I'm really angry right now about my wedding invitations. When I went to the shoppe to order them, I learned that "they" don't punctuate wedding invitations because they are supposed to be formal. Which is a total bizarro world from what they teach you in school: in formal settings you need to be ever more conscious of the rules of grammar and mechanics. No, on wedding invitations, appositives do not get surrounded by commas.
So when I ordered the invitations I had a small panic attack. Could I work as an editor and writer for a living and send invitations with no commas surrounding the appositive? Could I spend 20 hours a week telling football and basketball players that appositives need commas and then partake in purchasing something without them? I decided I couldn't. I wrote in the commas on the order form and the shoppe lady had to circle them and emphasize them and I had to sign my name in blood that I did indeed want my invitations punctuated in this manner. She wrote a special note, too.
Needless to say, Nance picked up the invitations tonight and this is how they are punctuated:
Together with our parents, we, Katy and Corey request the honor of your presence.
Look at it. It's begging for pause. There are elements of information needing to be separated in that phrase. Where is the comma??? Why is this happening to me? What do I do here?
The whole rationale behind ordering the seal-n-send invitations was to save money and precious environmental resources, avoiding wasted tissue liners and spare envelopes and pointless pieces of paper in the packets. Can I live with myself if I send back the invitations to be corrected? Can I deal with it if I have to get a green pen and write in 175 commas? Am I an unreasonable customer? What if they had spelled my name wrong? To me, this is almost worse. Why ask me to circle the comma and write special in the margins if "they" aren't going to honor my wishes anyway? Don't get my hopes up, shoppe!
I am frustrated and don't know what to do. My wedding invitations have typos. I can't decide if that is worse than all the yearbooks I have full of "your a great friend." I guess I won't be framing the invitation to hang on the wall in my house. Instead, I should take them into work and have my students play find the errors. Maybe they'll rub sausage grease and banana stains all over them and I will just cancel the whole shebang out of shock.
After years of nomadic temporary employment, advanced degrees, and chocolate ice cream, a rugger with a love of knitting and a cyclist with no domestic skills signed a Ketubah and bought a house in Pittsburgh.
5 comments:
I think you should take them to class and play find the mistakes. You have lost me on this whole matter they would look good to me either way, HOWEVER, you as a customer should receive what you ordered and payed for. Take them back if there is time to reorder. If not take them and demand a refund. Then you can use that money for more booze at your wedding:+)
Send them back. And if they won't do it correctly, find another shop. They really have no excuse.
Dude you are the customer they need to do what you want. Although if you send it to me then you know I won't notice these things. That's why I stick to numbers! I would demand a refund and send the messed up ones. You can hang it up in your house but you can get the green pen to fix that one. :P
~Val
I concur. Send them back. You paid for them. And they should be grammatically correct, dammit! (I've noticed the comma issue on an invitation a couple of years ago and wrote it off the the couple's error! who knew its standard to be wrong!?!)
that's my deepest nightmare! that a guest would assume i was the one who didn't know comma rules!!!
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