It’s pretty much standard in the wedding world these days to ensure your guests are informed of your wedding date before the official invitations are sent out. Whether you use a website, word of mouth or letters, it makes sense—you want as many of your guests to make it as humanly possible.
As common as it is for most people to have received a save the date of some kind, Mr. Jaguar and I happen to be members of families who were in the dark about them and had no idea they even existed. In fact, the first time I mentioned them to my future in-laws, they laughed at me and told me they were a waste of time—they’d just tell people themselves. Er, no. That might be the case, but I am a stationery nerd who gets giddy over receiving things in the mail, so skipping out on save the dates was never an option for me. Sorry, folks. They might be confusing, dear family members, but you’re getting one anyway. AND YOU WILL LOVE THEM!
The question was: what to do for them?
At first, I was thinking of going down the Vistaprint postcard route. I even designed one or two as mock-ups, had them posted out to me and prepared to send them as soon as I got back to Sydney this year. They were cheap, they came with envelopes, and they would spread the word without spending a fortune. They were…okay. They would have done the job. But something in me wanted to hold out and see what else I could come up with. I wasn’t allowed to use a photo of us, since Mr. Jaguar is a shy petal and didn’t feel comfortable with his face shining out at people (and random mail workers) as they were sent out in the post. What’s a girl to do?
Well, I used something I’d already spent money on for inspiration: the custom portrait I had designed for my lovely fiancé’s Christmas present! Do you remember it? I was inspired by Miss Sloth’s totally gorgeous postcard STD’s, also making use of a custom portrait—so I decided to see what I could come up with.
May I present to you, the Jaguar Save the Dates!
This is the front, complete with Nan Lawson’s sweet image. (The edges look weird, since they kind of blur into the background a little - but they’re much more crisp and clean in real life.) I kind of love that Oscar-cat made it onto our save the date cards, he’s part of our little family after all. And apparently he’s been quite the talking point amongst our family members on both sides, so there you go. Famous kitty.
And here’s the back, complete with random censor bar for good measure. I made sure I left enough space to whack a postage stamp at the top, as well as creating the address lines at the bottom of the invite; however I changed my mind at the last second when I decided that I wanted the cards to be a surprise and ended up using envelopes. To avoid leaving that space blank, I used the dotted lines to calligraphy the names of each guest on there—another sneaky way of digging in the “no plus one or kids” theme that we’ve been actively promoting since we got engaged. (I know, I know, but we’ve gotta do it.)
To be fair to Vistaprint, I did use one of their freebie promotions to mock up some cute address labels for our new little apartment here in the UK. So really, the save the date cards were doubly useful: they let people know about the wedding AND our new address. Two birds, one stone, epic STD win. They don’t look so wonderful what with all the dashes through them as below, but I promise they turned out much cuter in person:
With that done, it was time to get busy stamping and addressing. Since we’d recently moved in to our new place and had no printer, I spent the day handwriting all of the envelopes, and I think I did an okay job. I was curious to see what the current stamps were from the post office, but was pleasantly surprised to get reef fishies for the Aussie guests and cute koala bears for our international ones.
And then they were gone!
We’ve had really nice feedback on them so far—though Mr. Jaguar did have some family members that called up his parents to ask if that was the wedding invitation. (Sigh, even me mentioning that a formal invitation was to follow still didn’t help with that one.) Even the future in-laws agreed that they turned out pretty good. We also have had four people already let us know they can’t make it—good for planning purposes, so we can turn to our B-list in time for the invitations to go out. All in all, it was a good decision to have made.
Side note for cost purposes: I ended up printing them through Zazzle. They worked out to be around $1 per card, plus shipping. Also, I ordered them in two lots because I am crazy. We had our guest list sorted out, and our total was 110 people altogether. Because we had couples and families coming, we worked out to need around 70 cards altogether, but I could only buy them in an option of 50 or 100. I got cheap and thought we could get away with 50 postcards if we skipped out on a few people like parents and our bridal party who already know. Obviously, if you do the math, there was no way that was going to work out. No. Eeeediot. I ended up having to go back and order another 25, paying additional shipping in the process. Learn from my mistakes and don’t try and go too cheap—it’ll bite you on the butt.
The Zazzle printing looks fabulous (beautiful and glossy) and the colours came out amazing, so total props to them for that. They also delivered internationally very quickly, thanks to Fed Ex shipping, so that was a plus—especially while I was anxiously awaiting my last 25 cards before I could mail them all! The only thing to keep in mind with Zazzle is that your envelopes aren’t included. I went to a junky store and got some sweet pale yellow ones to be cheap. The total for our 75 cards came to just under $100. Postage for our Aussie and international guests was around $40 all up.
Did you have any guests that had no clue what a STD was? (You know the kind I mean…right?)
They look great!
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