If You Build It, They Will Come

We had scoured the tomes and weren’t happy with what we had found and what it cost. We eventually wandered into a shop in Dayton, while visiting Christa’s parents. They had the usual tomes, but also had examples of custom-made invites on the wall. These drew our attention, because they allowed us to do it “our way” and match our invitations to our color scheme. I am still celebrating this fact.

We got to pick the size, folds, and layering. We could have gone crazy with the ink color if we wanted. But this approach also required decisions and put a lot more pressure, or perhaps second-guessing, on which font truly represented our love. Right at that moment, our entire relationship became two versions of the alphabet—upper and lower case—of some font master’s interpretation of destiny through printable pen strokes. It was like getting a list of all the movies we had watched together and having to pick a favorite, period, for the rest of time. This may be easy in some cases, and the font field can be whittled down quickly to a select few, but then you have to invest some time.

“Our love isn’t that curly,” Christa said.

The first time you hear it, you kind of cock your head and grimace like your ear just sucked on a lemon. Curious, yet confused, I uttered something like, “nu-unh.” But as my survival instincts kicked in, I adapted and was soon spouting phrases such as:

“That’s not my A.” Because I now own the letters of my name, and I will present them as I please.

I even think I rejected some fonts on their names alone. “What if someone asked? I couldn’t say that. It has too harsh a second syllable,” I said rejecting one.

“That’s too musical-theatre-programmish,” I said, as I rejected another, and, weirdly, Christa understood.

This invitation would be as unique as we believed ourselves to be, while still remaining legible to those visually challenged. No one will have seen our font for centuries, and then, with it and our color-schemed paper, all the love, of all the generations that came before us, would come bursting out, as each invitee opened the envelopes. Now I see the reason for two envelopes—it’s to hold all the love. I had my own Hallmark moment and no one to share it with.

Eventually, we got it down to four fonts and asked to have some samples printed up for a more accurate assessment of the virtues of each.

“Great. What do you want it to say?” our helper asked.

We were somewhat prepared for this, having already set a time, date, and location for the event and chosen some key phrases, such as “Feast and Merriment” to place on various pieces of the invite. But sadly, we did not take the time to type them out, so we dictated them, with intermittent deliberations, to the printer.

Then came the question.

“What do you want on the seal?”

Our proposed invite had a small seal on the front, a small square of paper, where we thought we would put our names and the date of the event. We had seen this on other invitations that we liked. We asked if that would work and what else we could do.

“Some people put a symbol, family crest, or some decorative thing; it really looks cool,” the help replied.

First a love font, now a symbol of our love; this was fantastic. Not only did our font scream love, but we could have a symbol that completely embodied our relationship as well. The first thought we both had was, “lobster!”

In brief, the lobster supposedly has a soulmate, or single reproductive partner (as they are called in the animal world), a partner for life to scuttle across the ocean floor with, until time or a predator consumes them. As with Ross and Rachel from Friends, we are each other’s lobster, that is, the one we are meant to be with. When such things are thought or blurted out in unison, you are either with your lobster, or you have watched entirely too many episodes of Friends together. It helps if you do the “pincher” at one another every so often.

“What are the choices, animals and everything?” we asked.

Smaller wham. Oh, only one book. Well, this should be easy. Then I saw the number 100,000 on the front and noticed that there were dozens of choices per page, unlike the multivolume history of the universe provided for the invitations. The catalog was opened to the symbol section for us, which contained various ivy branches and the like. We were considerate and took in some of the more recent choices people had made.

Then we asked, “But we could do anything in this book, right?”

“Sure. It will print in about the same size as you see on the page. We can adjust it some for balance and scale.”

“Thanks. Hopefully, we will find something.”

We quickly determined where the first lobster section might be. There turned out to be three or four. I liked the lobster drinking beer. She preferred something a little more discreet. Eventually we settled on a silhouette of a lobster with a perspective that looked straight down on his back.

As it turned out, we had room to put our symbol, not only on the front seal, but also twice on the reception card. Three symbols: “Weh-hoo!” At some point later, The MOB came to the conclusion that having a lobster on the reception card would imply to the troublemaking Uncle J that lobster would be served at the reception. He should know that no one who is into bondage serves lobster.

“How could our symbol of love be so misinterpreted?” we wondered.

We certainly didn’t want to disappoint guests with our dinner selections, so we went back to the drawing board.

When we returned to view the proofs, we took another turn at symbolizing our love. After skimming all the finer hazardous waste signs and overly animated animals, we returned to the symbol section. It contained all sorts of borders and stencils of various things. Then it passed before us.

“That one’s interesting,” she said.

I agreed. It had a “don’t really know what it is, but I like it” kind of cuteness about it. It was curvy, yet bold. It could almost be made into a heart or could pass as a butterfly. I wondered if I could see the symbol within the symbol, if I stared at it until my eyes blurred, but it didn’t happen. This was our explanation to the world:

“That’s cute. What is it?” someone asks.

“Oh, that’s our symbol.”

“But what is it?”

“OUR SYMBOL.”

“Oh, I see.”

To most people, it was probably image 1023 on page fifty-seven. But most lack vision. This was our symbol; this was our relationship: cute, curvy, yet bold, with no consensus on exactly what it was. It simply was, and we liked it. As an added bonus, there existed only a very, very slim chance that anybody would mistake it for a foreshadowing of the reception fare. Unless they had a hankering for peacock, but that would have been a real interpretive stretch.

Now everything was set. We placed the order for the cardstock, paid the deposit, and awaited the results—everything completed by July eighteenth.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival