Blurry Is a State of Mind

We thought our legwork was essentially complete on this specific task, but not everything went as planned. In a call from the printer, we learned that the paper had arrived, but they were having problems running the RSVP postcard through the printer. In short, the RSVPs were “95 percent good, but not perfect.” Could we confirm that we would be OK with 95 percent?

What is 95 percent? What aspect of “perfect day” is not computing? Is that like saying, “Timmy has his flatulence problem ‘mostly’ under control?” Why were we the exception to the rule? Was it OK to be almost perfect?

Clearly, our wedding was meant to be the perfect day, and you can’t be perfect when you start out at 95 percent, two months earlier. Obviously, this needed to be dealt with in person, so off Christa went. It was like driving an hour to see an accident victim whose condition was gradually deteriorating.

She hit the highway to see the innocent child we had nurtured through so many tough times, under the pressure of finding the right font, cardstock, and symbol. Our RSVP card would now be the habitual butt of jokes among the cool, professionally printed and displayed invites.

“Hey four eyes, if you had a better prescription, the world wouldn’t be so blurry,” I heard one say.

Our phone rang.

“Hi. We wanted to touch base and say the direction cards can’t be printed on two sides either. Our printer has kind of stopped really…working well,” said our not-helping-as-much helper.

Sweet Jesus. I paid you to print, not inform me of your technical hiccups along the way. I offered the printer this solution: “If it remains legible, just print it on one side.”

“Oh, I think we can do that. I’ll give that a try,” she replied.

I expected to give approval on design concepts, such as our symbol, but assumed some issues would be solved independent of me. I had to pass this along, as Christa was driving up to see them, meeting Angie there.

I did not experience the next events firsthand, so I hope I can do them justice. Christa met Angie at the print shop to view the RSVPs. They both noticed that the RSVPs were not only a bit blurry, but off-center as well. This was ascertained by the almighty resource of human vision. The retort was, “Our publishing software says it’s centered.”

“Between the software and the paper, something shifted. What is in front of me is not centered,” Christa replied.

The shop was in a state of confusion; someone was not satisfied with just good enough. They offered to order a new printer part, which would arrive in one week, and stated they would “hope for the best.” Should we dare to dream that this great task of ordering and, cross your fingers, installing a new part would fix this great blurred beast?

Upon assessing the capabilities of our newfound questionable staff, Angie advised them to outsource the printing to an actual print shop with more professional equipment, not some local with a DeskJet. Their representative was quite irate at the implication that they couldn’t handle such a simple task and backed up their position with the convincing statement: “We are a small shop. I wouldn’t even know who to call.”

“Regardless of size, it’s your job to provide us with the product and service we agreed upon,” Angie said. This seemed like such sound business sense. I wish I didn’t know where this was heading.  (The two people we dealt with previously will now be known as Crazy 1 and Crazy 2.)

So a week passed, and Angie and Christa returned to see what had become of our glorious invitations. Upon entering the establishment, Angie and Christa were accosted by Crazy 1, who stated that we were collectively making her life difficult by demanding a centered and 100 percent clear final product. We were too hard to please, and it was the printer’s fault. The last printer’s job description I read had the word “printing” in it. A true craftsman doesn’t blame her tools.

Imagine going through child labor, then having the doctor hold up your baby and say, “He’s almost 100 percent perfect. His eyes are a little bit over on the left side of his head; oh, but nothing like a flounder. His head will always be a little blurry, if you look at it closely. I don’t know what you expected. Your birth canal is only approved up to six-pound babystock.”

A few days later, we got a message from Crazy 2, the owner. She said that we couldn’t go with the red RSVP cards; they were ruining her printer. We would have to go with a less durable paper in ivory. Christa returned the call and asked whether Crazy 2 was aware of Crazy 1’s previous behavior.

She replied, “I don’t know what to say about that. We need to move on.”

She offered us the invitations at cost for our trouble. At this point, we thought we might end up mailing lined index cards with “Please come” handwritten on them. Christa couldn’t speak to them anymore; she said we’d call back and hung up the phone.

