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SWPS Volume 6!

by in In The Office, Main on

It was an exciting weekend in the Southern Weddings office! We all spotted V6 on newsstands early, as did many of y’all! (Even though our official release date is tomorrow, I guess the SW goodness just couldn’t be contained — see instagram for proof!) If you’ve been a Southern Weddings reader for awhile, you know that not only can copies be found on newsstands, they can be ordered straight from our office. And because of this, during a fateful week every November, the SW office goes from a quiet work space to a crazy shipping department!

This was my first year as part of the SWPS (that’s the Southern Weddings Postal Service, of course), but having seen the recaps of V4 and V5 in years past, I thought I had a good idea of what to expect when that big old truck turned the corner. Y’all, I was quite taken by surprise, because the undertaking of sending about 700 magazines in two days is much harder than it looks! But first, some preparation had to happen.

We try to get as much done as possible before the magazines arrive, but this year, we didn’t get our new postcards until the day before. That means we wrote hundreds of notes in about three days! While we waited for the postcards, we made lots of boxes and alphabetized packing slips. On “shipping department” (a.k.a. Lara’s garage) organization day, Nicole, our interns Morgan and Ana, and I stacked the remaining V4 and V5 boxes against the wall. Meanwhile, Lara and Emily were looking fabulous for a shoot, and Grace was dressed as a doctor for Halloween. :)

Finally, magazine delivery day arrived! Apparently, it rains almost every year on this day, so Emily came prepared in a rain coat and boots. It was cloudy right up until the minute the truck pulled up, and then the rain started. Our hearts stopped every time the lift on the truck quivered–if a 2,000-pound pallet fell off, there was no way we’d be able to get it back on!

The gentleman who delivered our pallets was quite taken aback by our system, but we were happy to help as much as we could. I’m not sure how helpful we were though, since when he returned with the second batch of pallets a few hours later, he brought reinforcements.

Once all the pallets were tucked into the garage and we had opened a few boxes to get our first look at the V6 cover (read more about that here), we got to work!

It took two days of packing orders before we were ready to bring them to the post office, in a total of five cars. The post office kindly let us unload in the back, and thank goodness for that, because we had quite the haul!

One of Emily’s favorite pictures of the year is the world’s longest receipt from the post office. Now that we have a fancy mailing label printer, we no longer need to wait in line for hours while the post office rings up each order. While this is a huge help for our workflow, we naturally needed a replacement picture! So here it is: a strip of mailing labels stretching all the way down the driveway. This batch was only for about 85 labels, but we probably printed close to 600!

And there you have it, the SWPS, Volume 6! And I have to admit, y’all, my entire body has been sore for a week, which no one ever mentioned in previous SWPS posts. :) I sincerely hope we succeeded in getting your preorders into your homes, and if you’ve placed an order in the last few days, rest assured, your magazines are on their way!

lisa Written with love by Lisa
10 Comments
  1. avatar Caitlin Sullivan reply

    Congrats, ladies!

  2. avatar Emily reply

    Love that receipt/mailing label photo :)

  3. avatar Caitlyn | The Aerialist Press reply

    Congratulations on your hard work girls! It looks beautiful!!

  4. avatar Jess reply

    That mailing label photo is pretty epic! Congratulations on another issue so beautifully crafted, and thoughtfully shared.

  5. avatar Dana reply

    I’m so proud of you for doing heavy labor! :D

  6. avatar Mandy V reply

    Just found a copy in the stores today (Atlanta Target) ! So excited to dive into it.

  7. avatar Southern Weddings Weekly Round-Up | Southern Weddings reply

    […] diving into all of our gorgeous editorials from V6, we shared a peek into the Southern Weddings Postal Service. The total number of V6 copies we’ve sent out from our little office so far is well over […]

  8. avatar Southern Weddings V6 Launch Party Recap – Southern Weddings Magazine reply

    […] the joy found in the 300+ pages of our latest issue every time one gets sent out from our shipping department. To top it off, we were elated to share our pretty new home with you after months of […]

  9. avatar Southern Weddings Weekly Round-Up – Southern Weddings Magazine reply

    […] this time next week, we will have V7 in our hands and the SWPS will be in full effect! Before we switch gears from desk jobs to packing up hundreds of magazines […]

  10. avatar Southern Weddings V7 Pre-Orders are OPEN! – Southern Weddings Magazine reply

    […] our last photo shoot, Nicole and Morgan are hard at work on layout, and we’re dusting off our SWPS uniforms. That can only mean one thing: it’s time to open V7 preorders! […]

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