Invite musings

First of all, Go read this! Meg over at A Practical Wedding asked for reader input on self-catering weddings, and I wrote up my experiences helping Scott's aunt in the kitchen for her wedding. Never dreamed any of my advice would be useful enough to make it onto the blog, but there you have it. I'm feeling this neat little kind of excitement...it's kind of akin to seeing my name in the newspaper. It's more exciting than a newspaper because it's actually words I've written (which I've only seen in print before when I wrote a letter to the editor about how horribly arts are represented in schools), but less exciting because it isn't a tangible thing that everyone I know will read (which is the case with my local paper) so all in all, it evens out to about the same level of excitement as seeing the old "with Mandy ____ playing so-and-so in such-and-such play".

So. On to the main topic of my post, which is invitations. Because tonight, I had an interesting thought. Now, let me preface this by saying I in no way intend to do this. I never rebel against the norm merely for the sake of being different; I just do things the way I like, and if that happens to be out of the ordinary, then fine. If it happens to be exactly what everyone else does, that's fine, too. However, I do understand that some things have a social importance attached to them that is legitimate and not just made up by the WIC. Now, with all that out of the way, this was the thought I had:

Why send invitations at all?

This is just my own personal life, but honestly...I really do believe that if we just sent out a big Facebook announcement and made the effort to call a few relatives who are not tech-savvy, we could skip invites all together. My way of thinking is this: if people really care about coming to our wedding, they will want to know when and where it is, and they will find out. People have already asked us the date and location a hundred times. We're getting married in a place where a really huge chunk of my friends spend most of their time anyway, at least during the summer show season. We have a few out-of-town friends coming in, but honestly...not that many, that I know of. Scott's family is sort of out-of-town, but they're only an hour away, so as long as we sent them directions, they could find it.

I know this wouldn't really work for us for a number of reasons. For one thing, we're going to HAVE to have RSVP cards to find out how many people are actually coming. For another thing, too many people in both our families would be royally offended if they didn't receive an actual invitation. But man, wouldn't it be NICE? Because honestly, I'm not even picky about who comes to the wedding. There are certain people I definitely want there, but for the most part, I'm already telling people, "Yeah, the amphitheatre seats at least 400, we'll probably just see who all shows up and then if we run out of cake, we run out of cake."

I really don't like the idea of invitations. I know some people love them, and love making them all cool and artsy and personal, but...I've never been big on them. When I graduated college, I bought my announcements for a total of $0.52. That was the total price for fifty announcements, no joke, because I found them on a forgotten top shelf at Staples and they were THAT far clearanced. The clerk who rang them up was totally shocked when the price rang up. Were they pretty? No. Were they exactly what I would have picked if price weren't a factor? No. Did they serve the purpose I wanted them to serve? YES.

Really, though, I know I'm going to print up some kind of wedding invitation, but...I'm beginning to wonder, is it viable to actually invite some of my more tech-savvy, less traditional friends via Facebook? Some of them might actually appreciate the fact that I didnt' waste any paper on them. After all, everything in my wonderful town is trying to go green and be eco-friendly.

I'm really tempted to do this now. Why waste stamps on people who check their Facebook more often than their snail-mail? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

And now, for a special treat (to myself, mostly) since I've got the amphitheatre on my mind and since I've had a pretty awesome day, here are some pictures of me onstage at the place we're getting married. This is also pretty relevant to this blog because I'm hoping the guy that shot all these photos will also shoot our wedding...if he ever gets back to me. I know where he lives, I'm gonna have to go beat on his door one day. I stole these off Facebook, but William Lawrence gets all the credit for shooting them.



I guess this photo is technically the FIRST time I got married on the amphitheatre stage: that's me as Hermia, another Scott (not my fiance) as Lysander, and Hamilton as Egeus, my father, giving me away!




One of my lovely bridesmaids as Helena and me as Hermia in the middle of our epic catfight onstage. My face looks so funny. I love it.



A much calmer shot of the two of us, and one of my favorite images of all the promotional ones that were taken.

And now, last but not least, possibly one of my favorite pictures ever, ever taken of me.....





As SOON as we all first saw this picture, the other Scott cried out, "THIS IS SPARTA!!!" and now no one can see it without yelling that. Including me. This picture is so not a pretty picture of me, but it makes me so darn happy every time I see it.