Wedding Blog

When I first got engaged, I was pretty clueless about wedding-related jargon and acronyms. I thought empire (as in an empire waistline) was pronounced with a long i, like the Roman Empire. I had no idea what a bustle was - I guessed that it was a hair term, a variation on a beehive. Needless to say, I felt like a complete idiot the first time I went dress shopping.

At this n00b phase of wedding planning, I visited several boards where the brides would openly talk about STDs. One topic would read, “Help! Problem with STDs!” while another might say, “My fiance doesn’t want to deal with our STDs” - and I couldn’t help but think that these people must be really open with the internet community to discuss their sexually transmitted diseases so willingly.

Now I know better. In the wedding world, STDs are save-the-dates. Silly me. And I just ordered mine yesterday!

At first I wanted to print the month of April 2008 on Moo MiniCards with our wedding date circled. I would then buy some nice notecards, decorate it with stamps and whatnot, and attach the MiniCards on the inside with sticky glue dots. Then the person receiving the save-the-date could put the MiniCard in their wallet, pin it up on their board, etc. How cute would that be?

Excited, I started brainstorming the design and calculated my costs….and realized that this would cost more than $2 per save-the-date. Way out of my budget.

So I decided to go the postcard route. Simple yet effective.

First, I found a very reputable company to print the postcards: Overnight Prints had very good reviews, and their prices were reasonable at $69.95 for 250 4″x6″ single-side printed postcards.

I then searched online for some design inspiration, and found this:

I worked on the design using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. I made about 10 different versions using different colors and different width ribbons, and sent them off to Mr. Peony for his input. The final three:

The first is using our colors, which I thought looked more appropriate for our wedding date. The second and third look a bit too Christmas-y to me, but the third definitely looks the best. Although I wouldn’t mind the first because it is more season-appropriate, Mr. Peony, my mother, and father all agreed that we should send the last instead.

The best part? While ordering the postcards online last night, I saw the option for entering a promotional code and thought, why not? After a quick Google search, I found a coupon for $40 off!  Try coupon code POSTCARDSALE. I lubs me a great bargain!!!

The breakdown for our save-the-dates:

Although we don’t need 250, the tier below that is 100, which is too little. But with a total of $56.37, that’s only $0.23 per save-the-date! We’ll probably be mailing only 150 of them at the most (since we can hand out the rest) which, at $0.26 per stamp, will total $39.00. So even with postage, that’s only $0.38 per save-the-date. Not too shabby, no?