Save the Date! (Part II)

Javs didn't love the first picture I sent (the one in my quick/at work mock-up) because it didn't really show our faces and he thought it might be just a bit off for a Save the Date.  I eventually agreed.  And then it was so easy to choose which photo we did want to use after that - it seems silly to me (now) I didn't go with it in the first place!  It was the 'us' (don't you guys get sick of me saying that...) that I was hoping would be captured during our session with Andrea and Brian.  (no we don't always just flop on our sofa...) but we looked happy and comfortable.  It wasn't posed and it felt real.

We mocked up a couple of options in photoshop (him taking over when I got too frustrated and me asking for the computer back when I thought he was working too slowly.  Its sounds chaotic, but I think we were a pretty good team!)  and sent them to our family and wedding party for some opinions.  Luckily, their favorite was almost unanimous!  We had our front and back ready!  Now, to print them....

Thank goodness, in addition to save the date sites, I had also been keeping track of some printing sites (just in case!) that were recommended on my wedding blogsl.  We did a little price comparison and looked at different paper options with each place.  In the end, it was http://www.catprint.com/ that was the winner.  They were super reasonably priced and had good reviews (although not a ton of them).  We were also excited that they would send a free hard copy of our design for approval before the big print job!

**Here is where Javier and I made a mistake**

I swear I didn't want to open the box without Javs...

I will say that the Catprint customer service staff was super helpful (although not always as quick as I wanted them to be).  We sent off our designs, feeling the early light of accomplishment brushing our faces...only to have their team inform us that our files were not the right size and we would more than likely have some stuff cut off in the print if we stuck with what we had sent.  Hmm...Here started days of going back and forth with new files, many phone calls, and hesitancy from Catprint until they finally thought our design would print well. (by the way, I think it really was user error on our part - as I've mentioned, we were not photoshop experts)  Now, here comes the mistake: we were feeling some pressure to get these printed and out the door and therefore decided to fore go the hard copy approval before having our 100+ save the dates printed. They sent us a digital copy, but since the hard copy would take a few days to arrive and then we'd have to approve it before they even began printing, we said yes to the digital copy so they'd just hurry up and hit PRINT!

but he told me too!

You guys have seen them - they are, overall, very pretty.  We've gotten lots of compliments about them and I'm completely reassured when I hear people say how well they think the cards fit our style.  (YAY!)  But the truth is, if I had gotten this version as a hard copy, I definitely would have made some changes before having 100+ printed.  Oh well, I was pretty sad about it for a day (crazily contemplated having them all reprinted), but then realized it was really no big deal and I had to get over it. 

so i did :)

It is however a good example of the 'getting so caught up in it' that you kind of lose your senses a bit.  We were talking a matter of days that approving a hard copy might have added as far as getting these out to our guests.  But in that moment, I was so panicked and focused on getting them out exactly 6 months  before the wedding, that we rushed and made a mistake.

Lesson learned though: 1) start invitation stuff earlier (Javs and I have already started looking!) 2) two days will not matter, check and double check to make sure its what you want 3) even if its not perfect, its probably just you that is freaking out about it - everyone else is going to say 'they were lovely' and get on with their lives....

Great!  Now we have these beautifully designed, perfectly printed Save the Dates :)  but we got to get them to folks....we need envelopes.  So we spent a quick, ok reasonable, few hours in Paper Source looking at all the different paper options we had for the envelopes.  My goodness, I could get lost looking at paper in that store but I'll spare you the play by play recap of our time there.  Know that we pulled a bunch of envelopes we thought fit our 'colors,'  did a couple rounds of veto-ing, tried a few pen options on each and ended up buying 3 different colors so that we could decide later.  (Another mini mistake - we didn't have our physical Save the Dates yet and wanted to see how they would actually look with each envelope before we decided - so wait til you have your save the dates in hand to go envelope shopping -ooops!)

In the end we decided that we wanted to stick with the brown tones (our Save the Date was going to have a sepia finish).  We figured there would be other opportunities to bring in color and it just felt more consistent with what we were going with on the cards.  This ended up being a decision we were really happy with later.... :)