Our save-the-dates went out the very first week in April, providing our guests with 8 months notice. Which Alex thinks is an insane amount of notice, but hey, that’s destination wedding etiquette for you. And for 90% of our guests, our Arizona nuptials will be considered a destination wedding.
I always had a general sense of how I wanted our save-the-dates to look and feel. Keeping it simple, I opted to have simply one photo, and minimum text. I’m a huge typography dork, so I knew I wanted ‘Save the Date’ in a pretty handwriting font. Also, I didn’t want anything super formal and stuffy, I wanted something casual and light, which I think a postcard accomplishes quite nicely.
Many of my married / engaged friends referred me to both Wedding Paper Divas and Minted to assist in my search. I felt there were pros and cons to each site. With WPD, the customization options were virtually zero. Which was frustrating, because I fell in love with one of their designs. When I realized it wasn’t going to work — no matter how I sliced it — I popped back over to Minted, where I was able to adjust, and play around a lot more.
Minted has truly beautiful products, like so many more wonderful options! But I didn’t love that the back of the postcard was stamped with ©www.Minted.com (that actually really bothered me) and I wasn’t able to customize the back of the card to exactly fit with what I wanted. So, I did what anyone who loves projects would do…
I decided to DIY it. That’s right. I took on a massive, headache inducing project, and did it myself. I found a wonderful template on Etsy. I was able to work 1 on 1 with the designer to customize and do whatever I wanted. I heavily mirrored a particular style I fell in love with on Minted. And with the help of Alex, tweaked the wording for the back of the postcard.
After two proofs, and a very quick turnaround, the Etsy designer emailed the final copy, which I promptly uploaded to Staples. I was able to print 100 postcards for $35.96. If you do the math, that’s about $0.36 per postcard, versus $0.79 which would get you the cheap-o’s on either Minted or WPD.
Where the headache came in was not being 100% certain of a million little things. Like the weight of the card stock, what was the best option? Is printing a glossy front the right choice? Did the cards come pre-cut with the order, or is that a separate charge? Do I have enough room in between the lines? Did I order the right dimensions off Etsy? Will it upload properly? These are all questions / concerns that one does not have when simply ordering online, because it’s dummy proof (at least it felt that way at the time).
But after executing what felt like a million little decisions (and questioning myself a thousand times), I picked up a beautiful product from Staples that Alex and I proudly sent out to our friends and family.
But before we did so, the last step was addressing these bad boys. I had always planned on printing address on labels rather than handwriting them in, so spending $16.99 on a pack of Avery labels was another small cost. And of course, the cost of postage. We ordered USPS Cherry Blossom stamps, we bought 8 packs of 12 which totaled to $47.04
Here’s the breakdown of the whole shebang (what we would have spent at either Minted or WPD vs. what we actually spent):
That’s right. We saved $75+ and sure, that’s not a huge amount of money, but guys, this is essentially a piece of card stock serving as a heads up to our friends and family that at some point in the not-so-distant future, they will be receiving an actual, formal invitation. A pre-invitation, if you will.
So there you have it, how we saved $75+ on our ‘pre-invitations’ and got exactly what we wanted. And after these went out, I decided I’m not going to do any wedding planning until June. I need a break!