Wedding invites lost by USPS!

I thought to myself while reading your post, I wonder if she lives in Chicago. The city with the worst mail service ever. And yep you do. It sucks. Period.

I had a issue with that.. Some people claimed they didn't get an invite.. And like you said I repeated their address and it was correct. Luckily none of them were sent back to me but it was still a headache.. smh.. Good luck..

Oh no! That is very frustrating. I've not yet sent out my invites but I've heard similar stories before. What did the post office say about the ones that were returned to you? What was the issue?

Just curious but was your return address on the front top corner or the back?

The woman at my local office told me to make sure I put it on the front. She said the machines don't know front from back, and some will scan the back and think its the "to" address and send it to me instead.

I never would have thought of that. Glad she told me.

Did you check the weight?

We're in Chicago, too, and they did send one invite to US instead of the guest, but a new envelope and stamp and I think it worked out.

I've had them return one to me and another guest tried to rsvp and it was returned back to him two times. Both guests lived on the same rd.

Thanks for all of your responses and supportive messages so far! While I am not happy some of you went through the same thing, it's good to know I'm not the only one! And to answer some of the posts...

-I haven't contacted the post office just yet. Since I sent them 2 weeks ago, and some people seemed to still be receiving them just this past weekend (strange!), I figured I would wait until the end of the week and see where we're at. I doubt calling them will do any good, but I'm still going to give it a shot if nothing has changed.

-Our return address was on the back -- it makes sense that some of them would get returned back to me because of the machine issue. But strange many of them are just "lost"; neither here or there! Annoying, nonetheless!

-We did check the weight at the post office, so all of our envelopes were stamped correctly.

Good ol' Chicago postal services!

If your return address is on the back of the envelope, it is possible that is why some got sent to you if you didn't hand cancel.

Apparently if the envelope is flipped and the return address is on the back of the envelope (like on the flap), the machine may recognize the return address as the address of delivery. This is what they told my FSIL.

Sometimes I think when mailing in bulk things get lost more easily.

Also, are you sure you did all the envelopes? This may sound funny, but when I sent out my save the dates, I thought I sent to everyone, but I actually managed to forget one, which I thought was odd, but I had an extra save the date leftover, I just figured I had counted wrong.

YUPP! I've had the exact same problem. We sent out our invites almost a month ago and I have a few people that still haven't received theirs or I haven't received their response card. My best friend/MOH got sent one and a seperate one sent to her mother (both live in the same house), neither have received theirs but people In Kentucky and Missouri I've already gotten response cards back from. 2 people in our neighborhood (both co-workers of FH, they work where we live) haven't received theirs either and they live in our neighborhood!!! Some people received the bridal shower invite (which was sent out after the wedding invite) and people have received that but not the wedding invite or the other way around. A co-worker of mine had her invite (which was never delivered to her) sent back to me with no reason included but she received the bridal shower invite. USPS needs to get their stuff together! I double checked all my envelopes included in each invite for stamps, return addresses etc!

I haven't sent out our invites yet, but the same thing happened with my STD's. My mom, aunt, and grandma all live at the same house, but don't talk very often so I wanted to make sure each of them got a STD, well only my aunts showed up which made my mom and g-ma pretty upset. Plus other ppl who live in the same darn town as me never got the STD. It's a bit ridiculous! I plan on making extra invitations for this exact reason. Ugh!

Such a bummer!! I double checked each and every invite (twice!) to make sure everything was good to go!

I guess my only advice after all of this is -- if you haven't sent out your invites yet, make sure you buy plenty of extras if you can!

So far I've had one invite not make it to it's destination. It hasn't gotten returned as of yet, I guess it's just lost in mail-land. I have my second bridal shower this weekend so I plan on asking if everyone has received theirs. This was one of my fears!

I had a few issues with my Save the Dates. One made it to a friend in Germany a week before one made it to Athens, GA (1 hour from where I mailed them!). I sent them out April 5th and just got one returned to sender last week. Hoping my invitations fare a little better

We thankfully had all of our invitations get to their rightful owners, however we did have a couple lost RSVPS on the way back. People who sent them back and I didn't receive them (and are people I know wouldn't lie about it as an excuse).

I had a thank you card returned to me. No idea why. The address and postage was correct. It also took them about 2 months to return it back to me so I felt horrible that my cousin had gone so long after the wedding without receiving a thank you card. I double checked the address with her (even though I knew it was already correct) and she told me that she was having a lot of problems getting her mail recently. So instead I mailed it to her mom's house for her.

The most annoying part of that was that it just took the post office MONTHS to actually return it to me. The post office markings on it from the sorting machines and whatnot were even dated months after I sent it.

I haven't had any issues...sorry! The only weird thing was that I KNEW I had one zip code wrong. I sent another one since I knew I'd erred, but I didn't get the wrong one back for 6 weeks! Maybe they were trying to figure out where it needed to go!

Thats the postal service for you.

I do have a now ex friend (she doesn't know shes an ex yet) that hasn't spoken to me and refuses to rsvp at all to either the engagement party, the shower or the wedding and she tried to tell me she didn't get an invitation. I don't believe her- i'm pretty sure its just an excuse. Sure theres a chance shes being honest but knowing her- i doubt that.

On 5/21, I received a check dated, mailed, and postmarked on 5/14 -- in my same city! The sender lives 6 miles from me!

Yes! I had one person receive two and one of them was definitely addressed to someone else with their own envelope and postage. Another person called me yesterday (2 weeks after I mailed them out) and told me she got just enough of the envelope to know the return address was me and nothing else. Just an empty envelope. All of the problems the post office has you would think they would cater to brides since we spend so much on postage! Now I am wondering if other people just didn't get the invite and we don't know it yet.

I had the same thing happen,sent out 100 and 35 people didn't get them and they lived closer.What happend was different citys ,some weigh them some dont.It took awhile for them to come back,they will send them to the main branch and back to local post office.You should start getting them back any day now.