{wedding} Save-the-Dates

Well, the save-the-dates went out yesterday. They were so much fun to put together. We tried to hand out as many as we could because we wanted to wrap some of them in string, and the USPS adds $.20 extra per piece because they have to hand stamp them. In order to save a little cash, we only wrapped the ones we were handing out, which ended up being about half.
[side note- I noticed our mail person out by the mailbox picking up our stack of save-the-dates that had been strewn around the ground, so I went down to help him pick them up. Turns out, there was a black widow IN OUR MAILBOX! He said he had to reach past the spider, and through the nest to get the mail out. So if your piece makes it to your house with a little more "wear", that is why; it made it through a very traumatic experience :) ... and our mailman killed the black widow, so no worries.]

Like I noted in an earlier post, we gathered inspiration from all over the internet, but particularly The Natural Wedding Company. I loved the hand made look of hers, and definitely loved how they turned out. I loved the idea of using one piece of card stock, and addressing the outside so an envelope is not needed.

We went with a drawing that Zach did of the barn where we will be having our reception and, of course, Zach's talent of hand lettering. The result, in my opinion, is very "us", and very unique.

Thanks so much to Bellis Copy center for doing such a wonderful job with our printing. It is on the campus of Bob Jones University, but is open to the public. They have AMAZING prices for bulk printing, and they do really great work.

A very long time ago I came across this vintage home office stamp set. It came in very handy for stamping our return address on the backs of the save-the-dates.

pardon the blurring over the address :)

We folded the paper in half and used brown kraft paper tape to hold it together, and act as a wrap-around address label. We wrote the "to" address on the front and the return on the back.

We loved how they turned out. Now to get moving on the invitations!!

{wedding} Save-the-date "sneak peek"!

We don't want to reveal all of our fun little surprises for our wedding too far in advance, but since we are in the process of handing out/mailing our save-the-dates, we decided to go ahead a publish a little sneak peek!

But first: Some inspiration.

I have browsed through wedding blogs for MONTHS looking for any and every idea I could find that fit our style. We have gone back and forth on our invitation/save-the-date ideas because we definitely wanted to create something that was uniquely ours, and very special.

Here are a couple of the influences:

This idea actually has the full DIY instructions... we tweaked them.

[The Natural Wedding Co.]

I've loved so many of the ideas that I've found on Green Wedding Shoes. I love this site! This next idea is no exception!

[Green Wedding Shoes]

I just mentioned to my fiance yesterday that I am so thankful that he wants to be so involved in planning our wedding. He has very much influenced (and by influenced I mean that he has pretty much single-handedly done) all of our printed wedding material. He has been so patient with me showing him idea after idea, and layout after layout. At last we have a final, finished product.

Well, here is a peek! You will have to wait a while longer to see the whole thing!