Weddingbee Blog

It’s time to reveal the Cheetah save the dates! Sometimes decisions are easy, and lucky for me the design of our STDs* was one of those times. After we got engaged I knew exactly how I wanted our STDs to look—thankfully, Mr. Cheetah was totally on board. (He’s good like that.)

I envisioned a 5 x 7 card with a hand-illustrated image of Mr. Cheetah and me in Palm Springs; the other side of the card would have all the important info that save the dates usually have (mostly who, where, and when), and it would all look like a pretty little package. Deciding on the illustration was the hardest part—I’m an artist and Mr. Cheetah is known to draw (he has done our holiday cards in years past), so I felt pressure to create the illustration ourselves. I even sketched out a mock-up. But drawing/painting isn’t my concentration (sculpture, photography, and video make up most of my work), and the more I thought about it the more I wanted the illustration to be drawn by someone else’s hand—a style different than our own. So I turned to Etsy and created my first Alchemy request. Success! Just check it out:

Admit it: you love it, too. It’s by the absolutely wonderful LeFrenchCircus. And it’s exactly how I had imagined—no, wait; it’s even better.

I designed the other side in Illustrator using EcuyerDAX and Nelly Scripts fonts.

Since it’s a semi-destination wedding, I also made up a one-sided insert that directs guests to our website for more info on travel and lodging.

I had the actual save the dates and the inserts printed professionally. To save a little bit of money, I had the inserts printed two to a page, and then I just cut them in half with my paper trimmer. I tied the STD and insert together in a bundle with a tag. (Mr. Cheetah offered to help, but I can be an aesthetics control freak, and I only trusted my fingers to tie the bows just so.)

Here is a close up of the date tag and the essential and ubiquitous baker’s twine. Man, I hope that stuff never goes out of style; I love it like Cookie Monster loves cookies. Or like Dylan McKay loves Kelly Taylor. Pick your favorite cultural reference.

I tried numerous designs for the tags: little palm trees, our names, the website address…but the simple date design turned out looking the best. I printed these out on my home printer on heavy-linen paper (love) and then punched each out with a handy tag-shaped punch.

Here is the back after bundling:

Now it was time for the envelopes—which I foolishly left to the last minute (get all your supplies in advance—waaaay in advance). I knew I wanted the envelopes in one of our wedding colors, so I looked at Kelly Paper and Xpedx (where I picked up the linen paper for the tags), but their A7 envelope options were limited to white. So I had to pay a bit more for envelopes at the DIY bridal mecca, Paper Source. I considered a few colors (pink, yellow, gray), but in the end both Mr. Cheetah and I loved the sophisticated modern look of the black envelopes. I may have been able to find black envelopes for a better price online, but then there are shipping costs and I needed to get these babies out the door and in our guests’ mailboxes. Plus, while at Paper Source I bought their envelope-liner templates and some amazing patterned paper for liners in our wedding colors.

I cut out all the liners and attached them with double-sided tape—which seems to have worked quite well.

How awesome is that paper?

I have wanted to make wraparound address labels ever since I first discovered them a year or two ago (probably on Weddingbee). After a few rounds of designing, we decided on this one I made in Illustrator. I printed them, cut them out, and then ran them through my Xyron—and voila, DIY address labels! A little trick I learned: pre-fold the labels before putting them through the Xyron; it makes them easier to line up.

To top it all off, we used a Hawaii Rainforest stamp, a detail I’m sure no one noticed, but it was special to us since the first half of the proposal happened in Hawaii.

Here is the whole suite (complete with all the pieces, front and back)!

And just one more photo:

All Personal Photos

I saw our STDs** as a place to be cute, playful, and fun, and I’m so happy with how they turned out! Our guests have been loving them.

Now it’s on to designing the invites! But I have no idea what those will look like yet…

*Man, I feel weird and a tad gross typing that.

**Still feels weird.