Bride-to-Be Blogger Danielle: An Invitation Party

Danielle, hard at work.

This past weekend, my maid of honor and one of my bridesmaids came to visit to help me with my wedding invitations. They both live in the New York area, and I hadn’t seen either of them in months, so it was a weekend to catch up and spend time together, in addition to stuffing all the invitations.

My maid of honor, Melissa, arrived first at 30th Street Station. I picked her up, and we had lunch before we got down to work labeling envelopes. Tim and I ordered custom-made return address labels from VistaPrint, and we decided to use them for the response card envelopes, in addition to our invitation envelopes. Melissa and I lined up the labels and knocked out 100 response envelopes and 100 invitation envelopes in about an hour. She was a machine! I was amazed at how quickly we got through them.

The labels, all lined up and ready to go.

I had ordered blank stationery from Exclusively Weddings, and printed all the cards in advance — the invitations, the response cards, and another insert with directions on one side and a note about attire on the other. (This card was important, since our wedding is going to be a little informal.) Melissa and I had just started stuffing the invitations when she saw a typo on that card! So we headed upstairs to edit it, re-print and cut the paper. I was halfway through cutting (with Melissa stuffing), when bridesmaid Chrissie arrived.

After we finished stuffing, we broke for a snack, then sealed up the envelopes and set them aside. I wanted to address the invitations myself just so I could take a look at all of them and make certain everything was correct. Tim (who had made himself scarce all day at the Philadelphia Craft Beer Fest) came home and we all had dinner together before Melissa left to catch her train home. Apparently everyone finds each other very funny, and we laughed a lot during dinner. Chrissie spent the night, giving me some special alone-time with her at brunch the next morning, too. (There was a lot of eating this weekend — I think that having my two best friends visit was a good reason to neglect my diet.)

The next day I addressed all the envelopes and we got them in the mail Monday morning. It felt great to have all the invitations out the door, but I also felt reinvigorated by the weekend with my girlfriends. Melissa and Chrissie are my two closest friends, and I don’t know what I would do without them. They’ve both been there for me for all the important things in my life, both good and bad, and I’m so glad they’re both going to be by my side when I get married. I love them both, even though they are completely different from one another! (Both make me laugh uncontrollably, but in different ways.) I was glad that they had a chance to spend time together while we worked on the invitations. I miss having them close to me, and I appreciate both their assistance and our time together. I hope that once I am married, I will have a little more time to visit with them, and others that I love and miss!

Are your friends and members of the bridal party helping with any wedding preparations? Has your social life been impacted by your impending nuptials? What are you doing to connect with those close to you at this special time in your life?

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