Save the Dates are done!

Though our wedding is still 283 days away (who's counting anyway) and it is a little premature to be sending out Save the Dates, I just couldn't wait to share with you all the design I came up with for our wedding reminders! I wrapped up the final design last week and sent them off to Vistaprint to have them made up. Well, what do you think?

We decided to use postcards to save a bit on the mailing costs. Since our big day is more a destination wedding (despite the fact our parents live there), I liked the idea of using the vintage "Greetings from" postcard look. I Googled "vintage postcard" with every combination of Long Beach Island, LBI, Surf City, etc. praying that someone else had already created the 3-D words I wanted to use. No such luck. Nothing was high resolution enough. Bummer. Then I happened upon this awesome tutorial on Pinterest from Design Instruct. Now I am no graphic artist, but I do know a little something about InDesign, a little less about Photoshop and nothing about Illustrator. But, I was somehow able to mostly follow his instructions. Through a little trial and error and lots of hair pulling, I think I actually pulled it off! The hard part wasn't the postcard itself, just the letters. Here's an up close version:

I decided to use a mix of photos from our engagement shoot and photos from around LBI. Getting them to blend together took me some time as I had nearly 80 engagement shoot photos to choose from. (I'll share those in another post) I love the way the word "Long" came out with Old Barney (the landmark lighthouse on the northend of LBI) and the photo of us blending so well. I also wanted to make sure Surf City got some play in there, too. That's where both our parents have beach houses, where we met and where he proposed.

Thinking ahead, I knew I wanted to incorporate the lifeguard stand into our Save the Dates so when we had our engagement photo shoot, I made sure we included that as a prop. My fiance was a lifeguard there for years and so were his brothers, and I knew it meant a lot to him as awkward as taking engagement photos ended up being for both of us. I had envisioned using a chalk-like font to actually write on the date on the back of the chalkboard on the stand. I love how that came out!

I of course changed the "Greetings from" to "Back to where it all started" because it fit in better with the whole wedding theme vs. travel theme and helped share our story for those that don't know we met on the island.

I ended up adding a vintage effect to the photo using iPiccy, a free photo-editing site that is so easy to use. I believe it was the "Henry" effect.

After that it was just settling on the verbage for the back side. We got all the pertinent information on there. After doing some research for my own postcard I suggest including the following:

• First and last names of bride and groom (not everyone will know your last names from the opposite sides of the family);
• the date (duh). I even did that twice, front and back;
• the location, and I even got specific and mentioned the ceremony/reception venue for those curious cats;
• the fact that a formal invitation is still to follow so people aren't confused;
• the wedding website so people can learn more if they want to;
• and a little blurb about booking your hotel rooms early. Most hotels will release your block about a month before the wedding. I know I have waited until the last minute to book for other weddings and have screwed myself over and since our wedding is being held at a vacation destination the week after Memorial Day, folks may need to book before the formal invites are mailed to ensure they get a room.

I plan to hand write out the addresses. I also blurred out our address on the "return to" line, but that is included in the version that'll get mailed to guests. Just following the post office's rules!

Next task is narrowing down our guest list. How did we get so many friends?! 

So, how many of you have created your own, or plan to create your own Save the Dates? Anyone else try and tackle a vintage postcard with crazy 3-D letters? Any one else start with one vision and end up somewhere completely different? Sound off in the comments. I'd love to hear from you!