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
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival
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