Thursday, March 19, 2009

Wait a Minute Mr. Postman...

I’m SO excited, and I have to share!

I’m almost done collecting addresses for the wedding!

Yea, me!

For those of you who have been around this merry-go-round before, you KNOW how truly time-consuming and aggravating this entire process can be…but I have to say that because of some well-organized family members and VERY cooperative friends, this has been a lot simpler that I had feared.

You see, I started the wedding database file in Excel on my computer LONG before I was actually engaged. It was one of those things that I thought that I could get a “head start” on so to speak without having the official ring on my finger. I mean, I didn’t have to tell anyone exactly why I needed their address, just little innocent me, asking for an updated address….whistle…whistle…looking inconspicuous…

Ok, maybe not so much. But still. When I first started this process it was because I realized that in my search for our venue, we needed to know about how many people we were expecting to have at the shindig. But I guess-timated as this could be a rough number. But then when I got serious about it, I really needed a more “solid” number.

Then I started trying to project costs and work on our wedding budget…and I needed REALLY solid numbers…I learned that there was a big difference in catering costs and rental costs between 100 people and 150 people. So it would matter if we included everyone or limited the budget a little bit.

In the end, we were able to find a caterer that worked within our budget without causing us too much strain (hopefully!) and we are not going to have to limit the guest list too terrible much. So once the guest list got opened up, I made sure to color code it so that I could take a glance and easily see whose address I was still missing. When I started this project, there was of course more yellow (missing addresses) than white lines…now I’m down to only 12 or 13 yellow lines!

I have to send a BIG shout out to FMIL on this one. She is SO organized! She had a database already created for her side of the family that they use and update regularly…and she was in the process of making one for FFIL side of the family, so within about a month of me mentioning that I would need addresses eventually she had two databases turned in to me. And in there was more information than I could ever ask for – names, addresses, phone numbers (including cell phones), kids’ names, birthdays and email addresses. Yep, I was excited to get those…and to see my name and little CC’s name already included on the database along with our birthdays…what a nice surprise!

Then with my mom’s help and friends responding to emails right away, I’ve been able to knock most of those addresses out this week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And of course, a BIG thank you to Mr. CC for getting on the phone/text with his buddies and getting their addresses for me! You rock, honey!

Now that I have all of this gathered, and can hopefully nab the remaining few addresses before the weekend, I should be able to finish printing the STD envelopes…not that I’ve ordered the post cards that go IN the envelopes yet…but they’ll be ready to mail once I get them in! LOL.

What's that? You want a sneak peak at the STDs??? Is that what I heard? Oh, allright, but keep it to yourself....
That's a picture of the front of the STD magnet that will be attached to the back of the postcard, and I promise to have a step-by-step instruction post within the next few days.

Is it odd that I had the magnets made and the envelopes printed before I ever ordered the postcards? Who else out there does things in reverse order? Come on, I can’t be the only one…

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