Germany: It's that time again.

So, Torsten and I are leaving for Germany tomorrow. (Don't worry, I have an array of fabulous guest posters lined up to keep you entertained in my absence.) I'm kind of thinking about taking bets on whether or not Torsten's mother is going to tell him when she says goodbye, for the third time, that he's always welcome to come home if things don't work out between us. Any takers? What do you think? Personally, I think she will and Torsten thinks she might not.

But wait! Before I talk about Germany, I have to talk about wedding invitations. Last night my sister and I went to Paper Source after work to attempt to resolve my invitation crisis. Paper Source, by the way, is an absolutely amazing store, and we are lucky enough to have one of their few brick and mortar stores nearby (they only have them in seven states plus DC). Their website is also great, but I am so beyond websites at this point. I need a person, a real, knowledgeable one to whom I could spew all my confused ideas and who would respond with a tangible, good idea.

And it happened! It really happened. The salesperson who helped us was GREAT. She spent like an hour with us, and at the end I knew exactly what I wanted and had the materials to produce it. Yes, I'm going the DIY route like I threatened. But my sister is going to help (as well all know that Torsten will be useless in this regard). And if things get really down to the wire, perhaps I'll have a little bloggy save-my-invitations get-together where all of you can come to my apartment to help and we will blow through those suckers in like half an hour. Sound good?

ANYWAY. Pipe dreams of bloggy crafty fun aside, the invitation is SO COOL. It's difficult to describe (part of why we had to spend over an hour with the salesperson), and I will do a post (with photos!) about the actual assembly process once my sister and I start. But basically it's a dark purple horizontal pocketfold, and when the the recipient opens the flaps, they'll see a big light purple sheet with the invitation printed in English and German. On the bigger flap there will be a little purple pocket with cream polka dots and in the pocket will be the RSVP and info cards. Then the whole thing will be folded up and tied with a purple ribbon, which will be sealed with a bigger cream dot. The envelopes will be matching dark purple and have a vellum liner with little silvery flowers on it. There will be another cream dot as the address label, which will be hand addressed in purple ink.

It is PERFECT. And it deals with all the issues we were worried about. Of course, it's possible that when we try to put it all together it will be a time-consuming nightmare, in which case we will be back to square one. So, we bought one of everything, and when I get back from Germany, my sister and I are going to attempt to print and assemble a couple of invites to make sure it is doable and to figure out how much of everything we need to buy.

It was great. And I feel SO MUCH BETTER. And we only need to make 75 invitations, and they don't need to be sent until August, so even if we make, like, one every other day between now and then, we will still have plenty of time.

And speaking of Germany, let's get back to what I was saying at the beginning of this post. We're going to spend just a couple of days in London visiting friends first, and then we are going to Torsten's parents' house to celebrate his father's 60th birthday in style. And by "in style" I mean that I am going to meet Torsten's entire extended family for the first time all at once. And remember how last time I went to Germany, I was totally going to learn German first? Well, ha ha, I didn't do it last time and I haven't done it this time either. So while that will make it a bit more difficult for me to really get to know Torsten's family, it also gives me an excuse to totally tune out of what's going on and just smile and nod.

So, um, to make me feel better, how about you all tell me about the first time you met the family of a significant other? Happy stories are welcome and horror stories are ESPECIALLY welcome. But, um, if you have a story about how this one time you went to meet the entire extended family, and they didn't speak the same language as you, and it was awful and you wound up in tears and still haven't totally recovered? MAYBE DON'T TELL ME THAT STORY RIGHT NOW.