As dead as O-Ren

OK, so this has nothing to do with Kill Bill, but I just recently watched the two films and fell in love with that line...

This post is actually about my DIY Save the Dates!

My fiance is a very laid back guy that really has no qualms giving me full control of wedding plans... which drives me nuts! Before anyone gets a bad impression, my love is such a great man and I know I am very lucky but that still does not mean that I don't want to punch his face in a few days a year :)

Back to the Save the Dates:

I love the postcard invitations that have been trending for a while now. My Pinterest board is stocked high with all of the wedding postcards that inspired me to make my own. The only difference between the Pinterest postcards and mine is $$$! I've checked out zazzle.com and vistaprint.com but both sites turned out to be quite pricey, and the sites didn't allow me to edit the images (which for a person without Photoshop is very important). Instead of shelling out $1.75-2.00/card I decided to buy the AVERY brand Matte White Postacards (item #8387) and print them myself! Initially my little sister (creative, photoshop owning type) was supposed to make them, but she is so busy working hard and having a life (I can't blame her for having fun, can I?) that I resorted to using Microsoft Power Point and the Avery Design Pro program. It didn't turn out half-bad! I had to do a couple of trial prints and fiddle around with background transparency, but they turned out nice enough for a card that just announces our wedding date.

Here are some photos that may help you create your own special Save the Dates:

I'd love to make this up-right but it wouldn't go along with the others. So please cock your head to the left when looking.

This is the final edit for the back of our Save the Dates! It may seem too light on the computer but the words POP better when the background image is at a transparency of 62%. The photo below is of one the first I printed. The background image was at a transparency of  54% and looked "fine." Unfortunately the green grass interrupted the green in the font.

Side-by-side comparison of the two backs of our Save the Date postcards.

The front of our postcards show off my very amazing engagement ring! I am proud to say that it was custom made and my fiance planned it all himself. I am so lucky to have a man that knows what I want. Please ignore our messy desk!

This is my planner. I thought it was hilarious that I wrote "Print STD Cards." Let's just say that abbreviating Save the Dates is a BAD idea! AAAAND now you know I paid rent on Friday! ha ha.

As you have probably noticed, the cards all have weird borders with many different sizes.... It's ok, I freaked out for a whole hot minute too! I then remembered that I work at an elementary school and I can just chop off those borders with that giant blade on a wooden tray... what are those things called? Oh well, I'm going to use it and come back to add photos of my finished products.

As I write this I am assuming that everyone knows how to design things on Power Point, and maybe I am being a bit ignorant in thinking this, but if you need help at all please feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to type a step-by-step instruction on how to create custom sized slides and save them individually as JPEGs. 

How much did this DIY save the Rhudy Wedding?

Well, we are having a "destination" wedding of sorts. All of our family members and friends live in Kansas, Texas, California, or Venezuela so we completely understand that this isn't an easy wedding to attend. In lieu of expecting many guests we are still inviting all of the people that we wish could be there to share our special moment. I don't know about them but I LOVE memorabilia, so I keep all the cards and photos I get in the mail. I believe that receiving our Save the Dates will help people know that we love them and hold them special in our hearts. 

Now, to answer the questions, we are printing 120 Save the Dates. If we were to print them online through a custom card website we would spend in the ballpark of $210 JUST on Save the Dates... nothing else. Seriously? People would spend that much on a card that just tells you the wedding date?! Ridiculous! The Avery packet of postcards cost us $15 online and our Amazon Prime account got it shipped to us for free. Also, our ink is free since the printer is used for my fiance's work 98% of the time. I can understand that printing at home can be very expensive when buying your own ink, but if you think about it two new packets of ink (assuming one is black and the other multicolor) will cost you approximately $75. So in total you would spend $90 on printing your Save the Dates at home. That is more than half off the price of printing online! Plus, this allows you to be unique and creative with your design. 

I hope that this post helps any budget brides (as I like to refer to us) or any DIY brides out there!

besos,

VEM