A Video Save the Date

A friend's mom sent me a video of this save the date and I just had to share it with all of you! If you thought your save the dates took forever to finish (ahem, me..), watch this!

source

I have a feeling that will be one crazy cool wedding!

What's the most unique idea you've seen for a save the date?

Could It Be?

Could our STDs really be finished?! After multiple layouts, months of indecision, and multiple issues with our supplies and printing, our save the dates are being sent out tomorrow! After we finally decided on and printed a design, I brought them home with me so I'd have some help lining all of the envelopes. We found pink envelopes at Hobby Lobby that were perfect, and I planned to line them with this paper:

The only problem? I left that paper at my house at school, and it was Christmas wrapping paper, so of course, none of the Hobby Lobby stores here had it anymore. I looked at multiple stores for something similar, and after 3 or 4 trips, finally found it. I went back to Hobby Lobby to buy all of our pink envelopes, and... they were out. Of course.

The next night we went to Michaels and found a pack of plain white envelopes and cards. I figured I'd find something to use the cards for, so we went ahead and bought them. I spent the next few days lining the envelopes with pink paper like this:

Bad idea. I should've waited to line them until after we ran them through the printer, because the added thickness was causing them to get stuck and smear the ink.

 Some of the maaany envelopes we ruined

And since we ruined so many of the envelopes, we ran out. So I decided to try Sams Club and Office Max to see if they had bigger boxes of envelopes (sans the cards). I finally found some that worked at Office Max, but didn't realize they were a different size.

Doesn't that look like so much fun?

Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal, but David's computer is having some issues, and isn't able to perform a mail merge, so I was having to do the mail merge on my computer, burn it to a CD, and then put it on David's computer that way (since, of course, my compuer wouldn't print to his printer for some reason). I had to do re-do the mail merge and change the layout so that it was centered on the new size of envelopes. Also, these envelopes had a square flap rather than the pointed one the other one had, so I made a new template for the liners and cut 100 more of them.

 

Just a small difference in size...

By the end of it, I found myself saying, "I don't care anymore" more and more often. No pink envelopes? I don't care. No damask liners? I don't care. Two different sized envelopes? Nope, don't care. Ran out of double stick tape with 3 liners to go? They'll never know they didn't get a pink liner on their envelope. I am SO ready to be done with this project, and to move onto something else! But, all that aside, I really am happy with how they turned out, and I'm ok with them not being exactly what I pictured. No one (except you guys!) will know that they weren't what I originally envisioned.

So, here they are:

 

Have you had a project that ended up taking forever to complete? Did you end up not caring as much as you originally did by the time you finished it?

Only a Month Later...

I last blogged about our Save the Dates over a month ago. After taking our second set of engagement pictures, David asked if I would change the design and incorporate one of the new pictures as the main picture because he liked them more. I'll be honest, I usually love that David is involved in the planning and cares about being a part of decisions, but this time I wasn't exactly thrilled. I'd spent so much time messing with the first set of designs, I didn't really want to start over. But I decided I really wanted him to love them as much as I did, so I had him choose his favorite picture and I created a new design.

Little did I know how much work it would be to upload the design to be printed without it being cropped significantly. It took me forever to make it so the text wouldn't be cut off when the program cropped it. I eventually gave up on having them printed as postcards - I couldn't get the file to upload correctly as a postcard and I couldn't find any that were a great price, so I decided to just print them as 4x6 pictures and get envelopes for them. I used Shutterfly because I've liked my prints from them in the past and I could have one printed at Target to make sure it turns out ok before I print 250 of them. I'm going to go pick it up this afternoon - I'm excited to see it! This is the final design:

Instead of the pink border that I used in the previous designs, I'm going to use pink envelopes. I'll likely go with the ones I found at The Paper Mill Store:

I think I'm going to do envelope liners, but I haven't quite decided yet. At this point, we need to be getting them out, and to be honest, I'm ready to be done with them! But I do have a cute idea for the liners if I decide to do them. We'll see how I'm feeling when I get all of the envelopes - Maybe I'll ask for some help from David and my mom/BM M over Thanksgiving break. :)

I'll be sure to post again once we've finally gotten them all printed, assembled, and ready to mail. We really need to start finding addresses!

Did you create several designs before deciding on a STD? How did you gather addresses?

Save the Date, Please! Part 2

Thanks so much for your feedback on my last post! The votes were pretty evenly spread between the 5 options, but I'm still just really set on black and white. I do love the colors of our engagement pictures, and I know it's totally "ok" to have STDs (haha, what a sentence!) in colors other than your colors, but I like the idea of them setting the "tone" for our wedding - Black, white, and pink all over with lots of fun and love! :) So, I took your suggestions into account (particularly not using a pink font)and edited our 2 favorite options and came up with these:

Option 1:


Option 2:


I was still able to incorporate pink by adding the border, and I think the text is much easier to read now. David and I have pretty much decided what we'll do, but I'm curious to see what you guys think before I reveal our plan.

Which is your favorite of the 2? Do you agree that the new text is easier to read?

Save the Date, Please!

I mentioned in my post with our engagement pictures that we took some pictures for our Save the Dates (STDs - ha! I know, immature..) as well. I finally got to work on the layout a little bit, but now I'm stuck. I can't decide which one I like best.

Option 1:



I don't think I like it in full color because there's really no way to incorporate our wedding colors. Also, the text on the last sign would be edited so that 'Date' is easier to read like in all of the other ones.

Option 2:



I do like this one a lot more, although David said it isn't one of his favorite pictures of himself. I think I like the prettier font more (and how could I not? It's Albemarle Swash!) and I like that it's black, white, and pink.

Option 3:



I don't particularly like the big picture (of me), but David likes it. He was going back in forth between whether he thinks we should be looking at the camera in the main picture or if he liked that picture. He said he likes it because it makes him think we're saying, "Come follow us!" like on our journey or something - He's too cute.

Option 4:



He wanted me to try a mix of black and white and color. I don't dislike it, but I'm not sure what color text I would use. I still don't think I could use pink (to tie in our color scheme) without it looking off.

Option 5:



I think this one and Option 2 are tied for my favorites. The text would be the same shade of pink of the other ones, though. I don't like the coral-y color. Do you think the text is hard to read since it's across our bodies like that?

Ok, I need some advice! Let me know which one(s) is/are your favorite. Or, if you have another idea all together, I'm open to that, too! We're wanting to send these out in about a month, so I'd like to at least figure out the design so we can look into getting them printed soon. Thanks in advance for your help, ladies!