Wednesday, April 5, 2017

wedding wednesday: save the dates, part one

Long ago, when I first discovered Pinterest, I also found a ton of wedding inspo, from fairytale dresses to venues to wedding invitations. I had a whole wedding pinboard even though I was 22 and years and years away from getting married. I remember I had this one pin of a wedding invitation that I was just in love with - it was white with curly gold foil font, and it was just the prettiest.

Like most gorgeous wedding invites on Pinterest, it was from Minted. I've been working with Minted on some of my favorite posts over the years (see here and here), so when they offered to collaborate on something for our wedding, you guys, I almost cried. I was so excited because I just love their stationery, and every Minted invite we have ever received has always been gorgeous.

Since we're about 14 months out from our wedding, since some of the big things are nailed down (we have our venue and our photographer), and since we have a lot more time right now than we will starting in July, I've been scouring the Minted website looking at their 1600+ options for Save the Dates. There are a couple of things I was looking for when picking out options:

  • It had to match the overall vibe of our wedding. We are having a barn wedding, and therefore are all about a bit of a rustic, outdoor, pretty theme. Our wedding colors are probably blush and navy, and I hope to include a lot of greenery and whites into the wedding decor. Therefore our invites should convey a similar theme.
  • I would love for it to include gold foil. Luckily a ton of cards have the options of customizing the colors to any color in the rainbow, or about five metal foil options, which I love!
  • The main font has to be easily legible. I love the really swirly fonts, but also want it be clear to read. 
  • Ideally, our names would not be the center point of the card. Both CR and I have longer names, but go by the shortened version in every day life, so I just didn't like the idea of our full names taking up the majority of the card. There were a couple of styles I loved so much that did have the names larger, but I just liked them so much I let it slide. 

So once I narrowed it down, the cards really started to fall into two categories - ones without pictures and ones with. Here are the final eight cards I settled on that didn't include a picture. I think if you made me choose right now, I would go with the diamante foil-pressed version. I love the greenery and the gold foil - isn't it gorgeous?!


The other option is one with our picture on it. We have engagement picture session scheduled for mid May, and I think depending on how they turn out, I'd like to include them in the Save the Date. We keep all the Save the Dates we received on the fridge, and I just love looking at our friends and family every day. I also think it makes it a bit more personalized. For these ones, I'm having a really hard time picking out a favorite! I think my favorite is the XOXO card - they have a beautiful font, have the foil pressed option, and our names aren't the focus. I also love the whimsy of the We Do card, but it doesn't include a foil pressed option. But then I also really like the theme of the Vintage Love cards, although our names are the biggest part of the card!

Am I overthinking this? Maybe.

one | two

If nothing else works, we can always go with this very appropriate save the date for a couple who met in cadaver lab ;)

A couple of other things I wanted to mention about what I love about Minted. First of all, you can order a sample of any card for $1. Once we decide on our favorites, I'm going to order them in the style we want - I love that you can really get your hands on it before ordering 150 of them before you've even touched them. Also, and this is a big deal, is that they offer free recipient addressing on the envelopes. I sent out like 15 Christmas cards this year, and wrote the addresses by hand, and am not about to do that again x10, so this is definitely a huge perk. I'm thinking about getting a personalized stamp for the return address - we'll see what Pinterest finds for me! For now, I'll work on narrowing down our favorites, finding a dress for our pictures, and collecting addresses!

Please note that we are receiving credit for our Minted Save the Dates, but I was not paid to write this post, and of course as always, all opinions are my own!