STDs!

So we finally kicked our save-the-dates out the door! It was really nice to get that big task out of the way. We ended up sending out save-the-dates to about 2/3 of our guests... the people who would need to travel to attend the wedding and those close to our families, just to build excitement. So now that we have taken care of that, we can share them with all of you on here!



Our save-the-dates are "monarch" size, 3.75"x7.25", printed on Crane Lettra 220 lb. 100% cotton duplex paper in Ecru. As I wrote about before, the duplex paper is twice as thick as the regular Crane Lettra paper, so it can handle deep letterpress impressions on both sides. We chose Ecru as the color, rather than a standard white or off-white shade, to lend a slightly more rustic and warm touch and to balance out the otherwise modern design.

On the back side is a repeating, blind-embossed pattern of our wedding date written several different ways, our names, and "Save the Date" in a modern, san-serif font all over the entire side of the card. I love the tactile "texture" it creates on the surface of each card.



Then, on top of the blind embossing is the phrase "Save the Date," in my actual handwriting! In order to do this, I wrote out "save the date" on a piece of paper about 200 times until I found one that I thought would work well with the design. Then I scanned it and e-mailed it to Kristin, who converted it into a vector image and then created a letterpress printing plate from it. We were trying to achieve a similar look as these Linda and Harriet invitations, and it was Kristin's idea to use my handwriting... it was super fun to work on!



Then, on the front we used the same Century Gothic font as the blind embossing and just kept it as simple as possible. In arranging the text, we were trying to mimic the look of the invitations of Steve's parents' wedding in 1969... I don't know if I would say it ended up looking retro, but I liked the idea of echoing the style of their invitations. Also, at the top are our names, again in my handwriting.



Sorry for the blurring... I just didn't want our whole names on there on the WWW. If there was one thing I could change about them, it would be the color of the envelopes. I wanted something more in the chartreuse family. However, once we finalized the design and the size of the cards, our envelope choices were limited and I picked this one. In retrospect, I wish I would have chosen to go with a different size so that we could get the right color of envelopes or else I would have picked envelopes in a completely different color, probably "kraft" (light brown recycled-paper look). But, I am super happy with the overall end product! And now we know to think about the envelopes early on (which we have done for our invitations), so it was a good lesson learned!

What do you think? Did you mark the date on your calendar?