mad libs.

Months and months ago, a friend of mine emailed me a wedding idea: mad lib RSVPs. It is surely the most brilliant idea in the history of telling someone whether or not you are coming to their party. So that's what we did. I printed out little mad libs on cardstock, then put my address on the back, along with a postcard stamp. We plan to create a big display of the cards for the reception (at least the ones with no dirty words). We don't even need a guestbook, because we have these instead.

We've been getting one or two postcards back every day, and it makes checking the mail a real treat. I always knew that the key to getting mail was sending it, but apparently if you send people a pre-stamped postcard with a fill-in-the-blank message, they're even more likely to respond.

More likely, but still not definitely. Now, I am certain that there were RSVPs in the past that I left unsent. Not because of any particular malice or spite, but just because I didn't. And so I understand all those people who did not send theirs back. That doesn't mean that I don't want to strangle them a little bit. The whole point of them is so we can know how many people we're going to have to feed. It just makes my life easier, and frankly, I'm a little crazy right now.

To all the past brides whose weddings I did not send back the card: I'm sorry. I didn't understand.

Complaints aside - no, really - these little cards have been wonderful to get back, a little daily dose of mail-order fun. Every day, I approach the mailbox in hopes of finding one of those homemade cards among the catalogs and junk mail. It's funny to see how different people approach the task. Some people do it traditional mad lib style by asking someone else for the part of speech and then filling in whatever they said. Other people just write the word they think fits. Depending on the person, these can be very sweet or rather bizarre. One person put in a fake name (we have our suspicions). I'm honestly suprised it was only one.

I didn't realize how much of a personality can show through a few filled-in nouns and adjectives and verbs. While the invitations themselves were a sort of celebration of the individuality of Josh and me, these mad libs reveal the individuality of our guests (a bunch of weirdos, let me tell you).

A couple of people were stressing out over it, worrying that they weren't creative enough. But there's no wrong way to do it. Anything you put is a reflection of you, so whatever you put is exactly right. We're more interested in everyone's contributions than any particular ideal. It's not a test. After all, we already invited you to our wedding.