Stamp it out

I love personal snail mail. I love sending it and I love receiving it. As a historian, I often wonder how future historians will write biographies without personal correspondence to provide insight into how people’s lives. Totally nerding out, huh?

For some reason I always notice the stamp someone uses as postage. Given that we’re working on getting our Save the Date Pamphlets ready for printing by early December, I started thinking about how would mail the pamphlets. I think we’ll end up with a 5.5” wide by 4.5” tall envelope, about the dimensions the pamphlet folds down to. Once we get the first one printed I’ll run down to the post office and weigh them in the envelope; hopefully they come in at the postage rate of a first class, 44 cent stamp. Because I’d hate to spend tons of moolah mailing this!

One of my sister’s many talents is her very nice handwriting. Mine is chicken scratch, and DJ’s is worse. Gretchen has agreed to spend a portion of her Christmas Break addressing our StD Pamphlet envelopes. If things don’t get to harried, I might run the envelopes through the printer first in order to put our return address on the upper left corner. Or do I want to put the return address on a sticker and put it on the back envelope flap? Hmm.. thoughts.

While I was at the post office this morning I noticed all of the different stamps available. Of course, it’s the holidays, so there’s a dearth of Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza and general holiday stamps out there. Since our Pamphlets will go out right after Christmas, I’d like the stamp to be non-Christmas-y. I asked the Post Office dude what stamps they have available, and he recommended I check out the online options.

So off to the United States Postal Service website I went. And look what I found:

There is of course, the classic 44 cent American Flag stamp. Maybe appropriate given our July 10th date's proximity to the Fourth of July.

Then there are more wedding and love themed stamps...

This one, waaaaayyyy to cheesy to even show DJ. Although it'd be a good inside joke. Early on we agreed that we didn't want any (in our mines) hokey posed ring shots. And when I had breakfast with our photographer, one of the first things she said was that she doesn't do the photo of the two hands, with rings, sitting on the bible... HAHAHAHAH... thank god. Because that's totally not us.

But I digress...

This one isn't bad. Again, the rings hanging off of the L. But it doesn't really flip my skirt up, you know?

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I like cake. Who wouldn't like cake on an invitation? however you'll notice that this is a 61 cent stamp... which adds 17 cents per envelope to the mailing costs. It's good to keep in mind in case our pamphlets and envloeps are overweight.

I kept clicking around and stumbled across an idea that I like. The USPS seells National Park stamps! What if we got a collection of them, from National Parks we'd each visited, and used them as postage to send out National Park Pamphlet-esque Save the Dates? This idea has merit... (are you reading DJ?)

The last idea I stumbled across was the 50's Fins and Chrome stamp collection. Since my dress is from the '50's... weell... maybe not, but they're cool!

Overall, I didn't see anything that was a decider, but we'll keep looking. Do you think I'm totally nerdy for even paying attention to this?