Give the People What They Want

E and I finally sent out our wedding invites last week.  Neither of us is really into fancy paper and we didn't have professional invites in the budget so we did the whole thing ourselves.  It worked out quite well!  We're lucky to have similar aesthetics (modern, colorful and simple) and complimentary DIT wishes (me: awesome words; E: spray paint!)  It also didn't hurt to have most of a ream of white cardstock just lying around, because I am a genius and cannot read labels when buying printer paper at Staples.*

We probably could have made the response cards out of cardstock as well, but I was nervous about USPS rules (and unable to measure .007 inches to be certain) so we bought pre-perforated cards from Staples.  As you can see, E spray-painted them in four different colors, which was a big pain in the ass for him but turned out AMAZING.

Despite these successes, I do have a confession.  The poem I chose, e.e. cummings' "love is a place,"

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds 

is slightly inaccurately quoted on the invite.  Though an American poet, cummings must have been feeling his expat oats when he wrote this one because used the British spelling of "skilfully" in line 9.  Perhaps the omitted "L" is intended to lighten and psychologically shorten the word so we can move on to the more crucial "curled."  Then again, a quick survey indicates that he generally preferred the one-L spelling, as he uses it in several other poems - indicating that it was perhaps more a lexical default than a conscious creative choice.

In any case, SCREW YOU, CUMMINGS, I added the "L." Apparently I am more worried about people thinking I typo-ed my own damn invitations than I am about integrity to his artistic vision.  It is probably convenient that I don't work in the literature field anymore, because whatever faith in literature I had that hadn't been destroyed by my own laziness, self-critical tendencies, or ongoing brain-atrophy just got dealt another blow.  On the other hand, I still have enough English major blowhard in me to plaster a big ol' e.e. cummings poem on our wedding invites . . . so there's that . . .


*We have still not bought actual printer paper.  Airplane passes, Groupons, maps - they all get printed on cardstock.  For over a year now.  I am nothing if not a lazy bastard.