A Productive Day

The invitations are going out now.  That was a much longer days' work than I expected, partly because things were not quite as ready as I thought they were.  We had most of the addresses collected and sorted, we had invitations waiting to be printed, and I figured all we had to do was run everything through the printer and we'd be good to go.

It was more complicated, of course.  Aaron and Elizabeth did a lot of work lining everything up right so that everything printed within the right margins, but it turned out with one thing and another, printing the envelopes wasn't going to be a good idea.  Which left putting clear labels on them, effectively ruling out finishing last night when we were printing.  Plus, it was a trick just to sort out what to print.  We did most of the invitations using this interesting experiment on RSVP-ing by website, but we did send a few with traditional response cards since there are a few people on our list who might have a harder time responding that way.  This meant we had to print out two entirely different sets of invitations and maps as well as the response cards.  It was a little tricky to get an accurate count that way and then keep everything in the correct piles, but Aaron's good at that sort of thing.

Today's mission was to finish up and get those invitations in the mail.

Normally on Tuesdays, Ben and I go visit Grandma Lila for lunch, but I appear to have a cold after the flu virus this weekend.  At least there was 24 hours in between.  But at any rate, it seemed a bad idea to take a cold virus into an assisted living home.  They actually have a sign posted on the door that says, "Please do not visit if you are feeling ill!"  So Ben and I decided that he would do that today without me.  As it turned out, we ended up not seeing each other today for the first time since May.  I hope it's not an experience we repeat any time soon, but at least we were very productive.

I got labels first thing this morning and went to Macomb Christian to give them the deposit.  Elizabeth called while I was there and said she had just gotten a call from J.C. Penney.  Apparently they were only going to hold the bridesmaid dresses for another two days.  They'd given us a call on Thursday, but we were thinking of getting them Sunday and then everyone was so sick we'd forgotten.  So I went and picked them up, then came home to work on the invitations.  But when I opened the labels, I found someone had pulled a very ingenious trick on Office Max: someone had used all the labels, put all the empty sheets back in the box, and sealed it up again so it looked like it wasn't opened.  Yikes!  A con like that would've never even crossed my mind.  I called and got the situation worked out, but that lost a bunch of time.  Between that and picking up the dresses, there were no invitations out in today's post.  

However, we did get the dresses and the shawls came in the mail, the invitations are all done, and Ben and Dad Turner got things arranged for the few tuxedo rentals we need.  That sounds like it was an adventure - Men's Warehouse basically arranges things so that you think you're paying one thing, but you really pay another; and unless you turn right around and start saying, "No, the coupon says $40, not $30!" you just end up paying a lot more than expected.  I'm glad Ben got that taken care of.  I've been kind of leery of Men's Warehouse ever since August, when they contacted me with similar offers and it was so confusing I literally talked to three different people and got three totally different stories on how it all worked and what things actually cost.  I have a tough time being assertive in those kinds of situations, but Ben's pretty good at it.

So.  I'm off to go put the invitations in the post office box.  Hey, it's not midnight yet, so it still is technically today.  Which means I finally succeeded in my mission.

Whew.