mailbox love brought to you by wedding mad lib RSVP cards

So I got married in September last year, and I have a handful of things that I've been meaning to write about since then... But life is crazy. And the crazier it gets, the more I realize how much I will regret not writing about it. So you can expect a handful of wedding related posts here in the near future. (Followed by house posts, because we've been slowly updating our entire house since we bought it!).

Weddings are crazy.  Planning is nuts.  The day is a blur.  Recovering from a wedding is equally insane.  But it helps to have lovely friends to help you along the way. 

Throughout the entire process, I found myself constantly shocked at how expensive things are.  You'd think I would have become more numb to how expensive everything is, but I think I just became more and more shocked.  Especially invitations.  Hellooooo, it's a piece of paper that lives on the fridge for a month or so and then goes into the trash.  And people spend hundreds of dollars on them.  The cost of stamps alone made me wonder if an Evite was an appropriate substitute... 

So we made our own.  I designed them on Microsoft publisher.  And printed them out.  Enter a lovely group of friends who helped cut, stamp, tape, assemble, and address our approximately 170 invitations. 

If you're a bride (or ever even considering getting married) then please, join Pinterest (I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.  I'm sure you're already aware.  But just in case you aren't...  Just do it.  We found so many ideas on Pinterest that shaped our wedding).  Searching for invitation inspiration, I stumbled upon a picture of a bride who did mad lib RSVP cards and I was immediately in love with the idea. In love enough to spend the money on return stamps (they were just post cards, so that helped). 

Our biggest struggle was finding the right wording for an RSVP mad lib.  We ended up using various ideas from a variety of examples we found via google.  Once we decided on the word, I spent a little while making a few designs and finally came up with something the hubster (fianster at the time) and I both liked.

If you are interested in a free download of the template, please leave a comment in the comment box with your email address. You'll have to have Publisher for it to work, but I'd be happy to explain the easiest way to print it out, what kind of paper to use, etc... It's pretty simple! The photo is super pixelated, the .pub file will be much smoother.

I was nervous to send them out (It's TERRIFYING to send out wedding invites.  Mostly because I kept thinking that perhaps there was a typo...) because I was  a little apprehensive about how people would respond.  Overall, people loved them.  Yes, there were a few party poopers who either (a) didn't get it or (b) didn't care enough to fill it out.  But that was maybe 2% of responses.  The rest were awesome.  Seriously, every trip to the mailbox provided at least a few laughs for at least a few weeks. 

We wanted to display them at the wedding to show everyone how awesome they were.  So we used peg board and ran some string through them with mini little clips.  We made a "Wall of Fame" devoted to ones that we thought were particularly funny and deserved an award.  Throughout the chaos of the wedding, the photographer didn't get a chance to snap any photos of them.  So unfortunately, I can't show you what they all looked like together at the actually wedding... but I've been told by many an attendee that they were fun to read during the cocktail hour.  And the best part...?  We put them into a photo album, to cherish forever.

Enjoy.

The photo album.

 

We recorded a few stats based on all of the responses.  We posted this on the wall of RSVPs, calling it The Wall of Fame.

 

Funniest advice/message we received: "I'm not qualified to give advice in such matters."

We received 3 RSVPs for 2.5. This one was for the baby she was growing at the time! Another was for a dog (who never did make an appearance at the wedding) and another for a baby.

 

Because who doesn't want a "straight up thug life"?

Hands down best response to attend/miss: "awkwardly insert myself into all of your coupley moments at"

Have you been toasted from the Swiss Alps...?  Because I have.

Jabberwock, anyone…?

At least all of the important information was in tact.

Unfortunately, Peyton did not win us a Superbowl.  Maybe next year.

This one was added to the board at the wedding.  If we had received it earlier, it obviously would have won an award.

And then, there was this...

 

My brother's response easily won our favorite.  He made his own. And clearly dedicated a decent amount of time to doing so.  Read if you have some free time and would like to laugh (he also officiated the wedding...  That's a key piece of info to understanding most of the letter.  And he has knee problems, so that explains the percocet).

If you're considering doing mad-lib style RSVP cards...do it! 

maggie.
places we seek inspiration.