The Invitations

It was not until the spring following the July 2001 proposal that we began seriously planning a wedding. After coming up with rough numbers of about 150 family and friends (with an invitation list of roughly double that), we settled on a date: September 21, 2002. This selection was based on several considerations: it was a Saturday, it was equinox, Matt's dad's birthday was the day before, Kristin's dad birthday was the day after, tourist season would be near its end, fall colors should be at their peak, and it was a full moon to boot. Most of the more interesting and homey places in Fairbanks were unfortunately too small to accomodate so many. Therefore, Kristin started researching the larger hotels that typically are filled by tour busses. Finding nothing in Fairbanks that suited our tastes, she expanded our search geographically by contacting places in the Denali Park area, south of here. All of these hotels and lodges closed literally the day the last scheduled tour bus pulled out, which was September 16. One place told us that the Lodge in Talkeetna was staying open year 'round, so we booked a room there and checked it out.

Talkeetna is a neat place. The winter-time population is about 400, and most outsiders would say their's not much going on there in winter, if they actually showed up in winter, which they usually dont. Activity appears to pick up in spring, as mountain cilmbers begin camping near the local airport, waiting to get access to the western Alaska Range and Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. Later towards summer, tourists invade and begin buying trinkets and taking pictures the quaint half-collapsed or half-finished buildings that they likely dont realize were not built in the fake-rustic style, but actually are rustic. And inhabited. The Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge is a fancy new place that sits on a small hill outside of town with a fantastic view of the mountain range. It is an impressive structure and very photogenic inside and out. They have a hoity-toity restaurant with tasty food and over-priced wine, lots of clean and spacious rooms, were amenable to hosting a wedding on September 21, and most importantly Kristin absolutely loved it. So we booked it.

We informally put the word out on the date and location shortly thereafter, and asked our parents to send us lists of names and addresses. We began compiling the same ourselves. Kristin made an Access database with all of the information, including columns for whether invitations had been sent, RSVPs received, and number of people attending, so that we could constantly check the status. Custom says that you should send the invitations no sooner that 6 weeks prior to the wedding. Yet, due to the fact that people needed to take vacation time, purchase plane tickets, and make reservations we figured we needed to send them out sooner. We therefore decided to send out the invitations as early as possible. The next step was actually making the invitations.

Neither of us really understood or cared for the traditional invitations. The little pieces of tissue paper just didnt make sense when the invitations were printed by machine, not hand written with potentially sticky ink. And most invitations we found in catalogs were written in a font that was essentially illegible. This is not to say that the industrial invitations are inferior or bad necessarily, it is mainly that they just didnt reflect our personalities. Further, with the money we could save making them ourselves we could buy a new ink jet printer. We therefore decided to take advantage of the computer age and make our own, just as we wanted, and Kristin began researching options.

One problem with leading busy lives, traveling regularly, and trying to do everything in a way that makes sense (as opposed to simply the way everyone else does it) is that eventually one runs out of time. This is what happened to us, and it was by far the largest single stress event in our relationship thus far (about two years long). In the scheme of things, it was pretty minor, there was no yelling or harsh words, and outsiders likely wouldn't have noticed something wrong. But one day Matt voiced some frustration that our RSVP date was only 1.5 months away, and we still had nothing tangible for invitations (with the implication that Kristin was dropping the ball).This caused some unnecessary tension that lasted several days. It was revlieved somewhat by the flurry of activity that ensued, and the joint effort to layout a pleasant, informative, and pretty invitation was highly successful. However, tensions were heightened by the fact that the paper that Kristin had bought would neither track through Matt's work printer nor the one they purchased just for the invitations. Local printers likewise claimed that their equipment would likely produce unsatisfactory results. It was a pretty low moment, and we silently began listing the advantages of invitations from a catalog.

The situation was largely resolved when we discovered that by lightly taping the blank invitation card to a standard piece of paper that it would go through the printer just fine, albeit with slightly more labor. Purchasing full sized paper, printing two per sheet and cutting them, would have save effort. But in the end it only took a couple of days of half time effort to print them all out. The information page had a front and back side, which also took an hour or so of fiddling to make them line up when we ran the paper through the second time. Once in production mode, we could crank out about 20 invitations an hour.

Our goal was to create an invitation that largely reflected our own personalities. Kristin found handmade paper embedded with wildflower seeds can be planted rather than thrown away. We used this paper to announce the wedding, its location, and time. Kristin also purchased hemp paper and envelopes to use for an informational card, describing how to get there, info on Talkeetna, other activities planned, and the url for a web page we had created containing similar information (click here to access it). Matt modified a picture from a recent trip to add a personal touch to the design. The Access database that Kristin created was used to print mailing addresses directly on the envelopes to complete a clean and neat package.

The result was a beautiful invitation that we continue to receive compliments on, as well as surpised looks when we say that we printed them ourselves with a $100 printer.

Invitation:

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