Save-the-Dates!

Now that all of our Save-the-Dates are out, I can finally share them with you! Maria Bisso, my former colleague, and graphic designer for the Metropolitan Opera, designed our save-the-dates and the ink stamp we used on the outer envelope. Maria was a joy to work with, very responsive, open to all of my many requests, and extremely reasonable.

Here's what our Save-the-Dates look like.

Front

Back

I was going off of a pic that inspired me at Marit Hanson's website. I loved these save the dates when I saw them, and would have loved to order from her site, but felt that with Maria's help, she could create something very similar and personal for me.

http://www.marithanson.com/index.html

Once I had our "ticket" image from Maria, I ordered them as a "bookmark" on 4over4.com. They arrived 2 business days later! I had planned to order envelopes from the same website, but they only came in white standard #10 size and you had to order a minimum of 500!

That led me to find coin envelopes at staples. These were the perfect size for our sized Save-the-Date we purchased, and I felt that it was a little bit more authentic with the whole "ticket" concept. I showed them to Maria and she immediately suggested customizing a stamp to go on the outside. Well...blokay! So Maria sent me this image which I uploaded to rubberstamps.net and received my customized stamp in the mail the following week!     (Last names removed)

Our customized stamp

I also had planned to hand-write the addresses onto each one of these. A task that daunted me, but I was willing to do it. However, not only did I want these out sooner rather than later, I thought it would be really cool to print them out with a "typewriter" font. At this point, I was getting a little carried away with the whole look of these...which tends to happen with me. These bear no indication of the "theme" of our wedding, they were realy a fun project which I felt allowed me more freedom to be creative than I may have with our actual invitations. So, I downloaded a free font called "Traveling Typerwriter", which I thought looked perfect, and gave me the look that I wanted.

This is how the envelopes came out.

Adding the custom stamp on the side:

One thing about the stamp; I was worried that the stamp was going to run out of ink before we could even do all the envelopes. The ink was rather weak even after the first day of using it, and I didn't want to have to go out and buy another ink pad. If we rested it overnight and tried again the next day, it was usually fine and darker, but it was a little frustrating and nerve-wracking at the time.
 
Then we stuffed them with the "tickets"...

And these were ready to go!

Labor of love..but it was well worth it and I'm so glad they're done! I also have to say we got a few people tell  us "I  almost threw this out because I thought it was a direct mailing, but then I saw your name" which makes me wonder how many people actually did throw them out without even realizing??

There is nothing I can do about that now. I know that everyone who really should know our wedding date....does. I could have gone with a white or different color outer envelope and if I had to do it over again, I probably would have done that, and I probably would have handwritten the envelopes so it appeared more personal. I really wanted these to be more fun and not look so much like an "invitation", but I guess that's the risk I took for not having them be so formal. The important thing is I am so happy with how they came out and so thankful for all of Maria's hard work on them.

If you want to have Maria help you with any future design project or your own Save-the-Dates, she is seriously fantastic!

Maria Bisso

Kanopy Designs

mebisso@yahoo.com
Please put "Bisso Creative" in the Subject Line