It’s almost a rite of passage. Brides getting married in the Portland/Southwest Washington area for years have taken their completed wedding envelopes to the teeny little post office at Bridal Veil (pop. 88–give or take a dog or cat) just off I-84 in the gorgeous Columbia Gorge in Oregon.
In all the years I have been doing this, I have never had the chance to go to Bridal Veil until today. A bride from California opted for me take her invitations to this little post office and all I could wonder was what took me so long?
Head east on I-84 to Exit 28 and literally, if you blink while you’re making the exit, you will miss the driveway to the post office. You can see it from the road and my first thought was, “Jed Clampett’s home?” You pull into a gravel parking lot and there it is–honestly, our tool shed in Redmond was bigger than this quaint little post office. It’s old (built about 1950) and has basically two purposes-process wedding invitations with the stamp of “Bridal Veil, Oregon” and to serve the town’s mail needs. There is even a little bank of post office boxes for townspeople to get their mail from.
The sole postal worker, an absolutely delightful lady, drives her SUV to work, parking it alongside the post office and leaves the drivers door open so her dog Buster, a rat terrier, can rest on the driver’s seat while she works. Buster, if he can manage to wake up, will happily step down to greet you and kept my daughter entertained while we were there.
As I stood at the window purchasing stamps, five other brides and/or bride/groom couples dropped their envelopes off. Envelopes in boxes or bags that are already addressed and just waiting to be hand-cancelled by the lady in the window. When her husband gets off work nearby, he comes over in the afternoons to help her stamp the invitations. Today, she had nearly 1,000 envelopes to hand-stamp before they were shipped off to be delivered.
While putting stamps on the invitation envelopes I managed to have a pretty interesting conversation with the lady in the window–always multi-tasking. Stamps and conversations. She stressed several times that she SOOOOO appreciates brides purchasing their postage from the Bridal Veil Post Office since that revenue keeps them open. So, brides, if you are wanting this absolutely unique service, please consider buying your postage from this post office. To lose this service would truly mean we lost a bit of Americana, and we need to hang onto every bit of tradition we can. The service was wonderful, my new postal friend was warm, very helpful, happy for the conversation, and up for a few good laughs while my tongue was going numb from licking stamps.
When we were all done, my husband and daughter and I drove two miles further east to Multnomah Falls and soaked up the sun while enjoying the spectacular view of the falls. Sweetly, two separate people asked me to take a photo of them in front of the falls–I was genuinely touched that in this day and age of people isolating themselves from their fellow man, strangers trusted someone enough to snap a photo of them in front of this beautiful slice of nature.
I am working now on the template for a wedding invitation, return address, and rsvp card. Love is in the air, people are getting married, sharing joy, revelling in love.
Life is good.
