Save the Dates!

Yes, these went out a while ago. But, I did take a bunch of pictures, and I finally got them all uploaded. I ordered all of our invitation stuff from smallprinter. He was so easy to work with, and his prices are unbeatable (especially for letterpress!). In spite of all the time I spent working on the design with him, the final design is incredibly simple. I love every bit of it!

The invitations and save-the-dates all came the same day (I'm just waiting for printing of the directions and RSVP cards). They are beautiful!

While I was at the post office, picking them up, I went ahead and opened them up and had the nice postal employees weigh them for me, so I could go ahead and buy stamps. As it turns out, I won't need extra postage for any of it! YAY! So, I went ahead and got Frank Sinatra and Bette Davis stamps for the save the dates, and forever stamps for the invitations and RSVPs (they'll be after the postage rates increase, and I am that stingy). Don't the Frank stamps match nicely?!

My mom was awesome enough to turn my scattered pieces of paper with addresses into an easy-to-use mail merge document, already formatted to the perfect size envelopes. And yes, I printed out the addresses. Straight to the envelopes, with no regrets. Because of that, I was able to get them all addressed, stamped and stuffed in one night! That's my kind of project.

First Wedding Present!

I got my save-the-dates and part of my invitation suite in the mail this week! But even more excitingly, I checked with the post office, and neither will require extra postage!!!!!! That is a present that I can get excited about! So, I went ahead and bought all the stamps (invitations and RSVPs will be forever stamps), and it all came out to only $100.80!

...I remember a time when I would have had trouble spending $100. The wedding perspective has fully kicked in now though, and it feels incredibly cheap.

Save the date magnets?

Originally, I had in mind that I would do postcard STDs with a business card-sized magnet attached. But then, while working with the stationer, it was easy (and I was happy) to do letterpress STDs that matched the invitations - simple, classy, and in an envelope. And I'm really excited about them. I had completely dropped the idea of including magnets (thinking that they wouldn't really match the new style).

...and then I found marble magnets! (see Mormon Chic, Quidnunc.org, and NotMartha, et al.)
So I did a test run. As it turns out, my graphic design skills are seriously lacking. But here's what I came up with. I'm still not sure if it's worth including with the save-the-dates or not. They are way easy, so that's not a problem, at least. I'm just not sure if they are pretty/cool/neat enough to make it worth including. I guess I have to decide sometime this week, because I should be sending them out by this time next week!

STD postcards

Warning: math ahead.

I really want to do STD magnet postcards. I imagine a postcard that's a magnet - STD info on the front, and a mailing label stuck right to the magnet on the back. And according to the USPS hot line (yes, I called), they do still only require 27 cent postage. Rock! They'll be amazing!

So, I've been checking out the usual online culprits for cheap printing, and it looks like vistaprint comes through with the cheapest on this one - for 100 (I have no idea how many I'll need, but this seemed like a fair estimate for price comparison's sake), it's only $49.99 for regular postcard sized magnets (that's .50 each, for those of you who are as math challenged as I am - I double checked on the calculator). (Plus $4.95 to upload the image.)

However, if I do a STD magnet that's business card sized, and rubber cement it to a postcard, that may end up cheaper (although that makes me wonder even more about the postage changing - USPS is sneaky!). I can get the magnet from vistaprint for 17 cent/each (assuming 100 again), and the postcards themselves (or really, regular 3.5x5 prints) from adoramapix for 15 cent/each (or $.19 for matte instead of glossy, which may be worth the upgrade) - that brings the new (kinder, gentler) total to $.32-.36 per postcard (+rubber cement and mailing labels, and time to assemble).

Here's the easy summary:

big magnets: $.50/each
little magnets attached to postcard-sized prints: $.32-.36/each

So what to do?! Still assuming 100 STDs needed, that's a difference of only about $14-$18. So really, not enough of a price difference to really lose sleep over. And the bigger ones would be easier and look more like they were intended to be postcards (because they were)... and be less likely to fall apart in the mail. But would people prefer the smaller magnet?