Wedding Gift Ragg Stockings

I'm doing the rather unusual thing of knitting Christmas stockings for a wedding present. I began them shortly before the recipients' wedding back in August but have been seriously procrastinating since it was discovered that the kit yarn is the raw homespun type that offends the allergies of everyone in the household. Etiquette may say you have a year after the ceremony to cough up a gift, but I'd really like them to have it for this Christmas. I've set myself a goal of getting the knitting part completed by Thanksgiving. Then it's a matter of adding the names and lining the stockings. I'm using the Ragg Wool Stocking pattern from Annie's Woolens.

Here's a progress shot from today:



I have a question: Should I duplicate-stitch the names before or after blocking? This is my first Fair Isle project, and I'm really quite proud of it, but it'll need a significant amount of blocking to disguise the fact that the Fair Isle section is narrower than the rest.