STDs Are Great!
August 12th, 2008 @ 10:32 am by Miss Sweet Tea
… Save the Dates, that is! 
I almost forgot to show your our STD cards because I’m so excited about our invites, but first things first! Our STDs were sent to our guests way back in April, since we wanted to give people plenty of time to start saving money and planning to travel to New Orleans. After some hemming and hawing about whether to order our STDs online or do them ourselves, Mr. Sweet Tea and I finally decided to design them ourselves and print them out through VistaPrint.
Some tips and resources that helped us save a lot of money on this:
1. You can get major discounts on VistaPrint if you Google ’Vistaprint coupons.’ We ended up paying $20.00 for 100 full-color double-sided postcards. This $20 breaks down to $10 S&H and $10 of uploading fees (you can use their templates, or upload your own image files). That’s twenty cents a postcard! Of course, we had to factor in postage and envelopes, but it was still really darn good, if you ask me.
2. We didn’t have the bucks to shell out for Photoshop, so Mr. ST found GIMP, a free photo-editing software that saves documents as .jpg, .png., .bmp (the usuals) but also as .psd (Photoshop), .ai (Adobe Illustrator), and other such files! This means that when you upload the files to VistaPrint or send them to a printer like Kinko’s to get printed, your files are much higher resolution and quality, equaling better prints! GIMP is a little tricky to get the hang of, but it’s a free program, so we can’t really complain about that.
3. I’ve lately become obsessed with fonts, and there are some great free font sites out there. Our favorite site is DaFont, and there are hundreds of free font files available to download and install. Once you install (this is super easy, just save to Font File in C:/Windows/Fonts if you use a Windows machine, and there is a similar operation for Macs), you can use the fonts in any program, from Word to Paint to Photoshop (or for us, GIMP).
Here’s a little (font) preview of what we used on our cards:
Honey Script, I love you.
Tomorrow: the reveal!
Related Posts
14 Responses to “STDs Are Great!”
Yes, you definitely left us hanging! And wow, what a deal from Vista Print!
What a tease! I also love Vista Print. I’ve used it for my shower thank yous and will be using it for our rehearsal & groom’s dinner invites, wedding thank yous (postcards w/envelopes to save $$), as well as photo sharing postcards. One of my bridesmaids also used a vistaprint template for a shower invite, and it turned out great.
You tease!!
But I love Honey Script & Vista Print so I suppose I can wait just one day.
OOOh I love dafont. We are using Enchanted Prarie Dog.
Thank you for the link for GIMP, I’d never heard of it before and it sounds awesome! I will be downloading that when I get home tonight! 
Total tease! Well, when you give us more info on the STDs (like some pictures!) could you also tell us about the paper quality at VistaPrint? Do they have different options, or is there just a standard paper they use for everything?
@Kristen: Paper quality for VP postcards is all the same, though you have the option of matte or glossy for the ‘photo’ side (we went with matte, i think) and sizes (we did standard). It’s not super thick stock but not flimsy either. You get what you pay for, and these were basically free, so I can’t complain. OvernightPrints is another company, and they’re about the same (though I prefer VistaPrint).
Miss Sweet Tea, if you find the interface to GIMP difficult to use…you might want to try GIMPshop(www.gimpshop.com). GIMPshop is a front-end for GIMP that gives it a more photshop-like interface which you might prefer. I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other, but it’s a personal preference as to which you like better.
oooh, the honey script has been my latest obsession! good choice sweet tea!
Why do you prefer VistaPrint to OvernightPrints? I’ve used Overnight and am just curious about switching for when I send out my STD’s. Can’t wait to see your design!
I’m so glad you posted your font type. I had been pining over the Rambler script on Veer, but since I’m only a 12k bride, I couldn’t bring myself to pay $50 for a font. Honey is super close and the free part doesn’t hurt either.
Thank you!
[...] later came when I found out about DaFont.com from Miss Sweet Tea at WeddingBee. She used the Honey Script for her Save the Date Cards. It looked [...]
Better late than never, but thanks for posting about GIMP. I tried the free trial of illustrator and almost chucked my lap top out the window! GIMP is way easier to use!
Thanks again!
Miss Sweet Tea, San Diego/New Orleans
Age and Occupation: 26, Graduate Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Web Monkey
Engagement Date: December 1, 2007
Wedding Date: December, 2008
Blogging Since: July 14, 2008
Venue: Small church ceremony, museum reception
About Me: I'm an East Coaster living on the West Coast, planning a wedding in the South. I teach, study and write about pop culture, race, and sexuality for a living- now if only my dream job paid! After Mr. Sweet Tea, my other loves are scuba diving, traveling, being a semi-pretentious foodie, and fighting for social justice. I can't wait to have our best friends and family together in our favorite city to
celebrate with us!
argh. u left me hanging. i wanna see em sweet tea grrr