Save the Dates

The biggest thing with the save the dates is that they had to go out fast. I was engaged on May 19.  On May 20 I booked a Dec. 11 date at the venue.  On May 21 I bought I dress (I’ll do a post after the wedding…).  Save the dates generally go out 6 months before the date.  That is June 11, just over 2 weeks since after the engagement.  I elected to go with a simple magnet.  They were cheap and easy.  We ordered from Vista Print and they came out to just under $0.25 each.  Plus a card and a $0.44 stamp.  The total ended up being about $80 when it was all said and done.  Stefan’s roommate happens to be a quite good amateur photographer.  We went to see some sights in Boston for a quick engagement shoot for a photo to put on the magnet.

I sketched out an idea of what I wanted and translated that to a photoshop image.  If you don’t have photoshop, I recommend using Microsoft powerpoint.  It does a surprisingly good job at laying out these things.

We got size A4 or 5.5Bar invitation envelopes because they are exactly ¼ a sheet of standard US paper.  It just makes things easy.  We printed the cards 4 to a page and used a paper cutter to cut them.  Hot glue does a pretty good job of affixing magnet to cardstock.  It has the added benefit of being super fun and easy.

We used Microsoft Mail Merge to print the addresses.  We elected for a nice serif font.  I know the invitations have to be hand addressed but the Save the Dates are fair game I say.  Overall, we managed to get them out and mailed by mid-July which was quite an accomplishment considering the magnets had a 2 week lead time.  If I could do them over, I would have designed the magnet and card together for a more unified look.  I didn’t even use the same font.  I got confused and I didn’t have the magnets when I was printing the cards.  I don’t think many people noticed though.

I also highly recommend getting the magnets printed somewhere.  It is seriously cheaper than printing them yourself and they look better I think.

What do you think?  What would you have done differently?

Sarah