Up to this point, I'd say working on my invitations has been the most time-consuming task I've encountered.  

As I've previously mentioned, my sister (MOH J) and her West-Coast bestie, K, are designing my invites and sending the finished files to me for final print, trim and execution.  

Working together has been really fun for the three of us (I've gotten to talk more to these girls in the past two weeks than I have in the past several months!), but it's also challenging given the fact that I'm here...

MOH J is here...

And bestie K is here...

3 girls working 3 very different schedules in 3 very spread apart states in 2 time zones has not been easy, but we've been able to make it work!  Google Hangout - you are the butter to my bread!

Okay, we did actually get work done when we weren't playing with Legos - I swear.

We've been able to stay on time and on task with Google Hangouts (Google's answer to Skype), our shared Google Calendar and the good ol' USPS!

We're ALMOST there and I'll be sending them out soon, complete with a full reveal for the hive - but for now, I'll give you a sneak peak of our outer envelopes.  This one's for you, White House....

I cannot even deal with my email account sometimes.  Between my personal email and my business one, I must receive nearly 200 messages every day.  And I have to open every. single. one.  Why?  Because I do.  Because I hate seeing "INBOX (3,468)" on my screen.  Most of them get a quick click and onto the next, and I really do try to unsubscribe to things I never look at, but that shit's hard, yo!

When it came time to plan the wedding, I was adamant about creating a separate email to catch all the inevitable mailing list messages I will be inadvertently signed up for.  I created another gmail account, "[email protected]" which has been a great catch-all for all of the wedding CRAP that has been sent my way from visiting bridal fairs, vendors and websites.

It's also been a really helpful tool to organize my thoughts and ideas.  Since I communicate almost entirely via email during my 9-5 (really 7:30-4) job, I keep a good record of all the communication I've had with our vendors in folders I've created for each.  

In addition, all those WeddingBee blog posts I starred in my Google Reader?  I started emailing them to this address so I could sort those into categories as well!  

I thank my lucky stars every day that someone in my family has passed down this hyper-organized gene to me.  Thank you, whoever you are, dear relative of mine....

I must say, it's been incredibly helpful to have all of our wedding messages in one place and not have to sift through messages touting the best limo service in ALL of New England, free* wedding photobooths, whiter teeth in 5 minutes, etc.

*Please, nothing is free.  ESPECIALLY for a wedding.  Gimme a break, I'm no amateur.

As soon as Mr. Jet and I got engaged, I signed up for a Knot account - that's what every fiancée does, right?  I will admit, they have a lot of helpful articles and checklists, but a lot of the fluff doesn't pertain to us and it seems like they're mysteriously trying to sell you ALL THE WEDDING THINGS!

I found myself discouraged easily and quite frustrated at all the lists telling me I needed to find the PERFECT. BRIDAL.  BRA.

However, being extremely HTML challenged, I did like the ease and ready-to-publish templates of their free wedding website.  I grabbed our URL and got to work messing around with all the pages and options we had.  I was able to customize it to suit our needs, while getting rid of most of the "fluff". 

We kept all of the pages really simple and straightforward.  We provided the following:

hi there. - A brief introduction and cute photo of Mr. Jet and I on our trip to Salem last fall! Aww...

she said, "yes". - The story of our proposal, since many people still don't know how it happened!

ceremony. - A photo, address and a few details about the ceremony location.

reception. - A photo, address and a few details about the reception.

our guys & girls. - A list of our bridal party members and a quick, funny description of each.

"out of towners". - We'll have quite a few family members and friends coming from out of town.  Here, we listed the hotel we booked rooms at, some Fall New England activities, our favorite restaurants in the area and a few bars for after hours fun. 

guest book. - pretty self explanatory!

map. - The Knot has a cool Google Maps interface that plots the points you dedicate for Ceremony, Reception, Hotels and more.  This is a neat feature and pretty much populates itself!

We left out an "about us" section because, really, if you don't know us why would we invite you??, a gift registry because we're still undecided, and pages of photos which seemed a little self-indulgent.  It's a simple and classic website and plays its part perfectly for us.