We decided to take on the job ourselves. I called them back to tell them so. This needed to be over and done with. We sent The MOB to pick up the cardstock and proofs on copy paper. The MOB was reassured by Crazy 2 with the sentence: “Christa’s just a typically stressed out bride.”

The MOB gave her a little parting shot of: “You know where it’s coming from.”

How could this behavior be anything but aggravating, especially to a bride-to-be?

Back in Cincinnati, with the RSVP cardstock in our possession, we sat down to figure out how to print the Everest of stationery. Our collective genius stewed for, minimally, ten seconds, maybe twelve.

“Let’s look up printers in the Yellow Pages.”

It was like cold fusion in our table-less dining room. We used a book with phone numbers organized by professional trade to find someone to call regarding printing. Next to earning a college degree and winning second place in the third-grade spelling bee, this was my greatest intellectual achievement. It is easily said but hard to accomplish, letting your fingers do the walking. I have considered adding this moment to my resume to illustrate my ability to make the impossible possible and show that, through shear mental fortitude, I am worthy of middle management.

For simplicity’s sake, we found a professional printer about two miles from our stationery provider. They said they could do the job overnight, for roughly the same price as the Inkjet services offered by Crazy Inc. We drove the cardstock back up and told Crazy 2 that she could pick the cards up the next day, as they were still in charge of assembling them.

Let us pause and examine what could have happened. Crazy Inc. could have learned that they couldn’t print the cards, found a larger-scale printer in the Yellow Pages, which some would say is an arcane but still abundantly available resource. Then they could have taken ten minutes, total, to drop off the cards and pick them up next day, without ever mentioning a word of it to us. Instead, we made four two-hour round trips to a store that yelled at us, needed us to solve their problem, and made July, our birthday month, very stressful and agonizing.

Wait. I’m sorry. We still don’t have our invitations yet. They still had to retrieve the RSVPs, assemble the pieces, and have the addresses handwritten on the envelopes. We were already past our deadline.

We were notified by phone that the invitations were ready on a Friday afternoon. We called The MOB and told her to call Crazy Inc. to make pick-up arrangements. Over the course of our dealings with them, Crazy Inc. had pledged to remove certain invitation costs, due to the numerous problems and delays. When The MOB called, they told her the remaining invoice balance, which reflected very few of the discounts we had been offered. The MOB said they should give us the cards at cost, given the hardship endured, mostly by Christa.

Crazy 2 replied, “I would rather throw the invitations away.” She said that she didn’t want to see any of our family’s faces again and that we were her worst customers ever.

The MOB said, “Please don’t do that.”

Then Crazy 2 started yelling, “What would it take to make you happy; do you want them for free? Is that what it would take?”

“It would be all right if you gave them to us for the amount already paid,” The MOB replied.

Crazy 2, still yelling, said, “If you have the nerve to come and get them, after all the work we’ve done, they will be on the steps.”

Yes, they were left outside. The MOB had to close up the church she worked at and rush over to save our invitations. They yelled at The MOB over the phone, while she was working in the house of the Lord, and forced her to evacuate in order to retrieve our invitations.

I still get agitated thinking about those events, and even now, I get so angry I must visualize my emotional escape, a kangaroo with rabbit-soft fur and a pouch full of jelly beans with just enough room for me inside. The snuggly warmth and sugar high create an explosion of colors, as I daydream of a better place.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

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

The Universe in an Envelope or Two

Invitation-selling stores are more common then I realized, and they all have the same basic items—and people for that matter.

“Hi. We’re looking for wedding invitations,” we said upon entering.

“Great. What are you looking for?” the associate replied.

“Something somewhat unique, but formal enough for The MOB to show off at church.”

“Have a seat. We have lots of wonderful choices. Look through and mark the ones you like.”

Wham! What appeared to be the unabridged history of the universe landed in front of us.

“This is one of many. Take your time,” she added.

I looked around and saw that there were numerous universes to explore.

