A long courtship = a long story = an extremely long wedding invite.

My wife Jill and I had dated for eight years between four cities (mainly long-distance) before getting engaged. To announce the wedding, we decided that our relationship’s survival was enough cause for celebration, so we catalogued the essential twists and turns of our courtship on the invite. It was designed to fold and slip into a standard 5 x 7 envelope, so half the fun would be receiving a very basic envelope in the mail only to open it up and have a wordy, ungainly poster unfold out of it.

From the writing, editing, formatting and kerning, to the small heart attack when our printer told us that printing this thing would be impossible (they happily reneged), to the manual cutting we did ourselves so the RSVP postcards would hold in the folded invite, making this thing was every bit a case of art imitating our dating history. It wasn’t easy by any stretch, but we are both happier for having done it—plus our guests got a massive jolt one afternoon when they opened their mail.

Even though we know the ending, we still want to read the story.