Wedding progress continues. Our invitations arrived last night. They are old-school engraved invitations and the company sent us the copperplate as a keepsake. It's actual copper, in case you thought that was just an industry buzzword. There's another plate that was used for the response cards and a smaller one for the return addresses. Don't drop everything and go rushing out to your mailboxes looking for your invite, though - I'm a couple of steps away from that.

I'm waiting on sealing wax (told you it was old-school!) which is supposed to be delivered today. Then I have to go over the invitation list one last time, buy stamps for the response cards, cart the whole batch of supplies to Cheryl's house, help her put each little package together. Cheryl is calligraphying the invitations [is 'calligraphying' a word?], so when you see the lovely handwritten envelope, it's to her credit, not mine. Then finally I shall mail them all, after first taking one to the post office for weighing in order to determine if one first-class stamp is adequate. It's amazing how many steps go into the one project of "invitations" - I get tired just thinking about it and I'm not even the one doing the bulk of the work. Cheryl's also probably going to handle the sealing-wax part; there is a conspiracy in my family to keep me away from flames and combustibles after that unfortunate exploded-cow incident during my college days. Apparently I'm never to be allowed to live that down. It wasn't even that large a cow.

I worry a lot about the guest list - I don't want to insult someone or hurt their feelings by not inviting them, but I worry about people thinking I'm just trolling for gifts. Like this one guy I know, we worked at the same company for 5 or 6 years. He's close friends with The Boss, we've stayed in touch, I talk to him a couple of times a year and exchange e-mails every few weeks, but last year he moved from the Atlanta area to Florida. So I'd like to invite him and I'd love it if he came, but I wonder if he'd get an invitation and think, "What the hell? She knows full well I'm not flying up, renting a car, spending all that time and money to be at her wedding for a couple hours. This is a gift-grab and I thought she had better manners." But he might not think that at all, he might wonder why, considering that we've been friends since 1990, I didn't include him in something as major as my wedding (he knows about it & when it is through The Boss, the date impacted some other plans they were making). Maybe all he'd think is, "Cool, this is a good reason for a trip to Atlanta to see this group of buddies." What do you guys think?