Crafting the Save-the-Dates: The Finished Product

After much trial and tribulation and a few frustrating Adobe Illustrator moments where I was sure I was going to throw the computer into the sun, I have completed our custom save-the-dates! In my last entry I mentioned that I was inspired by save-the-dates which feature simple silhouettes which I thought added personalization while incorporating our 18th century Versailles/Marie Antoinette theme. Without further ado, I bring you our save-the-dates:

This is the "edited for Weddingbee" version. The original version obviously has our names, wedding date, address, and wedding website. The real version also has a full bleed area around the edge so it doesn't look cropped so close to the sides. 

We are having them printed from Moo because I've always been really impressed with the quality of their products, specifically the Moo MiniCards that so many previous Bees have utilized in their invitation suites. I realize I am jumping the gun by sharing the design before having the finished product, but I was so excited about finishing this project to wait any longer! Considering I started it over Thanksgiving break, it certainly has taken me some time to put together. Thankfully I think I've mastered enough challenges that when I start on our invitation suite I will work much more efficiently. 

The intricate trim on the front of the postcard was taken from a Ladurée macaron box because I'm a little obsessed with Ladurée macarons and I wanted to infuse some of that Parisian flair into our paper goods. Whether it makes a reappearance on our invitation suite remains to be seen! The wreath graphics on the front and the bird/wreath graphic on the back were from a Dover ornaments book which were scanned and vectorized by me. The fonts used are Mardian (the cursive) and Brain Flower and both were downloaded for free at dafont.com.

I made the silhouettes myself. I took profile photographs of myself and Mr. C and traced them on Photoshop. I have a Wacom tablet which made this process a lot easier. I then imported the graphics into Illustrator and vectorized them. In order to give it a more worn, weathered look I used a watercolor texture behind the graphics. 

If you are not familiar with graphic arts or Illustrator, vectorizing a graphic is essentially making it a graphic that can be resized without ever losing any detail or quality. It only really works with graphics or fonts.

Well, that's about it! I hope the postcards look great when they arrive and I hope our guests enjoy them! 

Crafting the Save-the-Date

When we first set out on our wedding planning journey I was adamant about creating all of the paper goods and stationary myself. This was inspired partly by the need to save money and partly by my stubborn desire to have total control over the creative process. Our first challenge arrived in the form of the all-important save-the-date cards. Mr. C and I knew we wanted something unique and personalized, but let's be honest, that usually costs a pretty penny.

Never one to back down from a challenge, I took this task into my own (in)capable hands. Never mind the fact that I am not a graphic designer. Or the fact that, at the time, I had no idea how to use Adobe Illustrator. I've been using some iteration of Adobe Photoshop since high school. But Illustrator? It's a different beast entirely. I find Photoshop intuitive but Illustrator takes training, practice, and patience. I was lucky to have the help of a friend who happens to work as a graphic designer. Some one-on-one training supplemented with a few YouTube tutorials and I was on my way. But even after finishing this project, the pen tool and I are not friends. "Oh, you just need some time to get used to it," my graphic designer friends have told me. No. The pen tool is evil and should be destroyed.

But before we can get to my trial-by-fire experience with Adobe Illustrator, I need to start with the inspiration. With the overwhelming diversity of save-the-date options, colors, and designs out there, it was hard to narrow down exactly what we wanted. We started by deciding the most important aspects we wanted to incorporate into this project.

1) Incorporate the Look / Feel of the Wedding: 

The save-the-date is really your guests' first taste of your wedding style and theme. As such, we knew that it was important to incorporate a some of our wedding colors as well as images that evoke a feeling of Versailles or Marie Antoinette.


2) Size Matters: 

I have seen a lot of adorable save-the-dates. Everything from origami, animated flip books, "mix tape" CDs of music, mini calendars (like Mrs. Green Tea's!), and more! Mrs. Duckling made her wedding date into felt numbers that are pulled out of a tiny envelope. Who could forget a date that adorable? Mrs. Eagle designed her own save-the-date magnets. Check out this adorable save-the-date where the couple asked their guests to "pencil in" their date. Adorable but not very cost effective, unfortunately.

