My Wedding in Real Time: The Save-the-Dates

Well I'm almost ready to get them out the door and hence after show them to you...but until that point, I thought I'd fill you in on the progress.

Typically you send your save-the-dates (std's as some call them, but that acronym often weirds me out) out anywhere as early as a year before the wedding (especially if it's a destination wedding or people are coming in from far away--Quebec, Canada in our case) or as late as 5-6 months before. If you're planning a shotgun wedding, skip the save-the-dates and go straight to the invitation. We are nine months out from the wedding and about to get ours at the door. I think that's pretty good for our wedding situation.

I originally knew that I wouldn't be paying for someone to make my save-the-dates. Although not a professional graphic designer, I'm good enough to handle something as simple as this. I gathered pictures from many different designers and companies across the country and came up with the basic idea for my save-the-date. Ours definitely reflects our theme (sorry still a secret for most of you) I think, or at least the people I've shown it to agree. I used Adobe Illustrator to create it, then transferred it to Adobe InDesign to get 2 to a page, and then finally exported it to a .pdf to print (including crop lines, which did help a small bit). I printed a test page, then cut it with the paper cutter, and it looked pretty good. One thing I didn't like was the way two of my colors came out on paper. A few short edits tonight, and I've remedied that situation.

After work I stopped in to my local Paper Zone (similar to Paper Source for those of you who know your stationery) after calling yesterday on the cost of envelopes. She said I could get red A-2 envelopes for $6.99/50 count. What a great deal! When I walked in, I first went to the wall of envelopes. $5.99/20--what?!?! This couldn't be the case, I hadn't heard wrong. Here's where I learned something important. I kept on going further and further to the back of the store and found red A-2 envelopes in packs of 50 for $6.99. The difference? Just a rectangular flap on the back of the envelope verses a trianglular one. Personally, I could care less, and the rectangular flap allows for a return address label on the back which I preferred over one on the front anyway.

So I bought those envelopes in red and another color (you'll find out later). I also went looking for 80# white cardstock to print the save-the-dates on. Again, up front $26.99 for a reem (or 500 sheets). In the back, same thing. The same type of paper for $19.99 per reem. Lesson learned. Always explore the back first for a good deal. I don't need all 500 sheets (since printing 2 per page I need about 53 sheets or so) but it's cheaper to buy in bulk and I might be able to use the same paper for my invitations, inserts, table numbers, place cards, etc., helping me save even more money.

What I forgot to also tell you is that I found a really cool label on Paper Source which would be perfect for the front of the envelope, but it was $5 for 8 labels...way too expensive! Without purchasing a similar label vector from istockphoto, it was going to be a bit hard for my novice designer self to make. So I used what I knew, or rather who I knew. I emailed one of our graphic designers at my work (who I've also talked to about possibly designing my invitations for a step up from my save-the-dates) the picture of the label with a link and asked her either a) how to make it or b) if it was easy enough for her to make quickly. She said it would be really easy and she'd get it to me by next week at the latest. Now all I have to do is buy basic shipping labels (2"x4") from an office supply store, merge my addresses to her label, and print.

Finally, before all of this I had thought about really saving money and doing my save-the-date as a postcard. It's totally simple and means no envelope necessary plus a much cheaper postage cost....but an informal postcard just didn't suit my style. So scrap that...but I am going to hand deliver as many as possible to save at least a few bucks. I read about hand-canceling the envelopes, but honestly I could care less about that, not to mention I really don't have the time to spend an hour in a post office in the middle of the day.

All-in-all I think the final cost for sending out 105+ save-the-dates is set to equal about $100 (maybe a few dollars more due to international postage), which makes them $1 a piece. Honestly, I think that's a pretty good deal.

I'll put up pictures of my save-the-date(s) as soon as guests have begun to receive them in their mailboxes. Keep an eye out!