Weddingbee Blog

Although I briefly contemplated buying pre-designed Save the Dates (STDs), I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I really wanted us to design them ourselves. Since we’re not designing our invitations, I wanted to try my hand at something, and STDs seemed like they would be the perfect, fun option. So, I got started (checking in with Mr. Guinea Pig every now and again, who would always say, “Looks fine.”).

It turns out, there is a reason I am not a graphic designer or artist. I’m a scientist and also a perfectionist, so not only did I struggle to design our STDs, but I nitpicked each draft of them, as well. My very first designs are completely different from where we ended up, so I thought I’d share the evolution of our STDs thus far.

(example of a ’typical’ STD, from Magnet Street)

In the very beginning, we started with what I considered a fairly typical Save the Date idea.

At least, it looked like a lot of the STDs that I had seen over the years, mostly on other people’s fridges, since I haven’t been to very many weddings! I figured we’d get a postcard printed at Vistaprint during one of their sales (where 100 postcards are free) and this would also help us save on postage. Since Mr. Guinea Pig and I haven’t had an engagement photo session, I tried to find a photo that would work, and started bringing in elements I liked around the photo (flowers, flourishes, etc). This turned out to be a disaster, and looks like something a child drew in MS Paint (in my ever-so-slightly self-critical opinion).

But I decided to persevere, and start over. I kept seeing awesome STDs on wedding blogs that I desperately wanted to emulate:

(Woodgrain Embossed Save the Dates found via Oh So Beautiful Paper)

(Adorable Save the Date idea via Style Me Pretty)

(one of my favorite STDs ever, via OnceWed - in fact, I loved their whole wedding from what I could see)

But knowing it could take me months to come up with a creative idea like these, I was starting to get desperate. Then came the fantastic suggestion from our officiant, and I finally had part of an idea nailed down: plantable paper! At first I liked the idea of something like this:

(a wedding invitation, but you get the drift - from Daisy Days)

However Mr. Guinea Pig had other ideas - he had decided he didn’t want a picture of us on our STDs at all. Since it’s not very often he has a strong opinion about anything related to the wedding (see end of this post’s first paragraph, above), I went back to the drawing board. I still wanted something that would be fun and not too formal, and one day while Googling ’save-the-dates’, I came across these:

(calendar STDs found on Flickr, here)

I think these are great! And just as importantly, so does Mr. Guinea Pig! What I like most about them are the two shades of colored circles depicting the month, and how much the date stands out because it’s the only number (as opposed to putting an actual calendar on there). Now I had a design idea to work from, but I still found myself stuck - I didn’t want to copy these exactly, as I’m sure that’s not considerate/legal, but as someone who doesn’t design things I found it difficult to think of a way to incorporate the part we love into a new design! So that’s where things stood with our Save the Dates for almost a month, before I finally pinned Mr. Guinea Pig down and said, “This needs to be solved. NOW!”… these babies have to be designed, printed, stuffed, addressed and mailed within a month!

Did you design (/are you designing) any of your stationery for the wedding? Did you struggle to come up with a design that you liked? What is your favorite type of Save the Date? Any hints for a newbie?