danke schön, merci and thank you

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

There have been many pleasant surprises I've experienced since being engaged.

One, I still haven't tired of looking at my ring. I can now type without getting distracted every fourth word -- which is a plus when you kind of write for a living -- but I still get a little frisson of happiness every time I remember I'm wearing it.

Two, there are far more people than I ever expected who love to talk about weddings. This is great because, I TOO love to talk about weddings. Also, I blog about it.

Three, we have already gotten more presents than Suri Cruise gets for Easter. Notice I'm not saying Christmas because, let's be honest, she still has us beat there.

Point three leads me rather circuitously to the (not quite sharp) point of this post: Thank you notes.

It should surprise exactly no one that I have a soft spot for stationery. I love seeing my name written in cursive. I love monograms. A little part of my heart still breaks every time Mike declines to have his embroidered on his button-downs a la Sam Seaborn. But, on the bright side, I have an eternity to convince him of the error of his ways!

Anyway, I was and am quite excited to have couples' stationery. I had originally had fantasies of custom-made calligraphic monograms or perhaps getting my own coat of arms like The Middletons in preparation for my own royal nuptials. However, I was impeded by a few roadblocks: One, contrary to my own beliefs, I don't actually have a royal title? Ugh. Two, even with all of my advanced planning, time was actually an issue here.

Our friends and family have been beyond generous and have also been extremely punctual with the gift-giving. This means we received awesome pizza stones, blenders and cake testers before we actually had any of our wedding stationery figured out (For the uninitiated: you can buy "suites" of paper containing matching invites, thank you notes, menus, currency with my face on it, etc.).

So yes, we could have gone anywhere, even CVS, and picked up a ream of notes to send out. But this homey don't roll like that. But I also wasn't about to a) pay for a rush order b) spend an inordinate amount of time planning a card that most people are going to chuck out a few minutes after they read it. [I just realized there are a lot of lists in this post. Anyway.]

The happy medium? Wedding Paper Divas. I have been an enormous fan of their sister site, Tiny Prints ever since some of my friends in PR started working with them. It's really a brilliant system. You can sign up for a membership and pay a very reasonable flat-rate per card for the whole year. They can then ship the card (birthday, thank you, whatever) directly, meaning you don't have to worry about scrounging around for stamps. And the cards are AMAZING. Totally customizable. You can ask all of my bridesmaids!

Wedding Paper Divas specializes, obviously, in all things wedding. While they don't really deal in one-off cards like Tiny Prints, they have an amazing selection of anything nuptial-related for really awesome prices. In about five minutes I found a customizable monogram/name combination thank you card that was simple and absolutely perfect. The fine people at WPD will send you a proof to sign off on and then within a few days you have your cards. And all your guests will be thanked!

For any fellow brides in a rush, I cannot recommend them highly enough. If you are so inclined, you can actually get all of your wedding paper from the site. If anyone has tried it, I'd love to know what you think.