Save the date!

Since spring and summer wedding season can be pretty hectic, John and I thought it would be a nice idea to send out "save-the-date" postcards a year (or so) in advance, just to give everyone a heads-up. Save-the-dates are an opportunity to have a really fun, informal announcement as well, so I enjoyed designing them knowing that the actual invitations would be much more formal later on.

The problem with having so many great engagement photos to choose from was that it was pretty much impossible to pick just one to feature on the save-the-dates!

So, I decided to print three different postcards as our save-the-dates: each would feature a different photo, but the back side with all of the information would be common to all. I created a type treatment for the postcards that matched the boardwalk/rock-and-roll feeling of our photos (with a little... ok a lot of... inspiration from an Elum invite I saw at the National Stationery Show), and I think they looked friggin' awesome.

Version 1: Frog Bog

Version 2: Piggyback

Version 3: Clown

Back side (common to all lots)

Enter VistaPrint. I first heard of this company on The Knot message boards, and brides raved about the fact that if you sign up for their e-newsletters you are guaranteed to receive an offer for 50 free postcards, and all you have to pay for out of pocket is image uploading and shipping. Sure enough, I received the offer and I sort of exploited it, hee hee... I made three separate orders of 50 postcards each, so I ended up paying only $38 for 150 postcards! Not too shabby considering another company quoted me over $650 for 150 postcards!!!! (The expense was due to running small quantities of several different lots, rather than just one big lot.)

The postcards arrived two weeks early and they look even better than I thought they would. A big yay for VistaPrint!

On Saturday, June 28th, I brought my stack of postcards to the Bordentown Post Office so they could be hand-canceled to avoid ugly bar codes and postmarks possibly being printed over our website URL or other information. The clerk at the post office said it wouldn't be a problem, and she took the stack from me and said they would get to it later in the day.

Unfortunately, the following Monday I heard from several recipients of the postcards that the cards were NOT hand-canceled and sure enough, there was ugliness printed all over the backs of my postcards. Sigh.

My advice to brides-to-be: don't be afraid to be a Bridezilla and insist that the clerk hand-cancel all 100 postcards right in front of you!

Interestingly enough, I also heard that some recipients immediately threw the postcards in the trash because they assumed they were jeans ads! Ha ha. It was only after they took a quick second glance that they recognized our names and rescued the cards from the garbage can. I guess that's what happens when your photos look too damn good ;-)