Mailboxes, Etc



The finished product -
along with our favors and photo of me and my dad.



I grew up in Manhattan and today we live in a condo building in DC.  Why do I mention this, you ask?  Because to me, a mailbox is a small locked box in a row of other small locked boxes in the lobby of a building.  A lone mailbox, standing freely on the edge of a driveway with the residents' names painted on it is very bucolic to me.  So, when planning our outdoor Vermont wedding, I thought a mailbox would be a great home for cards we'd receive from our guests.  Not exactly the gilded locked birdcages of many weddings I've seen but I thought it would work well.  Once again, with the internet at my fingertips, I found a standard mailbox on Amazon for $15.  There are two issues with a "standard" mailbox.  First, mailboxes are significantly larger than they appear when driving down a country road or grandma's driveway.  They're really just quite long.  It was about 8 inches longer than I needed but figured for the price, it would do.  Second, a "standard" mailbox, as the word would imply, is a boring mailbox.  It would need some sprucing up.  And I had the perfect thing to spruce it with - chalkboard paint!  Before you think I painted chalkboard paint on everything without two (or four) legs, this is the last chalkboard paint related project.  I swear.

 

So, with the tarp still down in our living room floor - it stayed there for a solid month or two - I got to work.  Typically, it is recommended that you scuff smooth surfaces before painting.  But, I'm a bit on the lazy side and figured I'd first give it a whirl without this annoying scuffing step.  I'm not proud that I'm lazy, it's just a reality I've come to live with.  Maybe lazy isn't the right word.  It's just that I like things done, and I like them done quickly.  I'm impatient more than lazy, really because I don't mind hard work. But in addition to this tendency toward impatience, I'm also a perfectionist.  These two characteristics do not go well together and have led to more than one fight in my home.  But impatience ruled the day and I put brush to mailbox.  Three coats of paint and 24 hours later, I was done.  It took me another day to touch up some of the hard-to-reach places (like around the little red "you have mail" flag) and I was done.  When it came to the day of the wedding, my dear friend with the great handwriting simply wrote "Cards" on either side of the mailbox.  It was placed on the gift table along with our chalkboard reading "Cards & Gifts" and worked out well.  One thing I would note is that there is some risk with this option.  If you're at all concerned about the theft of envelopes - a particular concern if you're at a large venue with a large staff and multiple events - you may not want to use this idea.  A few people raised the concern that our mailbox didn't lock someone could steal the cards.  We had a plan that someone would check the mailbox throughout the night and collect the cards, but that never really materialized.  I sort of shrugged it off figuring that if someone stole wedding cards, karma would get them.  In the end we didn't lose a single card but I am aware that this is not a good project for all people and all venues.

 

One funny note about this project:  This is something I had never seen before.  I didn't steal the idea from Pinterest, a bridal show, or a blog.  I came up with it all in my own little head.  But weeks after my mailbox was  painted and packed away for the trip north, my mother called me excitedly.  That day at work she spotted one of her employees coming back from the mail room with a large mailbox in hand.  Knowing this coworker was getting married around the same time as me, she inquired - "Karen, what is that mailbox for?" to which Karen replied "I'm using it for the cards at our wedding!".  My mom then showed her a photo of my painted mailbox and they had a good laugh.  I guess sometimes great minds really do think alike!