Save the Date Tutorial

My save the dates arrived in the mail today!!!

I had been looking at save the dates for months. Magnets are really popular. And I understand why...they're easy to hang on the fridge and you see them everyday. They look classy. They're super cute. But they're also really expensive. Like, over $100 expensive. Again, I have better things to spend my moolah on.

After some much debate discussion with my mom, I decided to make my own. And then I sort of drifted away from the magnet idea and towards post cards. They're also cute, and like, a novel idea. (And you can even save a little on postage. Double score!)

We had engagement pictures taken back in October, and they had an "Old Hollywood" theme to them.  I have a vintage vision for the wedding too, so I knew that I wanted the save the dates to be old fashioned looking. Through my previous web shopping, I noticed that photo strips are a popular trend right now, and a great way to showcase multiple pictures (because we're that into ourselves).

So I opened up power point and started to mess around.

The reason I chose pp was because I am computerly-challenged (yeah, I make up words- eat your heart out, Sarah Palin) and I have no idea how to use something cooler, like photoshop. Plus I had to make a five foot by four foot poster for one of my research classes last year and we learned how to create and resize slides, so  I was already familiar with this sort of thing.

And with that, I picked a picture to be my background...

 I liked this one because it's candid, there's enough room around me and Brian to write, it sets the tone, and it's just interesting to look at! I messed around with the color a bit and cropped a McDonalds out of the shot.

The Wiltern Theater

Next I googled "vintage photo strips" and found one like this:

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I added it on top of our background photo and rotated it a little bit so it looks like it was kind of just tossed onto the picture. I strategically placed the strip over that light post that was in the foreground. Then I layered some other shots from our engagement shoot over the strip, and changed those pics to a sepia tone so they blended better like this:

Then I added a text box at the top that said "Save the Date!" at the top. This was another strategic placing. I put it over the marquee so that the other words weren't a distraction, yet you could still tell a marquee was there and that we were at a theater.

Again, I am not the most computer savy person, so this is a very crude rendition of what could possibly be done with this project. Someone more in the know than myself could have created their own marquee like this:

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But again, I was playing with balls in college.

Not those balls, these balls!

Besides, there's no time for learning about computers when you have Kinesiology Majors Club Dodgeball Night!

Me and my bridesmaid Brigitte... we dominated that night, btw!

Back to the save the dates. Actually, before we do that, I need to talk about something... on wedding websites the The Knot and Wedding Bee, the girls are constantly writing in acronyms. Like, instead of fiance, they write FH for future husband. Or MOB for mother of the bride. The one that cracks me up the most- and I honestly don't get how these girls can write this all the time (unless I'm just that immature)- is STDs for save the dates... Maybe it's from the slide show I put together back when I taught health, but whenever I see this, I automatically picture a vagina full of herpes. No. Bueno.

Okay, nowwwww, back to save the dates... I added another text box to the bottom where I put the date. All of the other information is on the back, but I felt like the date should be on the front just in case someone wants to hang it up or something.

And voila...

You have the front of the postcard!

For the back, I googled 'save the date vintage postcard.' Originally, it was just to get ideas. Then I found this:

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Quite the little find! I made a text box with our return address to cover the fake one and then I made a text box to cover the fake info and add our real info. Closer to the finish...

I didn't want to print these myself because that seemed like a hassle, what with the double sides, all the ink, yada, yada. I researched the STD boards to see what others had done and the most reliable (cheapest!) source seemed to be Vistaprint.

Now to bring your work to any printer, whether it's in person or through the internet, you have to have your images saved as jpegs, so I had to learn how to convert a powerpoint and a word doc to a jpeg. Back to google. (Google is to me, what Windex is to Toula's Greek dad- solver of all problems!)

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To convert these files (for a mac, anyway), you have to save them as pdf documents. Once they're in pdf form, you can then re-save them as jpegs. So there's an extra step, and you end up with three forms of the same thing, but the end justifies the means, I suppose.

Besides, once they're in picture form, you can mess with the color a little more, blur the edges, and make it look even more vintage.

Then I added the back to my upload onto Vistaprint and bada-bing-

Ready to order!

I was a little skeptical at first, but my order arrived in about 2 weeks and they look great! Another item to check off the wedding to-do list!

Off to bed, good night!