SWAK: Sealed With A KILLER?!?

Still waiting to get some pictures back, so I'll start the recaps soon... but in the mean time, I want to share with you a story that I can laugh at now, but was pretty FURIOUS at the USPS at the time...

I had taken a sample invite into the post office to get a price estimate before I ordered all of the paper to create the invites.  They told me that I was right on the edge of needing the 45 cent vs. 65 cent stamp.  So I went ahead and ordered and created the invites (thanks, Kristin for all your help with the invites!).  It was definitely a labor of love, but that's another blog post!

Just so you know, here's a sample of the invite:

Ignore the white-out... I didn't want to post someone's address. :o)

And there are MANY different stamp designs to choose from for 45 cents (a.k.a Forever Stamps), my favorites being these:

Bonsai Trees... pretty!

Cherry Blossoms on the National Mall... Pretty!

Flower painting... Pretty!

Love Ribbon (the red would clash, but still)... Pretty!

Pixar Movie Buddies... Cute and Fun!

Wedding Roses (the 45 cent stamp for invites)... VERY PRETTY!

And the 65 cent stamp is also known as the "wedding stamp":

I would be OK with any of those... really, I would!

So imagine my surprise when Jason and I took a final invite to the post office to find out if we needed to do the 45 cents or the 65 cents, only to be told we needed to do 85 cents because we "weren't just mailing paper" according to the (male) USPS worker.  I took the invite out and SHOWED him that it was only paper, and he still said we needed the 85 cent stamp.  Fine.  150 invites, 20 cents more per invite.  That's an extra $30.  Whatever.  I'll pay it just to get these dang things mailed.

Then he showed me the 85 cent stamp:
Yep, those would be Birds of Prey.  Nothing says "Love" and "Wedding Invite" like deadly birds.  According to Wikipedia, those lovely beaks you see in the stamps are for "tearing flesh."  Yep.  Our wedding invites were going to be stamped with some freakin' flesh-tearing, winged predetors.

Not only were they more expensive, but the brown birds clashed with the black/white/pink/gray color scheme of our invites.

I was on the verge of tears.  No, this couldn't be.  I asked the guy if he had any other prettier stamps.  When he asked why, I flat out told him, "Because those birds are ugly."

His response, "Well, I kinda like them."  Whatever.  Typical male.  They are ugly and definitely NOT meant to be put on ANYONE'S wedding invitation!

Thank goodness Jason was there.  He asked the guy to show us another option.  He came back with two of the red love ribbon stamps.  So now we are looking at 90 cents per invite.  That's almost as much as I spent to create them!

I was welling up with tears again.  Jason just took the invite back and told the man we would think about our options.  I was NOT going to ruin our beautiful invites with those ugly birds of prey, and I definitely didn't want to pay double our original estimate for freakin' stamps.

Jason said I looked like this as I drove home:

Cruella DeVil from 101 Dalmations

Don't worry, there's a happy ending to this story.  We went to another post office the next day where we had a lovely female USPS person to help us who said we could do the 65 cent wedding stamps.  When I asked her if it was too thick or stiff, she said it was fine, and we didn't need to go for the more expensive stamps.  We preceeded to buy the stamps, and our beautiful invites got put in the mail to all of our guests with the beautiful wedding cake stamp.

The moral of the story: 
Get a female USPS person to help you.  Men just don't understand you don't want people to associate your beautiful wedding (and the invites you spend days assembling) with those ugly Birds of Prey.