Kelsey: Requesting the Honor of Your Presence

Hold on while we agree on what it looks like to invite you

Julie and I go to a lot of weddings. This means that we have received a large number of wedding invitations. We have received invites covering the full spectrum from creamy, engraved, multi-piece suites, to cute postcards asking us to RSVP at the couple’s website. A couple years ago we were even invited to a wedding via colorful paper representations of tacos made by the bourbon-powered couple on their living room floor. All types of invitations are totally acceptable in our circles.

I knew professionally printed invitations were going to rank high on my budgeting wish list well before we ever got engaged. I wasn’t the sort of girl who dreamed about her wedding dress, but I’ve been coveting letterpress and artistic fonts since I knew there were such things. Additionally, I help couples figure out their wedding invitations in my part-time job at a paper store, so I felt some professional pressure/responsibility to put out some fancy paper goods associated with our own knot-tying, as well as to take full advantage of my employee discount.

The way my store runs custom printing, couples and individuals make an appointment to come in so that they can have the full attention and expertise of one of our salespeople. Currently, Julie is spread out over two jobs, and I’m working three-ish, so appointment scheduling is not one of our strong suits. When spring break at school gave me an opportunity, I jumped at it, and cajoled Julie into sitting down at the table with two planners and our household calendar in hopes of finding a time we could go in and see what we liked. We were finding a few times that would work for both of us when Julie looked up and told me, “I don’t really care what they look like. I care about the wording, but you just go in and pick out what you like? You know me, I’m not artistic.”

I took issue with in this statement. First, Julie is not crafty, but she has a strong sense of style. Second, I love this woman dearly. After four years, I know her pretty well. From the decoration of our house, to the design of our dog’s collars—Julie has an opinion on how things look. Our lives are better looking because of this, and I am grateful. If I picked out the invitations without her input, she would take one look at them, and say something along the lines of, “Well, invitations are more your thing anyway,” and then I would pull out my hair, and we would send them out anyway and we would never speak of the invitation debacle again.

I pointed all of this out to Julie, and when she still looked recalcitrant, I bribed her with a promise of lunch and sealed the deal.

When we arrived at our appointment my good friend and coworker had laid out the three big binders of suggested samples for us to look at, along with some samples of colors I had mentioned liking and wanting to tie into the wedding: coral, mint green, light grey, gold. Julie and I started to look through the binders and we were pleased to see that we liked a lot of the same things as far as fonts and designs, and we had a couple of options picked in no time at all. My friend walked us through the process of laying out our wording, and then we needed to pick colors. I happily picked up my stack of pastels and sparkles and fanned the papers out to Julie. “What do you think? Coral names? Mint envelopes? Or should we switch that up?” Julie’s face was not enthusiastic. I rephrased the question.

“I think it looks like an Easter card.” She finally said.

“An Easter card?” I replied.

“Yeah.” She affirmed. “I don’t really like pastels.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to count how many times I had mentioned the words “coral” and “mint green” in the weeks leading up to this moment, and finally deciding that perhaps we had different definitions of the term “pastel.” “Do you like any of the other colors they have?”

“Yeah!” Julie responded gleefully. “I really like peacock.”

“Peacock?” I asked. “You have so never mentioned anything like peacock ever before.”

“I like it!” she said. “I think it looks good with the grey too. And we could do hot pink envelopes.”

“Hot pink envelopes?” I repeated, “You don’t think pink envelopes for a two-bride wedding invitation are a little, well, obvious?”

“Do you think the envelopes are going to tip people off?” she said.

Somehow, in my fine paper dreaming, I had decided that this was my one chance for some fancy printing of my very own. Something designed for my own specific tastes, that I could pull out of the album and pet and sigh over forever. I had completely glossed over that, by default, not much about this wedding was going to be all mine. I was excited to order our invitations, and I had asked Julie to do this with me because I had professed to value her input and trust her judgment. Besides that, she is also getting married at this wedding. This was not my chance for my fancy paper goods—this was us making our wedding invitations. In that moment though? I just decided that I liked seeing Julie excited about something that I was excited about more than I liked any particular color combination. We finished the order for our peacock and gravel invitations with the fuchsia envelopes, and we went to lunch.

We picked them up a few weeks later and assembled one at our kitchen table so we could check out the finished product. They’re nothing like anything I ever would have picked out on my own—they’re much better. Which is, of course, why we’re getting married in the first place. Or as the song we’re walking down the aisle to says,  “And I’ve seen so much / More than I would see / Than if it was just me.”

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