Gentlemen, Mark Your Calendars

It has been a busy week in the Goodlaff household!  I have so many wedding-related goodies to share with you, but first, a huge piece of news: our Save the Dates are out!!  Currently winding their way through the mail system, the Goodlaff Save the Dates are beginning to pop up in mailboxes all around the country (and Australia too!).  So exciting!

Mr. Goodlaff and I decided a while ago that postcards were the best option for Save the Dates--they are simple, effective, and extremely budget-friendly.  I started designing them months ago (hello antiquated version of Photoshop), and true to form, got a bit frustrated with the design and abandoned them for other shiny, non-frustrating projects. Fast forward a few months and suddenly we had to get them out, like, yesterday...Time to buckle down.

I started with a dream of a beautiful postcard and no font in my cache to make it happen.  Many brides before me have expounded on the virtues of  Dafont.com.  I will just add that it's a happy place.  Most of the fonts are free and you can find almost any font style you're looking for; but browser beware: it's a time suck.  I spent about five hours just looking and playing with fonts, some of which had nothing to do with wedding projects (oops). The fonts I ended up using were 'Jane Austen,' which is the frilly script on the face of the card, and 'Nymphette,' which allowed me to have filigree on the back of the card without having to do any real work (like drawing it myself).

After picking the fonts, I worked some creative magic in Photoshop (an eraser here, a paint bucket there), played with about seventeen different blues, yellows, and greens, spent a few hours debating the wording on the back with Mr. Goodlaff, had a mini-freak out about color profile translation between my laptop and Auburn Printers (RGB to CYMK--WTF?!?!?), and finally, after almost a week of tweaking the design, we had a postcard worth mailing.

Aren't they pretty? I'm so thrilled with how they came out.

We didn't want the card to look cluttered, so we went with a very basic design using our wedding colors and only the most essential information: Save the Date, our First and Last Names, Wedding Date, City, and then the link to our wedding website for curious guests wanting more information.

Although I found a ton of online printers offering decent prices, we opted to go with the local, always-fabulous Auburn Printers; I work with them on a lot of work-related printing, and we have a great relationship.  I can't say enough good things about being able to work with a local vendor on our first wedding-related printing project.  I got to see a proof before printing, got to make changes, and didn't have to pay shipping either.  Merrill and her team did a great job, and didn't even flinch when I was being a nervous, slightly crazy bride. Their prices were very competitive with the online companies, so in the end, it was an easy choice.

We sent our files to Auburn Printers on Monday and our postcards were ready for us on Thursday morning.  I picked them up that afternoon, Mr. Goodlaff and I slapped postage on them, ran them over to the post office, dropped them in the outgoing mail slot with ten minutes to spare before closing, and I giggled all the way to the car, thinking to myself, there's no going back now. 

Later that night, I asked Mr. Goodlaff what he thought about different designs for our wedding invitations.  He looked at me incredulously and gave me a look that (and this is a rough translation) said  "Leave me alone, crazy lady--I need a break from all this paper and vellum."

Maybe next week, then?

Did you design your own Save the Dates? How did you feel when they were out in the mail?