Image via: Style Me Pretty / Photography by: Pen / Carlson  / Planning + Design by: Birch Design Studio 

Then you have the standard photo postcard that many couples opt for these days. This is a very simple and painless way to create your own save-the-dates. The best part is that your friends and relatives will have a great photo of you and your fiance to display on the fridge. There are loads of examples available, but I love our own Mrs. Turkey's! Unfortunately, ever the overachiever, this seemed like the easy way out to me. Also we may have been slacking on having our engagement photo session. Whoops!

Honestly, the decision here came down to money. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on elaborate save-the-dates or the postage required to mail them. A simple postcard made the most sense to us, plus it meant that maybe we could spend more money on the invitations down the road. Mrs. Snow Cone gave some great tips on how to save money when ordering postcard save-the-dates.


3) Personalized: 

Incorporating cameo-like silhouettes was my idea on how to personalize our design without including a photograph. I was really inspired by these two save-the-dates, one from Minted and the other designed by the groom of a wedding I spotted on SMP. They do double duty in adding personalization along with a little 18th century flair. It seemed like the perfect solution for us!

Image source via: Minted

Image source via: Style Me Pretty / Photography by: Stephen Jerkins / Stationary by: Nick (the groom)

I'm still tinkering with the design, but I'm nearly finished with our save-the-dates. It only took me, oh, two months to sit down and finish them. I've been slacking Hive, it's true. I hope to reveal them to you soon along with the details on our wedding website which I've also been working on. Since our save-the-dates will have our wedding website address, that needed to be completed before we put our save-the-dates in the mail.

What was your save-the-date inspiration?

The Burden of Planning

Hello Hive! I would like to wish everyone a very HEALTHY and HAPPY 2013! May all your wedding planning go smoothly. May your big day be perfection. And if it's not perfection, I hope that you still leave the party with a huge smile because you just married an amazing guy. Maybe you got engaged over the holidays or maybe you are knee-deep in the planning process (like me) and just need a  quiet little reminder, so here it is: Breath in and out deeply. You can do this.

I tend to become easily overwhelmed when starting a new project. This was something that plagued me in college and graduate school. At the beginning of each semester I would receive a course syllabus rife with assignments, projects, and due dates. I would panic which would often lead to a total emotional meltdown. Eventually this panic runs its course and I am calm enough to talk myself into a "can do," problem solving attitude. I start by breaking the project or assignment  into smaller, more manageable tasks. I also like to make to-do lists where I ask myself, "What can I cross of this list today?" I remember to always take things one day at time. To sum this up in a pithy quote: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You will never take that first step if you are too busy being emotionally crippled by everything that must be accomplished along the way. 

The same advice holds true for wedding planning. I think many women are initially overwhelmed with the amount of planning and decision-making that comes along with throwing a wedding, myself included. You have friends, relatives, coworkers, and complete strangers offering up all kinds of advice or recommendations. To make matters worse, you are immediately bombarded with a thousand minute (but seemingly huge and important) decisions. Everything from wedding colors, to cake flavors, favors, venues, music, vows, and more. There's lots of weighing pros and cons, rationalizing, and second guessing yourself. But one of the best things you can do is to make a decision and then come to peace with that decision. Walk away from it. We all want to make sound, well-researched choices. Unfortunately there isn't always time or energy to make the perfect choice every time, so sometimes the good enough choice needs to take precedent. And you need to be okay with that!

