Saving the Magnets and Dates
I'm planning on designing my Save The Dates soon and I was looking for some inspiration. Anyone willing, please post pictures of your Save The Dates. Here are our Save The Dates! We had our custom watercolor fox portrait Save the Dates designed by an old friend of my husband's, Meera Lee.
The magnets ended up being free from vista print because I wasn't happy with the borders and they just refunded the price! Here are ours: decided to do a petite card from minted along with a business card sized magnet from vistaprint. The movie was "Bridezilla vs Groomera" and she drew godzilla wearing a veil and holding a bouquet and Gamera wearing a bow tie and top hat. The quality of the normal paper is excellent and they exceeded my expectations in terms of paper looks, the feel of the card, and the colors printed. We went with one of Vista Print's templates that featured a photo because we loved our engagement pics. I went traditional with the invitations to kind of balance out the fun/silliness of the coasters. With 20% off and a $25 refer a friend credit I spent 116 on 135 save the dates. It was a hodge podge of both that I cut and pasted together in publisher to get the final product.
We haven't mailed ours but weight checks out and they don't seem to stick to anything once in the envelope! ing them , but they were a postcard we got a friend to draw in the style of a movie poster. Minted addressed the envelopes for us, and we bought a return address stamp from VistaPrint that I love for like 13 bucks. We got these from minted: black with the white text. We hadn't quite figured out a theme except we knew we both like black and white stripes and it was going to be formal.
We really wanted magnets so that people could just stick them on the fridge!
Then we moved right along and place the order.
What We Got
We ordered 100 customized magnets for $20. I ended up DIYing some business card magnets but would have loved having a post card sized magnet. We ordered large post cards from vistaprint instead of actual save the dates.
So I took "wedding" out of my google search and just ordered magnets through a non-bridal/wedding website. Anyway, I'm sure it's been posted on here before, but heres our Save the Dates and the process. No complaints I did this but then used magnet tape to make them magnets Thanks for the heads up! I actually did not use save the dates, but I can say as a receiver of the cards, this would be useful. Thanks! They were business card size, but it now looks like they have Post Card size magnets available. We really didn't want to spend over $100 by ordering Save the Dates. Nice, we just got our save the date magnets from VistaPrint yesterday and they look much better than I had expected.
Shopping Around
I'm doing my own stationary and other than buying card punchers it's only costing me for card, glue and printer toner.
I've been wanting to do magnets or a scratch off reveal but couldn't find it economically feasible. We paid $47 I think for 100. I don't get why more wool don't do things like this or make their own cards. We wanted magnets -- but holy smokes those were more expensive. Even had an art tell me I could make cards for a living haha.
Make It Count
Some might not understand why I they shouldn't just send the invitation out at the time I would have sent out the send-the-date card. I think a Save the Date would be nice, even if it's electronic I mean who doesn't benefit from those little reminders especially if it is for an event like a wedding? I think another advantage of them is that it lets your guests know that they are in fact invited. As someone who thought they were a waste of money, I would do them if I redid my wedding. If most of your guests are local I don't think its a big deal to do them.
I have a coworker that I think was unsure whether or not she would be invited - we talk about my wedding a lot. And if you send invites and not require an RSVP until a date many months later, you're going to have a bunch of people forget and/or lose their RSVP cards. At that point, there were only 4 Saturdays available in the summer, and that's how we decided on our date.
save the date cards are printed "formal" way to notify guests in advance of upcoming shindig. I just let the people who I absolutely wanted to be there know the date of my wedding so they'd be there. One way that I think of it is that people are not going to be as concerned about my wedding as I am. The Save The Date usually only lists the date and general location. unless you absolutely want to guarantee that they were warned - I think people will attend if they want to. Some people want to be invited late because they don't know if they are available until the last second. But the reason you don't send out invites that early is because you might not have details nailed down 8 months out like the time of the event. Also because people could forget about your wedding 8 months out and they RSVP yes but then totally forget about it and don't show up. I couldn't RSVP to a wedding 6 months in advanced. Generally people can better let you know if they can come or can't come closer to the date. After the Save the Date, she commented on how she was excited and comments differently, now that it's not just chatting about it, but something she'll come to for sure.
Why can't people just send Facebook invites for their wedding instead of dropping $300 on invites?! I'm already starting to panic that we will be too late to book venues for 2016 :P We are doing both there! :D I think letting people know a year out when traveling is involved is helpful, but making a commitment a year out is difficult.
I think if it's small and you're not expecting anyone to have to travel significantly or take time off work, they aren't necessary. Because many people don't know where they'll be in life in 6 months. What if I just send invites early? I did them only because my FH's side is all overseas, so they would need to know hotel information. I see where they can be beneficial for out-of-towners or in vacation season, but I'm getting married in October 2016. I have enough planning to do that I just didn't want to bother printing, addressing, and mailing another piece of paper.
When You Have Expectations Make Them Clear
So if I want people to come, I have to make sure they know about it, not just once, but multiple times.
I personally don't see the point in them, and find them odd when I receive them. They'll forget details, lose the card, forget to RSVP. All the usual issues, multiplied by several months. But people are already asking me for dates and making plans for next summer and need to know when to reserve time off. I don't think they're necessary, but traditionally invitations go out about 2-3 months before, sometimes even closer to the wedding than that, so I can see how people might want a bit more notice. I was thinking about save-the-dates and I feel like this is a fairly recent thing to do. Generally it's you alerting those people to mark their calendars for that date so they don't make plans if they want to come to your wedding. We sent ours the last week of June/first week of July for an October 4 wedding.
But I would consider sending the invites just a tad earlier, maybe 3 months instead of 2, to give a bit of extra notice.
Also, as someone else said, you might not have all the details ready to send an invite. We have Miller hall, so there is the lawn right in front for the ceremony. Tell them the date in person if possible, send them a save-the-date, send them an invite, call them up when they don't return the RSVP card. I have 7 months to go, so sending an invite now is impractical.
More On Save the Dates
Here is some info I found at the knot We sent the destination wedding save the dates out a year in advance, invites went out 6 months in advance.
How many months before the wedding is it appropriate to send out save the dates? You can also do fun email save the dates. We sent ours out in waves over a two week period, with all of them out by 5 months before the wedding. 8 months if you are having a destination wedding.
We sent ours out six months before the wedding. Destination wedding here also, we went 18 months in advance because several guests have to request their vacation almost a year in advance. Depending on the cost of the destination, more time is better so people can put away money.
My fiance's sister sent hers out 4 months to the day in advance.