Weddingbee Blog

Sorry I’ve been too busy to post much lately, but we FINALLY put our save the dates in the mail last Monday, and “we received them!”s have been slowly trickling in!!! It is seriously the most exciting thing EVER! I’m pretty sure I will physically explode when we get RSVPs for our actual invitations next year, because I’m already pretty close!!

The reason we kept our finished save the dates all addressed and stamped sitting in a bag on the floor for…um…nearly three weeks…is that we linked to our wedding website on the save the date and had the sudden revelation that the site just wasn’t “fun” enough! So we decided to fix it up, add pictures and stories, and not send out the save the dates until the website was ready, since we guessed most people would look at it once when they got the save the date, and then not again until they needed real practical details around wedding time.

How much energy are you putting into your wedding website (if you’re having one)? Do you think people (who aren’t wedding obsessed ) really spend time looking at them??

But onto what you’re actually here for…..the Save The Dates! We DIY’ed the entire thing, from all the text to stamping, cutting, gluing, hole punching, and tying, so (un)fortunately for you, there are lots of in-progress photos to scroll through before you get to see the finished product!

First, we (well, I) stamped this lovely double happiness (from paper-source) in red Color Box ink directly on the center of each front card.
Note how bored our cat looks with this process.

Then, I stamped the “Save The Date” (from addictedtorubberstamps) in a really nice metallic gold ink (also Color Box):

Then I spent many, many hours cutting this beauuuuutiful paper I bought at Pearl Paint into strips and gluing them onto the tops of the page (with a regular glue stick):

A few of the almost completed front pages:

Put the pages together, hole punch, & tie a ribbon, means it’s DONE!

But…despite our best paper-cutting efforts, some of the pages were slightly different sizes. So I got to painfully exacto off the edges of the ones that weren’t quiiiiiite right:

And here they are all stacked up on the table when they were done!

And all stacked up in the box we moved them into from the table… (no, I would not have posted this many pictures if I hadn’t known about Mrs. Bee/BIL Bee’s magical powers of “Read more right here” cuts ) See how sparkly the gold ink is though! And the gold and silver detail in the fancy paper’s pattern!

When you open it up, on the first page you find this lovely little magnet (from theknot.com’s store) which is pretty simple, but all the other ones I saw were a little TOO much:

Here’s the first inside page (once you take the magnet out to put it on the fridge!)

And the second inside page:

There is also one more page with tons o’ random details (roughly where the small town is, best ways to get there, advice on where to stay, contact information, etc.) which I’m not going to post, because I found myself censoring just about every other word!

I know they aren’t as “classy” as getting fancy letterpress that match your invitations or whatever, but I wanted to put sooo much random extra information in them that it seemed a bit excessive.

And finally, with my vague-efforts-at-semi-calligraphy and Love Birds stamps!

Okay this really is the last photo - our Staples personalized return address stamp! In red with a double happiness symbol we uploaded ourselves.

Additional info:
I designed the text pages all in Word, using clip art I found on microsoft.com (plus the fancy bird double happiness from google images). Just formatted as two columns and set the middle width as twice what the side margins had to be for the printer, and fiddled about with how high/low the top vs. bottom should be. We printed one copy on our printer at home, then VERY VERY CAREFULLY transported it to Kinko’s where we did regular black and white photocopying onto Kinko’s brand ivory cardstock.

We bought a paper cutter at Pearl Paint to divide each piece of paper in 4, and a self-healing mat for cutting with an exacto knife (which is how we cut the red paper strips and neatened up the edges). The ribbon was from Crane’s, as was the special mini hole punch. I really want to put mini holes in everything now, it is just too cute.

The envelopes are from Staples, and were a little flimsy, but I couldn’t find any others that were ivory and normal. There doesn’t seem to be a tier for that size ivory envelopes in between “cheap and flimsy” and “psycho fancy and expensive” so we just decided to not worry about the envelopes. I also got the envelope moisteners/glue sticks from Staples and they were SO SO SO worth it.

I ordered the stamps from usps.com and it could not have been easier. I hate going to the post office, so I was very very happy to pay over my very small shipping fee (because, you know, THEY deliver it!) for the convenience. They also got to me in like a DAY which was crazy.

THE END!

So…what do you think?