From today, our wedding is exactly six months away. Holy moly, where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday this happened...
And now we are halfway there already. Crikey.
I didn't plan it this way, but we mailed out our Save the Date postcards a couple days ago, and they will be arriving exactly 6 months ahead of our wedding. What natural timing I have. I'm not sure what proper etiquette calls for in terms of getting save the date cards out, but since we are having a destination wedding, I think giving guests an early heads up is helpful.
Anyhow, back when we first got engaged, I set up a bare bones budget. After a few brief chats with my parents and James, we set our budget, which is in the neighborhood of 13k, about half as much as the national average for a wedding. So far, so good, but when it came to planning wedding paper products, I realized how easy it would be to blow the budget here.
After playing around on Microsoft Publisher for a couple weeks, we were able to design our own Save the Date postcards, and get them printed locally for $55! Thats whats up! Here's how we did it...
Pinterest browsing led me to create a paper products 'board', which all of my early inspiration landed on. I discovered an awesome website called The Wedding Chicks, which has free templates to create entire wedding invitation suites! Amazing right? So we played around with that for a while, and eventually circled back to our early wedding inspiration...
Here is how the front turned out...
Without further ado, here is the back.
My suggestions here are play around with layout and format until you find the right look. Under Page Setup on Microsoft Publisher, you can set margins and custom layouts. This is also where you flip between Portrait (long page) or Landscape (wide page). I also suggest having a glass of wine or two, it makes the successes sweeter and the failures (you KNOW I have lots of those) easier to handle.
Overall, just do what makes YOU and your fiance' happy.
Lately, I've been struggling with too many hands in the wedding basket. I am an approval seeker, and am also surrounded by people who mean well, but offer too many opinions. After a couple minor meltdowns, I have decided to stop asking for so much input, and just do what makes me happy. And it is making wedding planning sooo much easier.
So that's where we stand folks! Coming right along. Have a wonderful weekend, and lets pray for some spring-like weather!!
Found your blog through YHL. Your postcards look great! I wish we had gone the less traditional route and used something other than photos of us for our save the dates. We did go the postcard route though. You can check them out here: http://www.figuringoutlifeblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/save-dates.html Good luck with all your wedding planning!
ReplyDeleteThanks Hannah!! We are pretty happy with them. Yours look fabulous as well. Its so hard to make a decision at the time, but in the end, it all will be perfect no matter what right?
DeleteThey look great! I'll have to check out the wedding chicks diy ones. I love their printables! It's hard to keep in perspective, but people really don't keep the save the dates anyway!
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