“Mark what you like and we can price them out at the end,” she concluded and walked off.

I was in the dark regarding the price of invitations, and Christa, to some extent, was also. We didn’t think the numbers would grow so fast. Dining à la carte is a blessing and a curse. You pay for exactly what you get, but to be full, gloriously full, the check ends up bigger then you think.

“We have found four we like,” we said.

“Let’s see. Oh, that is nice. The invitation paper is two dollars. Printing is fifty cents per invite, and the printing set-up fee is twenty-five dollars total,” our helper replied.

“So, two hundred and seventy-five dollars for one hundred,” I stated.

“Did you intend on having a reception?” she asked with only a hint of contempt.

“Yes.”

“Well, how will they know? You need a reception card.” Our assumed IQ kept dropping.

“OK.”

“Those are seventy-five cents each, with a twenty-five-cent printing fee per card,” she stated.

“So three hundred and seventy-five dollars for one hundred.”

 “Do you want to know who is coming?” she asked.

“Those we invite, hopefully,” I replied.

“Yes. So an RSVP card will be needed. The matching one is also seventy-five cents with a twenty-five-cent printing fee. Oh, let us not forget the envelope—fifty cents each, plus postage.”

“All right, five hundred and twenty-five dollars, plus postage. What was our budget again?” I asked, looking at Christa.

Nickels were pouring, like the sands of an hourglass, directly into my clown pants, sinking me ever further into budgetary no man’s land. Gasping for air, I began to understand the tomes, as the weight of the universe was being unloaded on us, one nickel at a time. (Our wedding had three sponsors: my parents, Christa’s parents, and us, so I wanted to ensure that each sponsor got nickel-and-dimed equally. I wanted a corporate sponsor, but none stepped forward. I personally feel that I could have been more persuasive, but Mr. Puddy insisted on doing the talking. His demand for equal feline representation was often the deal breaker.)

“And will your guests simply infer the way to get to your wedding and reception?” our helper continued, at this point addressing the village idiots.

“I suppose we could tell them,” I offered.

 “On some exquisite linen paper, I hope.” She continued to refine us. I nodded.

“Indeed, forty cents per sheet and twenty cents for printing. Now to wrap it nicely, we have the French-fold envelope, fifty cents each,” she added.

“And postage!” I exclaimed.

I had anticipated her move and had struck first. She wanted to charge us, but I said it first. Who’s the big winner?

“Oh, sir. That is simply the envelope for the invitation.”

“Exactly,” I stated, confident in my comprehension of envelopes.

“For the outside envelope, we recommend a more simple ivory, with ivory tissue. Fifty cents per envelope and tissue, postage should be seventy cents. I can also recommend an excellent calligrapher for two dollars per envelope,” she finally concluded.

I was swimming in the madness, but with clown pants full of nickels, the prospects weren’t good for staying afloat. Our middle-of-the-road invitation had blown past our price expectations to the point where even I had lost the ability to keep a running total.

An envelope for an envelope. How can you state it so matter-of-fact, when it is so insane?

“Well, we are going to have to think about it,” we said, and made a beeline for the door.

We both knew that the wedding invitation budget wasn’t anywhere near four figures. We called The MOB to go over what we had learned. She had spoken to some friends at church and learned that invitations were a bit more expensive than our budget seemed to indicate, and she reemphasized that we had better beat Uncle J, or she wouldn’t hear the end of it. It took us a little while to let the new budgetary picture sink in.

This led us into the single greatest misadventure of the preparation.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

INVITATIONS - Sticking It to Uncle J

Amid the Save the Date bondage confusion, Uncle J claimed we had sent some of the cheapest invitations he had ever seen. The MOB was not happy to hear this.

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I gave him an earful,” she said.

It so happened that Uncle J’s nephew was getting married that summer and had invited The MOB. She showed us the invitation and said, “What’s so great about this? I’m sure yours will be much prettier.” Needless to say, the budget on that particular item got a lot more wiggle room. So the hunt began.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival