No Manhood Necessary

“Hey there, it looks like you need a break,” said the woman in the lab coat.

“Yes, I do.”

I am very certain that the fact you said that means I will not be receiving said break at this moment. But I do trust a lab coat, and your pamphlets are pretty.

“The best advice I can give any bride, or groom for that matter, is to take some time to relax,” the lab coat continued.

“As soon as we get out of here, I imagine relaxation will follow,” I countered.

“That is why we are offering a special six-month membership in the Massage of the Month Club,” she pushed.

“We’re going to be late for the fashion show.” I attempted the courtesy exit.

“There is no obligation to receive your massage once you’ve paid for it.” She was a selling machine.

“I just learned of a death in the family.” I attempted to beg.

“What fiancée wouldn’t cherish the gift of a soothing massage to calm her nerves?” She tried to make me the hero.

“I swallowed the toothpick with my last cake sample and am bleeding internally. I only have seconds to live.” I pleaded for my life.

“We can do a three-month package, if you’re afraid of commitment, and she prefers smaller packages.” She had hit me below the belt.

“Now you’ve insulted me to the point that I’m enamored with you. Does that lab coat ever get hot…doctor?”
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

Certified Apology

Three weeks later the Crazies sent a letter to apologize. Just kidding. They sent a certified letter, copied to their attorney and CPA, stating that our outstanding account balance was going to be turned over to a collections agency if we didn’t respond in seven days. They cried a river about how they did so much for us that they didn’t bill for—and how apologetic they were about the difficulties. We thought an apology was the only thing they could or should do, but since the letter was marked “return receipt requested,” I really knew better before I opened it.

Apparently, these former ladies who lunch got to thinking about their misfortune, talked it over with their Bunco buddies, and decided that they had done nothing wrong and that they deserved to be paid for their labor and materials. On over two pages, they outlined their case for suffering and distress.

Vendors always say a lot of things to reassure you that they can do their job, while hinting at all the additional service they are going to throw in special for you. Simply tell them to write it down and sign it. That was our first thought. We should have finalized our contract, right after we got the invitations, and not given them a chance to cry over their spilled decaf nonfat Frappuccinos. Your self-esteem should be proportionate to your abilities. Please leave us alone. Where is that damn kangaroo?

My dad and brother are attorneys. I called them and asked, “What should we do here?”

As a result of their advice, I spent the good part of a day typing out our version of the events over four pages, which included counter-bullet-pointing their bullet points about hurt feelings and how normally everyone likes us. I, of course, quantified the miles traveled for auto depreciation, estimated the financial value of the emotional abuse, and noted that I didn’t even charge them for doing their job for them.

If I know my dad, he probably sent a two-sentence letter on the official-looking, law firm stationery, stating, “I think both parties can agree that the services rendered equate to the money already exchanged. I consider this matter resolved.”

We have not heard from them again, for which I am thankful. But I am somewhat disappointed that my four pages, filled with non-legalese jabs at their character and professional competency, didn’t get passed along.

Did I mention how effectively my kangaroo expels those trying to enter my jelly bean haven with a copyrighted double roo-foot frontal attack to the torso? The perpetrators explode backwards, quickly fading to a single perspective point and disappear to a faint popping sound.

As a footnote, once completed, the invitations we designed and half-manufactured were superb. Numerous people responded that they loved them, and a couple of our friends said the invitations made them want to get married all over again. Did this make it all worthwhile? Hell, no!

I believe Christa said it best: “Evil people like that make me not want to get married. It’s not worth the stress. They should go back to their country club and rot.”

It takes extraordinary circumstances for Christa to want another human being to rot. This is not in her character. You don’t want your wedding to be called off because the invitation makers are incompetent, but eloping made a lot of sense some days.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

Stamp of Approval

We had Crazy Inc. stuff the envelopes for us as a part of the assembly. Unfortunately, after demonstrations of their skill level, we didn’t trust them to have accomplished this task correctly. So we unstuffed and verified all contents and order. This included such tasks as determining which invitations were assembled in the most precise manner and sending those to the people most likely to retain them for posterity, such as The MOB and The MG. I apologize to those who read this and feel slighted by having received a 95 percent good, but not perfect assembly; we had hoped you wouldn’t notice, with nothing else to compare it to.

At 3:45 p.m., on Saturday, the invitations were a week beyond the acceptable ultimate last day they should have been mailed, and we needed to get them en route to our guests. I hit the USPS website and pulled up the Love stamp. I enlarged, printed, and offered the design to my bride-to-be. She approved. We headed off to our local post office branch.

Upon arrival, we said, “Hi. Yes, wedding invitations. Late. Evil printers. How much postage do we need?”

“Sixty cents,” was the reply.

The essence, the eternity, the all-encompassing documentation of all we hold true and cherish, the colors, the font, the symbol, all weighed about two ounces, a little depressing, yet affordable to mail.

“We need eighty Love stamps, like this one we enlarged and printed for your reference.”

“What we have is in the case,” said our friend in blue.

The Love stamp was not present in the case. Surely, you reserve a supply of one hundred or more in a velvet-lined gold safe behind the counter. These are the preferred stamps of wedding invitations countrywide.

“Do you know of a branch that has them?” we asked.

“They probably have them at the main branch downtown, but they close in fifteen minutes.”

“These need to be mailed today. Can you call and ask?”

“They sell stamps at Kroger and some banks. You could try there,” was their reply.

I went through the white pages and called Kroger (who only sells $.37 stamps) and some other possible stamp retailers to no avail, as all the banks were on banking hours. At the same time, we learned from our helpful post office workers that we were apparently in between model years on the Love stamps, and therefore inventory was low citywide, but they still might have some at the main branch.

I glanced at Christa. “These have to go out today,” she said.

“Then we have to use the flower-bouquet stamps,” I replied.

The $.60 flower-bouquet stamp was lovely and had many admirable qualities, but it did not say Love on it.

“Put them on pretty,” Christa said.

This statement implied that, since we didn’t have a stamp that said Love, we would have to hope the receivers inferred Love by the painstaking effort we put into locating and centering the non-Love stamp. There was a chance that, without an exquisite stamp presentation, given the absence of Love spelled out, some people might forgo opening the invitation, thereby rendering all of our design and labor efforts useless and futile.

Fifteen minutes later, we walked out of the post office, our invitations at the mercy of our friendly postal workers. I smiled and felt a bit of relief. I turned. Her expression was a little more sour.

“We finally got our invitations out. Aren’t you happy?” I asked.

“Everyone knows that wedding invitations have the Love stamp on them. People will look at them and go ‘What is this?’ We should have ordered the stamps months ago. We are so stupid.”

My brain registered a warning light. I needed to respond in the right way, else something bad would happen.

My first thought was practical: “We didn’t know how much postage was going to be a few months ago.” Not good enough. C’mon you can be supportive.

My second thought was defensive: “I’m not stupid. You should have thought of that. You have all the bridal magazines.” Need I explain this one?

Next I mentally considered disbelief: “Sweet Jesus, woman. You need to calm down. They’re just stamps.”

I quickly realized that her ideal dream wedding was conceived, given life, and nurtured a time long before I came into the picture and that, at times, I was probably more disposable then her wedding vision. I didn’t want to say anything to reinforce that perception.

Finally, something positive and credit-deferring presented itself, and I went for it.

“I have never noticed or recalled a stamp on a wedding invitation I’ve received, and when they open ours and see the beautiful invitation you’ve created, no one will be able to remember a thing about the stamp.”

I said it and nothing exploded.

Let this be a lesson, children. Never judge your mail on the color and orientation of the postage; it is what’s on the inside that matters.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

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