Weddingbee Blog

The famous Vegas tourism slogan is, of course: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” This saying may very well be true for a lot of trips to Sin City. (Enough trips, at least, so that entire movie series are based on this premise.) However, given the money that I am spending on a professional photographer and our penchant for taking lots and lots of pictures, I can’t imagine a scenario where we don’t return home after our wedding with a lot of photographic evidence of exactly what occurred.

We even take pictures of us taking pictures.

So our new wedding-related Vegas slogan: “What happens in Vegas will be so much more awesome if you come too.” The trick was luring everyone there. We decided that the best way to do so was to send out some STDs.***

As soon as we decided that we were going to get married in Vegas, we realized that we could have some fun with the STDs. We also wanted to do something pretty awesome for them, especially since we were asking people to pony up for flight tickets (or gas) and hotel rooms just to see us get married. After all, this is a destination wedding for everyone, except Mr. Mole’s parents. We wanted to pay it back somehow.

We brainstormed a lot of different options for our Vegas STDs.

A friend sent out luggage tags with their names and date embossed on the back. A coworker sent out tropical vintage postcards with their wedding website address. My sister mailed everyone a magnet with all of the necessary wedding information (which is still on our fridge, by the way, now holding a bill).

One day, I was browsing on Etsy—a phrase that I will get to type out dozens of times here—when I stumbled across the store for Architette Studios. Jennifer Bishop creates prints, stationery, and cards with handsketched drawings. What immediately struck me was her skyline series. After all, when I think of Vegas, I immediately think of the skyline with all of the lights and casinos.

Image via Architette Studios / Las Vegas skyline

We like that the cards are modern and clean while still being fun. Mr. Mole, who has very definitive opinions about typography, wants to add that the font is formal without being fussy. So we decided to order a set of customized postcards from her.

The real version obviously has our names and date!

But, you might ask, what’s that behind the postcard? We decided to up the ante (har har! more puns!) by also sending each couple or family a seven-in-one battery-operated video poker game. Thanks to my beloved Amazon Prime account, we got a great deal and free shipping on these machines. My father had a smaller version of one of these when I was growing up, and I used to play with it for hours. I always, always, always lost all of my money within 20 minutes. I am glad that I got the gambling (and bankruptcy) out of my system back then. Otherwise, the money that we saved for the wedding would be going to feed my nickel video-poker addiction instead.

Some of the STD envelopes, all ready to go

Mr. Mole and I figured that this package will get everyone in the mood to come to Vegas and have fun—and, of course, see us get married. We mailed them out in May, and they were a huge hit. Now we only have about three more months to go!

Are you sending out STDs for your wedding?

***I was going to avoid making a joke about STDs, but I can’t help it. So I figured that I might as well hide it out of the way. Vegas! STDs! Now there’s a pair of words that go together. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. Etc. Ad nauseum. This is one reason that I still think out the full words—save the date—whenever I see the acronym STD on wedding websites.