Save the Dates

 Pinterest. If you haven't figured it out by now, it is highly addicting!

Searching for "save the dates" ideas, I was encountering some road bumps. I couldn't find anything out there that represented "us" and "our wedding". SOOO, naturally, I decided that I was going to create and craft all our wedding stationary. I didn't find my save the date idea on Pinterest, but you can count on me uploading it to the site. Pen and note pads ready, please...

 

To start things out, I purchased some tags from Old Factory Antiques and Crafts in Hummelstown (It was cheaper to buy tags from there because all other places only sell in bulk).

I ordered the Save the Date stamp from Paper Source.

I also purchased ink from Michaels.

Then I stamped like a mad woman...

I had the magnets sitting around in one of my drawers, so I cut them into small rectangles and attached them to the back of each tag. I figured I would save you all the leg work from having to make room on your refrigerator and provide the magnet for you. We all know that save the dates (wink, wink), along with kids drawings, are all one of those things that make it to the refrigerator. So, if it isn't already there, go ahead and put our save the dates on the fridge.

I decided that they needed a little bit more girly flare (Damon didn't think this was a necessity) and I added a hydrangea stamp (hydrangea also being the flower we are using in the wedding) and used ink again from Michaels (the shade of ink is hopefully going to be one of our wedding's accent colors).

I then dusted off my hot glue gun, and cut paper doileys to fit on the top, left hand corner, of each tag. I fortunately had the doileys lying around in my craft box. Nonetheless, they aren't expensive and can be purchased at most craft stores.

I attached the doiley to each tag.

I then, patiently waited for our engagement pictures to come in and I rushed off to make my MiniCards.

Here is the message that was on the back of the MiniCards.

Next step was to Stamp the envelopes.

Then hole punch the MiniCards and add the Bakers Twine  

The only thing left to do was to address the envelopes and add postage.

I'm not going to lie, I had already priced out the labels and was a mail merge click away from printing, when I had the discussion with my mom about handwriting the address on the outside of the envelopes. Wedding etiquette says, by no means should you use labels, EVER. But this is 2011, people do whatever they want and I was more than willing to jump on the label band wagon, or so I thought. My mom was very adamant about me hand writing the envelopes. I was tempted to get writing samples from all of my girlfriends and choose the lucky girl who would be writing my invitations but realized that the wedding is supposed to represent us. So, as un-gorgeous as my handwriting is-it's mine and it was seen by all of our future guests.

Total Cost: $63.19 (without postage) 

Made 100

.ray.