The Seattle Party Invitations are Away

In my last post, I mentioned the fact that we've sent out our invitations to our Seattle reception (which Girl Scout Fiancée calls the WAC, for WAshington Celebration). While Girl Scout Fiancée has been very crafty so far with many aspects of our wedding, even designing our own wedding invitations, the prospect of hand-crafting a hundred or so invitations to the Seattle party was a little too daunting for her craftiness.

Girl Scout Fiancée did some research on the internet and found the perfect solution for us at Invitations by Dawn. We had some pretty simple requirements: Girl Scout Fiancée wanted something that matched the whimsical-yet-rustic aesthetic of our venue, something that said both "fun" and "fairy tale wedding" at the same time. We also wanted invitations that included an RSVP card, and Girl Scout Fiancée hit upon some that were folded over so that the RSVP card tore right off of it, becoming a postcard that could be mailed back to us.

The great invitation that Girl Scout Fiancée designed.

In this area, I basically did nothing. Girl Scout Fiancée did all the work of designing the invitations; I was just a proofreader and occasional thesaurus for her. I think they turned out great, and we sent our first batch to our East Coast (and other non-Seattle-dwelling) friends and family. Knowing that these folks would need the most time to plan for a trip like this, and wanting to give priority to anyone traveling across the country to spend time with us (after all, we can only invite so many people based on our venue size), we mailed these invitations back in January, giving everyone nearly five months to respond.

The RSVPs trickled in, and as we suspected no one is going to be able to make the trip from across the country out to our reception, which was fine and expected. Unfortunately, we got a little sidetracked with finalizing our wedding and honeymoon details, and soon the RSVP-by date was creeping up on us as we realized we hadn't sent out the second wave of invitations to our local friends. In a frantic storm of address-gathering, label-printing, stamp-sticking, and invitation-folding, Girl Scout Fiancée managed to get the second batch of invitations out to the local folks...with about a one-week window on the RSVP-by date. Yeah, it's a little short, but we didn't want to waste dozens of great looking invitations.

We probably could have chosen a faster delivery method, too.

Fortunately, most of our local friends were understanding. Still, as the RSVP-by date came and went, I sent an e-mail out to everyone whose RSVP we had not yet received, explaining to them that we'd be thrilled to receive word back from them up through mid-April. So far, we're doing pretty well; almost two-thirds of the people that we invited have responded to our invitations. Of our local friends, only a handful haven't responded, and luckily I can chase them down in person and get their RSVPs when we hit zero hour...which is in about two weeks!