Decision: to Save the Date or not Save the Date

Our kitten Natalie was near the best source of natural light in the house, so she got to pose with our postcard

As a graphic designer, there was no question for me as to whether we'd send a Save the Date or not. Since most of our guests live in Columbus, or at least within driving distance, it wasn't a complete necessity, but I've taken any excuse to design paper pieces for our wedding. Once we had picked the date and color scheme, it was an easy process from there.

I knew I wanted to keep them inexpensive since a chunk of our budget would be needed for the actual invitations, and a postcard seemed like a natural way to convey our message. The one indecisive moment that arose was when considering how to print the postcards. I requested letterpress quotes and purchased a gocco, but the letterpress would not have allowed me to flood the page with green and was too costly for us so early in the game, and the gocco was too small and didn't allow for the oversized cards I envisioned. Ultimately, I used a laser printer, and I was really happy with the clean results. Cutting corners in some places has allowed us to spend more in others, and this was a perfect situation to create something inexpensive yet still stylish.

I think the 250 page pack of 100lb. Cougar paper in bright white cost me all of $11 and I have access to an incredible laser printer, so really the only expense was a bit of a splurge on postage from zazzle. I wish the site didn't charge so much on top of the postage itself, but I think the details are the most important part of a design and Nathan agreed it would complete the piece, so we went with it. In the end, we got more comments on the stamp than the design, so it was really worth it. (People love a novelty!) I went with typefaces that were already on my Mac, and I knew I wanted our names to be big and bold with a calendar incorporated somewhere (much like the Chewing the Cud Save the Date featured on my inspiration board).

One design sacrifice was the rounded the corners I originally planned for, but upon researching the USPS regulations, I discovered postcards need square corners to be mailable. (So glad I discovered that before rounding them all; it pays to do a little reasearch beforehand!) In the end, the design of the postcards paved the way for the rest of the invitation suite (which went into the mail a few days ago) and one friend described them as chic, which made my day.

the front of our Save the Date

the back, with our custom stamp

Design nerd moment: I determined that the green I'd use for all the printed pieces would be PMS 376 by holding a Pantone chip book up next to my shoes and choosing the color that most closely matched. Yes, I realize this is overly obsessive, but it helps to be consistent! Plus I love that everything comes back to the shoes :)