Mark Your Calendars!

All the wedding resources of the great, wide Interwebs say that save the dates should be sent out about six months before the wedding date.  With our wedding in May, I said "Let's get these done and sent out around the middle of November so that we'll be well ahead of the Christmas mail rush!"

Well, you know what they say about the best laid schemes of mice and brides, right? 

Between the invite design, the guest list, addresses, and other details, we couldn't get everything together in November.  I freaked out for a minute, realized it wasn't a big deal, and set our new deadline to the end of December so we would come after all the Christmas postage.  And on my birthday, we set 110 of them off into the world!  

 Super excited  to drop them off!  This wedding not sponsored by Bodybuilding.com.  Just a conveniently sized box! 

Crowded post office made me feel ridiculous for having Sphinx take pictures - but I knew I needed them!  The things I do for y'all. 

So if you were a Pyramid wedding guest, several days after this you will open up your mail box and see...

"H"'s aren't my strongest letter, obviously.

A Hogwarts acceptance letter, apparently.  With the thick yellow envelope, and the emerald colored ink, that's exactly what they looked like to me!  

We used a rubber stamp on the back for the return address:

Sorry for the blurs, but you can see the swirls on the stamp and the purple ink.

Inside, we find the save the date card itself:

Using a balloon background picture has been an idea of mine for ages and I love how it turned out.  They're so colorful and fun!

And the tiny modification we made after getting the stack of cards from Uncle G:

I put a magnet on the back so that people can stare at our faces every time they go to the fridge!  

Now let's break it down for those curious:

Here were all of my supplies, can you spot the hidden Mickey? 

So I've mentioned last time that we had Uncle G's designer put this together in Photoshop, and he printed and cut them for us.  We played around with several different pictures, but ultimately liked the one where we're looking right at the camera for the inset.  It also incorporated all of my info, but I don't think it looks too busy.

For the envelopes, I took Mrs. Palm Tree's suggestion and ordered from envelopemall.com, and I'd totally recommend them too.  The only downside was that they only came in orders of 100, so I had to get 200 and now I have a lot extra (although there were a lot of mistakes, so I'm glad I had more).  I bought the Stardream Metallic Gold Euro Flap - A9, since that size fit my card closest, and I wanted a nice pointed back flap because I'm picky about things like that.  The gold color is perfect, and nice and shimmery in person - I was able to spring for the shimmer since this site was much cheaper than the other one I was looking at!  Thanks, Mrs. PT! 

I wrote the addresses with a pen labeled "opaque marker" by the brand Recollections in the shade "Holly".  After about 100 envelopes, my pen started dying and I had to go buy another.  They didn't have the exact same color, but apparently the Lime Green came out just fine on this gold paper, and that's what you're seeing above (I liked the Holly a bit better, but I was not about to worry myself with that).  I don't have great handwriting at all, but the pen was able to obscure some of my incompetence.  I put flourishes on some letters where I could manage it, but mostly I just made sure it was legible.

A closer look at the stamp, in case you're interested.

We incorporated the last of the wedding colors, purple, in the return address. I had this wooden handled stamp from Etsy seller LemonTreePaperCo, saved on my favorites for a long time and I finally ordered it during a Black Friday sale.  We just went with our first names so that we can reuse it after the wedding.  Highly recommend this seller too, no problems at all and we received it in about a week!  I used a purple ink pad from Michael's and had no problems with getting a clear stamp every time (except for when I accidentally had it on the bumpy table shown above and that was my fault).  

It was a semi-last minute decision to make these magnetic.  I didn't want to worry about the cost (and having to go somewhere else besides Uncle G) to do a full magnetic card, but I really like the idea of people being able to put it up on the fridge as a reminder.  With so many fridges being stainless steel these days, a lot of people can't even use it that way, so I wanted it to be a cheap addition.  I found rolls of magnetic tape at Michael's for $3.99 each, and I was able to cut about 70 pieces from each roll; I used two rolls and had plenty extra.  I stuck them to the card, and didn't have any problems with the adhesive coming loose or not sticking to the fridge (we did some QC tests).

Stamp peeking out of the box here. 

For postage, we used the Wedding Roses Forever Stamp, which is good for up to 1 ounce.  I weighed our invites with a food scale at home, since I wanted to make sure that the little magnet didn't make it too heavy.  It was only 0.65 ounces - hooray!  I took a leap of faith and dropped these off in the postage box without going up to the counter (the line was hella long!), but we don't seem to have had any problems with the shipping.  

These weren't too hard to assemble, once we had all of the pieces. We just started a little assembly line where I wrote the addresses and Sphinx added the postage, stuffed in the card and sealed them up while we were watching TV in the evenings.

And here's a breakdown of the costs, although it's a little misleading since we didn't pay for the cards:

Envelopes: 200 (w/shipping) - $60.74

Michael's: paint pens, magnetic tape, ink pad - $15.17 

Custom rubber stamp (Etsy - w/ shipping) - $23.00

120 stamps - $55.20
$154.11 or $1.28 per StD  (for 120 cards, a few stragglers haven't been sent due to lack of addresses!)

I'm very pleased with how these turned out, especially since I felt like we were behind on putting them together.  We had already shared the date with some out of town family, so this was more as a reminder. 

Or as my sassy Daddy had to say "Oh good, I'm so glad I got this, I just might have booked something that day!" And he wonders where my attitude comes from.  I've received some great feedback from the members of our guest list who don't like to poke fun at me so much.

And now..on to invitations!  Yikes!  Anyone else semi-DIY their paper goods?