save The Date?

2. Who would we really want to save that date?

3. Let's never get on  tiny bus to Athens with Mr. B's co-workers ever again. Unless we want to be entertained by grown men signing and dancing along to Wilson Phillips, Celine Dion, etc at 2:30 in the morning.

You see, we have quite a wide range of estimated attendance to this grand shindig. At the high end, if everybody came, we would have 115 folks. But if we go with a low estimate, it could be around 73. A swing of over 40 people hugely impacts reception venues. Don't want to plan for all 115 and have 40 empty seats [and also pay a higher price for a bigger venue]. And certainly don't want to have standing room only.

So, I came up with the brilliant idea of formally announcing the date we have chosen to wed and requesting people reply with their vague intentions of attending or not. Nothing binding here, but give us an idea if you're positive you won't come or think you might skip out. Is that allowed? Can you request an RSVP to a Save the Date?

Please advise.