Save the Date!

I am in the process of making our STD's (haha) for the wedding. I really wanted to go with magnets, so my guests can stick them on their fridge. That way my wedding will stay on everyone's mind! While doing some research, I came across this site. They have hundreds of templates for Save- the- Dates, and you can even customize some of them with your own photos. I loved this photo booth one:

A little pricey for me at 100 for $150. I briefly considered buying magnet paper and printing my own, but then I found VistaPrint. I signed up a few months ago, and I am literally bombarded with free offers. A little annoying, but well worth it for the great deals! Currently, 25 small magnets or 10 larger magnets are FREE! I've decided to go with the smaller size (3.5" x 2.0"). It's about the size of a business card, but I think can still be well done. You can download a template and design your own for a $4 upload fee. (I used Illustrator, with a free 30 day trial.)

As a caveat, I am not a graphic designer, and have never used Illustrator before. However, I am fairly computer savvy, and spent a few hours figuring out how to use the tools and came up with this:

Those pictures in there are just placeholders- I want to rip- off the photo booth one, where we hold a sign that says "Please Save" in the first one, and "the Date" in the second one. I might put a background of fireworks behind the picture or somewhere on the magnet. What do you think?

If you don't feel like messing around with Illustrator, there are hundreds of templates on Vista. I saw that Miss Champagne from WeddingBee used a template of gold damask, two elements I wanted to incorporate in our wedding. If you search through Vista's templates, keep in mind that you can change the colors of their designs, and also change all of the text, font, and placement. I rotated all of my text and pictures 90 degrees so that it would print out longways instead of like a business card.

Again, not planning on using this picture, although I do love how my dress complements the colors! I am wearing this dress again this weekend for a rehearsal dinner, so I may ask my sister to take a bunch of shots of us to get one that might be usable. We are going to eventually take engagement pictures, but I am not sure if they will be done before I want to send these out. Which design do you like better?

Breakdown:

100 small magnets from VistaPrint........ $30 with shipping

100 postcards to mount magnets from VistaPrint..... FREE promotion

100 plain envelopes..... $10

100 stamps...... $42

TOTAL COST FOR STDs........ $82 or $.82 each!