Double the pleasure, double the fun

There are some things that I really enjoy having two of. Double cheeseburgers, Two-for-one sales, shoes, and breasts. Sometimes, you get two of something, and it is a welcome suprise, like two dollars in your wallet, twins, and two hashbrowns in your breakfast meal. Other things in duplicate are not so fun. I shall illustrate.

To ease our anxiety about the nine million things to do for our nuptuals, Russ and I have been steadily working on our invitations. All this week, time has been devoted to carefully selecting wording, budgeting, and formatting this project so that it will be an elegant, useful, and simple way of compacting all of the information you might need to know to come attend our wedding. The price of these things astound me, but after I got over the initial sticker shock, I was able to press on in the interest of time.

So, about five minutes ago, we looked over the wording and so forth, and went ahead to order the things. I looked at the subtotal after entering in my credit card number, and clicked the "checkout" button.

A few seconds later, I was taken to my confirmation page with my order number, and lo and behold, a new and different subtotal appeared at the bottom. Like twice the amount. Wha? On the page before it said half that! I don't even have that much in my checking account! Surely this isn't tax? What? So I scurried over to my e-mail to wait for a message from the card people saying what the order was.

I look over it, and it has doubled the entire order. RSVP's, Invitation layers, folio jackets, accomodation cards, envelopes, reception cards, the whole shabang. I couldn't figure out why in the world it would have done that.

So, I click back the order button to see the complete summary online. The bottom of the receipt page was what we had ordered. The top, however, contained previous incarnations of the project. This was when Russ and I were typing all of the content in all-caps. After realizing that neither of us is Owen Meany, we thought better of it and capitalized appropriately.

Well, the voice of all-caps would not be quashed, as it has insidiously bonded with our order and refuses to join its brethren in the eternal realm of first drafts. Yes, our invitations have developed tumors.

And, like the task-master that I am, I just HAD (all caps) to order the damn things at 11 in the evening, long after the customer service people have gone home for the weekend. I must live with the anxiety that our invitations are not perfect as I had hoped. Russ is taking this a little better than me, as he is asleep next to me right now, and I am on my third glass of wine.

This is just the beginning. I haven't even sent the buggery things out yet.