Save the Date

Our bride-to-be approaches the six-month milestone.

By Sara Cardace

Somehow while my mind was buzzing along happily contemplating other wedding-related matters, enough time passed that I'm now in the danger zone on my save-the-dates. I'm told they need to go out at the six-month mark...which is about two weeks from now. Yikes!

John and I are considering going with seed-paper cards like these. I like the idea of not wasting paper and think it's a cute idea to send people something they can plant and watch grow. Right now we're trying to figure out whether to have them made for us (which would cost about $300 total, according to a friend who works at this fine company) or to just do it ourselves. John's been taking graphic-design classes as of late, so we're thinking maybe we could buy the seed paper and just print whatever he comes up with text-wise directly onto the paper, cut, and send. It's hard to tell what the end product would look like though...

Another option would be to print up regular save-the-date cards on nice card stock and affix some sort of cute seed-paper cut-out to the front of the card so people could pull it off and plant it, while retaining the part of the card with all the info on it. Actually, now that I think about it, the point of a save-the-date card is that you have something to refer to when you want to refresh your memory, right? In that case, it hardly makes sense to send people something that they're meant to stick in a pot of dirt! Hm. If anyone has any experience with this I would love to hear about it.

Other issues: Do we want to go with a postcard-style save-the-date, or a regular one-sided card with a nice little envelope? I think cards with envelopes are nicer, but they're a bit more expensive. Unless I decide postcards won't work for some reason or other, I'll probably go that route. In general I'm trying to avoid the silly extra costs involved with having stationary embossed, engraved, etc. I know how lovely those kinds of invitations look, but it's just not a priority for me.  

On a sidenote, it suddenly feels really bizarre to be planning what equates to the biggest, most expensive blowout bash I'll ever throw in the face of this looming recession and/or scary depression. It just feels a little...tacky, you know? On the other hand, as my mother pointed out, everyone will probably be really, really in the mood for an excuse to celebrate come April! For the sake of preserving my sanity and good mood, I'm deferring to her judgment. In fact, that should probably just be my new rule for myself. She's a very smart lady.