Tying the Knot: Our Save The Date

Our Save the Dates were mailed about a week ago so I'm pretty sure that everyone's received them by now. 

(and if you haven't gotten yours yet then I'm sorry for spoiling the surprise!)

I loved our engagment pictures so much that I knew instantly that I would include at least one of them for our STD. (yes, Save the Date, not the other kind) I also knew that I wanted to make them myself to cut down on cost.

Traditionally STDs go out about 6 months so I cut it a few weeks early but I figured we're only going to be getting busier and our wedding is close to the holidays I wanted to give people plenty of warning and get these suckers in the mail!

I used a program on my computer called Comic Life to design them which was super easy to use. You select your picture and then add text boxes for all the rest. It took me quite a while to decide on a picture and final wording but I am so happy with how they turned out. In case you were wondering, the two fonts are JB Cursive and Pharmacy and I downloaded them both for free. (Lots of sites have them)

Once the design was finalized I exported the file to iPhoto and cropped it to 4x6 dimmensions just to ensure that nothing would get cut out on accident. I wanted to make them into a fridge magnent of some sort but couldn't find any for the price I wanted to spend so instead I had them printed as simple 4x6 photos from Target. I had a coupon that I thought was for 50% off and I'm still irked at the employees I worked with that day but oh well.

I had 50 photos printed at $0.15 each so I spent a total of $7.50 on the STDs themselves. They were mailed in standard A6 white envelopes from Staples that come 50 in a box for $8.50. Add on $20 for stamps and I spent a grand total of $36 to DIY my STDs!

They designed exactly how I wanted them and they were also a great deal. I personalized them even further by stamping a cute "Happily Ever After" stamp across the seal of the envelope in navy. I'm still in the deciding process of what I want to do when it comes to our formal invites but after all the success I had with this project I can bet I'll be DIYing again for those as well. I'm also planning on doing a similar project for our table numbers (based off something I loved from Pinterest) and I can't wait to get started on those!