Here's a tale that might ring true with my fellow DIY warriors. My dad (who generally gives the best advice) has something he calls the 90%. Essentially his philosophy is that all the extra time and energy you put into making something 100% isn't usually worth the investment, nor is it outwardly noticeable to anyone but yourself. Most of the time 90% should be good enough. If you are familiar with economics this is basically the concept of diminishing marginal returns. He came up with this idea while vacuuming dog hair out of his car. I really like to imagine my dad tediously vacuuming up dog hair while pondering life's big philosophical questions. I am the type of person who will run herself into the ground in an attempt to reach 100%. I could spend hours or days on a lesson plan that is over in 50 minutes and which my students do not appreciate. I have to go above and beyond, when really, 90% would have sufficed and no one but me would have known the difference. I guess it's all about knowing when to pick your battles. And some battles just need 90%.

My brother and me hanging out with dad, giver of great advice and proponent of the 90% rule.

Another important piece of advice, which I inherently understood and yet initially failed to follow: stop trying to do everything on your own. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a control freak, but sometimes it's hard for me to delegate tasks to others. I guess I like knowing things are done right the first time and it's hard for me to trust other people to complete tasks that are up to my standards. Well guess what? That's irrational and silly and creates extra, unnecessary stress. Let your eager friends and family help out (but don't turn them into indentured servants!). And that means your fiancé too, that poor guy who might not have any idea what he's gotten himself into. 

One night I was up late, tossing and turning in bed when I glanced over at Mr. C. He had passed out the moment his head touched the pillow and was sleeping peacefully. Why was I the one up late worrying about wedding details while he was soundly sleeping? First of all, I think that women are terrible about taking their worries and troubles to bed with them. I think men are better at shutting out the mental noise that stirs in our brains and causes worry and anxiety. Secondly, at the time Mr. C did not have my massive wedding checklist floating around his mind. He was blissfully unaware of all that needed to be accomplished in order to throw the wedding of our dreams. That's because I was the one who was scrolling through wedding blogs making my mental wish list. I was the one on The Knot trying not to freak out when I saw the massive wedding checklist. I was the one with the inspiration folder of DIY projects just waiting to be started (or finished). To be fair, we made all of the big decisions together, but I was starting to become overwhelmed with the details, especially since I've also undertaken designing the save-the-dates and invitations.

He had no idea I was feeling overwhelmed until one day I had a mini-meltdown. "I can't do this by myself!" I cried. Mr. C was taken aback by this sudden deluge of emotions. He had no idea I was silently obsessing over these details. I had let the worry pile up and pile up until I couldn't hold it back anymore. I told him I felt like Frodo carrying the One Ring into Mordor. I was carrying this massive burden on my own. I was the one having nightmares about a wedding with missing chairs, bad food, and absent bridesmaids. I was the one stressing about vendors and hair stylists. And really, that was my fault. I hadn't showed him the checklist.  I hadn't communicated my expectations. I hadn't assigned him any tasks. He didn't know a thing about scouting out rehearsal dinner locations, out of town guest baskets, escort cards, or booking hotel room blocks. As soon as I communicated my frustrations to him, he immediately asked what he could do to make the wedding planning burden easier. So I did something I should have done weeks earlier: I assigned specific tasks to him.  And you know what? The world did not end. He completed them and he did an awesome job. That's because I'm marrying a very capable and responsible guy who I wasn't giving enough credit.

I sit and ponder why I didn't enlist Mr. C's help earlier.

Well, that's about it on advice from me (for now, anyway). To be honest, I enjoyed writing this out because I am often the one who needs to listen to my own advice the most. I need to stay calm and focused and continue taking this wedding planning journey one day at time. I need to remember that I'm not facing this journey alone but with an awesomely supportive guy by my side. I need to remember that in most cases 90% will just have to do. I need to be okay with that. Actually, I am keeping that in mind right now as I'm finishing up our save-the-dates which I can't wait to share with you!

Did you feel overwhelmed when you first started planning? What is your go-to strategy for staying calm and focused when you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed? Did you have trouble enlisting the help of your friends, family, or even your fiancé for your wedding?