Weddingbee Blog

I think it’s safe to assume that MAJORITY of the potential wedding guests who were sent save-the-date cards have by now received them—I still have a few I haven’t mailed yet because I haven’t gotten their mailing addresses, but hopefully this doesn’t ruin it for them!

When it comes to sending out save the dates, there are TONS of options out there today. However, I needed our save the dates to have a few specific qualities:

1. They needed to be relatively inexpensive. I’m not made of money, y’all. I wish I was, though.
2. We wanted to be able to utilize some of our favorite engagement photos, courtesy of the fabulous James from Ballenger Photography. Since we went ahead and did an engagement session, we want to be able to use them at every opportunity possible, dagnabbit!
3. We wanted something simple and fuss free that I could potentially design myself and send off to be printed somewhere.

Our search for the great save the date ended where I figured it would. Ladies and gentlemen, the mister and I have hopped on the Vistaprint bandwagon.

At first I was kind of disappointed that we had settled on doing the postcard thing, simply because it’s already been done so many times by couples in the past. But “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Am I right? Anyway, I can see why so many brides decide to go the Vistaprint route, because it really is incredibly simple and fuss free. Check item #3 off that list!

I designed both the front and back of the postcard myself after looking at some other save-the-date postcards floating around on the web for inspiration. I used some of mine and Mr. A’s favorite engagement-session photos (check #2 off that list, now), incorporated the Albemarle Swash and Poor Richard fonts (which seem to be emerging as the unofficial ones we’ll be using on everything wedding related), and infused some of our wedding colors into the mix.

One of Vistaprint’s many promotional deals gave me the opportunity to order these lovelies at an extremely discounted rate (check #1 off that list, baby!), so I uploaded our front and back designs to the website, placed my order, and waited less than a week before my bundle of 100 pristine postcards arrived on my doorstep. I honestly couldn’t be happier with how they turned out, and I highly recommend Vistaprint to anyone who’s looking to get some postcards made!

OK, enough chitter chatter. On to the photos!

I used a simple corner rounder to give the postcards a polished look. I seriously love the way they came out!

I left the backside of the postcard in grayscale, mostly because I didn’t want to pay the extra bucks to upgrade them to full color. I kind of like the way the gray looks on the back, though. It also made the mailing addresses stand out better than they probably would have if the backside had been in color too.

I ended up mailing one of these to myself so I could see what they looked like when they came through the mail. The only problem was the post office had stamped a big old ugly bar code across the “formal invitation to follow” on the top, which bummed me out a bit. Aside from that, though, they seemed to look relatively nice even after being beaten up by the postal service!

As a side note, I’ve got to be honest here, bees—dropping those babies off at the post office made this wedding thing feel really “real” for the first time, you know what I mean? It was like we were OFFICIALLY announcing our plans to our friends and family that we are, in fact, tying the knot on March 16th of next year. It was such an exciting feeling (and also a little nerve-racking!). I can only imagine what it’s going to feel like when we send off the official invitations!

Did you sent save the dates to friends and family after you had settled on a date and location for the wedding? At what point in the wedding planning did it get “real” for you?