D'oh

Later this week, I'll be posting photos of our invitations.  But first I thought I'd start by posting about all the things we forgot to think about when creating our invitations.  May our foibles bring your laughter or wisdom . . . or both.

Mistake #1: Don't forget to ask someone to help proofread your text . . . especially if you can't read the language that the text is in.  In law school, I served as what was basically a glorified copy editor for my law journal, and as an English Ph.D. student, I teach writing for a living. So when it came to the text of our invitations, I was feeling pretty confident.  Silly Hot Cocoa.

We had a trifold invitation with a Hebrew panel, an English panel, and a Chinese panel, and I'm only literate in English. Yeah, you can see where this is going . . . .  We had a company that specializes in Jewish wedding invitations throw together the Hebrew text for us, and for some reason I got so delighted with the aesthetics of the Hebrew that I completely neglected to proofread it. Thank goodness at the eleventh hour I recovered enough sense to ask one of our groomsmen who knows Hebrew to look over the text for us, because I got this delightful email from him: "Your guests who know neither English or Chinese might wind up a bit confused, as your wedding hotel is identified both as being in Tucson, AZ, and Marina del BEY, CA."  D'oh.

And all that confidence I had about the English text?  I had a mistake there too.  A small mistake that very few people would have noticed, but something that someone as anal as I am would have been mortified about.  D'oh.

Mistake #2: Don't forget that your invitations will have to be legible to friends and family of all ages and visual acuity.  When deciding on the color of our paper and ink, I naively thought: "Our colors are purple and silver.  Surely, we should use those colors!"  Of course, our visually challenged guests have now gone blind from attempting to read silver ink on lavender stardream paper.  D'oh.

Mistake #3: Don't forget that the size -- and not just the weight -- of an invitation influences how much it costs to send it.  When our invitations came in, I take it to the post office to confirm the postage cost.  I think to myself: "Surely, this can't cost very much to send; after all, we have only one insert!"  Pshaw.  The post office clerk tells me the envelope extends about a half inch past the guideline for a conventional envelope, which means that the envelope counts as a "large envelope" in post office parlance, which means that each will cost $1 to send, thus doubling our anticipated postage costs.  D'oh.

Also, this meant that I couldn't use the Lunar New Year stamps I had already ordered from USPS.com, which looked oh so beautiful with our purple, Asian-influenced invitations.

Purchase this stamp here.

Instead, the Lunar New Year stamps had to be relegated to our RSVP envelopes, and we had to use this tres ironic Wisdom stamp for the invitations themselves.  They are lovely for an art deco wedding, but looked so very random on our invitations.  Boo.

What do you wish you had known before deciding on your invitations?