on the home stretch!

6 weeks, 180 invitations, and 2 post offices later... we are finally on the home stretch!!! this morning, my mother and i went to the lovely la mirada post office and that visit was a flop. when i handed the lady one of my boxed invitations, she weighed it again and told me the postage would be about $3! ummm, no. i already checked how much postage would be at the pasadena post office last week and was quoted $1.64, exactly 4 $0.41-cent stamps. and then she proceeds to tell me, it's because it wouldn't fit in the official slot on a card that she produced from underneath the counter. "see, it has to fit here," she says, as she pretends to shove my 1-inch high box inside the quarter-inch wide slot. and i just smiled sweetly and told her, it's okay, i'll just take it to another post office. somehow, i half expected the failure anyway.



so off i went to the pasadena post office near my work. i love that post office because it's in an old building and the fixtures look like the old post offices with wrought iron gates and that old architecture. and i love them even more because they're always very courteous and nice there. very un-postal service-like. so i got up to the window with my big box of 60-some little boxes, and i asked the lady to double check my postage. i held my breath as she says, "$1.64". whew! and i asked about the hand-cancelling of the postage and she said that they don't do that there. but they'll have to be hand cancelled anyway because they're boxes. they won't fit through the machine. score!!! i had her double check the boxes that were going to canada and the philippines. the one for canada actually cost less than the ones staying in the u.s., but the ones for the philippines were short from what the 1st post office told us. so i just added a few more stamps to the invites for the philippines and handed them to the lady. and off i went to work, with a much lighter load, both physically and emotionally.



i gotta say, it certainly could have been worse eh? any horrid post office experiences out there?

ah progress

making the invitations has been a long arduous process for me. i know it's partially my fault because i totally burned myself out too much in the beginning and then i just didn't want to look at the darn things for at least 3 weeks. of course, that put us totally behind schedule and now, we're scrambling. we wanted to get these babies out before this weekend so that we can hand deliver them to our friends and families during the showers. i must say, they did turn out really nice. i'm very happy with the new paper, and the redesign of the pages. what i loved most, was that i was able to print everything myself and it all looks just beautiful. my parents thought they were very professional looking and my dad looked shocked that i printed it all on my color laser printer.

so without further adieu, i'd like to present, my invitation booklet:







i'll be showing the whole package soon as well as how my fiance and i did the japanese binding.

invite progress

this is what i've been consumed with for the past 3 weeks. last week was pretty much a bust because i burnt myself out so much. so this week, i decided to focus on something else and let my husband-to-be take a stab at it.

this was my very first try. note the all-too-shiny side of the silk and the waayy too wide sinamay.



this was my 2nd try. thought i'd make the sinamay vertical. still too wide though, but at least you can see/feel more of the fabric.



the lovely back side. the main invite piece will end up here. i ordered it from the philippines and my cousin's bringing it back here next week. yayyy for no shipping charges!



the progress as of last week. each yellow post-it note represents 10. the stack is being flattened by the albums on top. the albums contain our engagement photos, by the way!



this week, henry tried his hand at it and he was great and just as meticulous about it as i was! you can't even tell which ones he did from mine!



my darling htb (husband-to-be) hard at work: