Southern Weddings

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!

Written with love by Lisa

Oh me, oh my, y’all. We haven’t done an official count yet, but when all is said and done, I think we are going to have sent over 600 individual ORDERS out through the SWPS in this first week. And, of course, each of those orders could contain between 1 and 20 magazines. Allow us to give you a little glimspe into how the magic happen. Or, as I like to refer to the “magic,” the one week of the year when my desk job turns into a warehouse job…

The work of the Southern Weddings Postal Service fires up long before any magazines arrive. As soon as we opened pre-orders, our intern, Alexia, set up a system for managing them, and began to handwrite thank you notes and mailing labels. Here’s a peek at the stacks from a few weeks ago:

Because we knew our office supply of magazines was going to arrive later than usual due to Superstorm Sandy, we tried to do even more prep work than usual, including pre-stamping envelopes, folding and taping up boxes, and stocking up on packing tape. Whoo!

Before we knew it, magazine delivery day had arrived!! A massive truck pulled into our neighborhood, and the driver turned out to be the same guy that delivered our order last year. The first thing he said? “A year is not enough time in between these visits.” We know it was said with love, y’all.

I’m sure he appreciated how many photos we insisted on taking of the process.

Happily, we had Miss Grace to help us haul the 7.5 pallets of magazines (18,000 POUNDS, y’all. 18,000 POUNDS!!) up the driveway. Even more happily, Lara’s husband, Ari, arrived unexpectedly midway through the ordeal! I think the delivery guy almost cried when Ari rounded the corner, he was so happy to see him. What, mister, Nicole and I weren’t exactly the help you were looking for?

Those two photos of Grace pretty much kill me, by the way. Doesn’t she look like a little figurehead in the first one? Very helpful.

Once we’d huffed and puffed our way up the driveway and each pallet was tucked safely into our “shipping department”, we got to work moving magazines from one set of boxes and into another! All hands on deck! And by all hands on deck, I really mean it! All other non-essential activity stops in the office while the SW gals bust out those first several hundred orders. Susan, Grace’s nanny, even chipped in at naptime!

Once we had a good number of orders ready to go, we started loading cars! Luckily Lara and I both have small SUVs, so we were able to squeeze quite a few into our initial load.

Oh yes, the actual postal service is always delighted to see us coming. They graciously let us unload in the back (cool!).

That’s just a small portion of our haul!

The other gals then abandoned me at the front desk (just kidding — I sent them back to the office to pack up more mags!) while the cashiers processed our boxes upon boxes. Our total across three credit cards for this initial visit? Get ready for it — $2,500. Yep! I snapped this photo and texted it to Lara when we hit the first $1,000 :)

Once back at the office, I took what has to be one of my very favorite annual photos — second only to the photo I make John snap of me grinning next to the first copy of SW I find in the store. Why, it’s the world’s longest receipt!!

And that, my friends, is the story of the Southern Weddings Postal Service, V5 Style. I sincerely hope that we’ve succeeded in getting your order out to you in good time and great condition! If you haven’t had the pleasure of placing your order yet and can’t find a copy in stores, be sure to do so here!

P.S. SWPS V2 and SWPS V4!

Written with love by Emily