for your tears of joy: stds part 1

Our guests are starting to receive our save the dates!! I'm kind of impressed with the postal service - they were sent out Thursday afternoon and by Saturday they had already reached people in North Carolina, Florida and West Virginia. BUT. Not everyone has theirs yet, so I still can't do a full recap. However, I can start with the envelope since that won't reveal too much (and they aren't much of a surprise anyway due to this post). I'll work my way in from there, once they've all been received.


Our envelopes were Kraft paper, which I purchased from Paper Presentation. As much as I love Paper-Source, I'm not a fan of their Kraft paper and their prices were much higher. The Love sticker was a last second addition once I started sealing the envelopes and realized that some of them wouldn't stay closed. This was even after I started using my super-duper strength glue stick to seal them instead of just a damp sponge. I was worried that some would come open while making their way through the mail, and I already had sticker paper, so it was an easy fix.

This brings me to tip #1: Figure out your ENTIRE suite before you begin mass producing. It will save you time and possible frustration. If I had done this, I would have known far enough in advance that the envelopes didn't seal very well (not because of the actual envelopes, but because our stds were "puffy"). I would have been able to get my extra supplies far enough in advance, as well as the extra design work completed, instead of running around like a crazy person the weekend before I wanted to get them in the mail.

tip #2: Some mistakes are more expensive than others. For our Love labels, I downloaded a 2 inch round label template for the design and printed them on full sticker paper. When I went to cut them out with my 2 inch circle punch I noticed that I wasn't able to get a cut without part of the gray outline showing. So I hopped back on my computer, fixed the problem and printed out 5 copies for our 100 stds. Well, do you know what happens when you're cocky and confident that you fixed the problem and print 5 copies instead of only 1 to test your work? You waste 5 copies (and $$ - label paper is expensive!). So do as I say, not as I do and TEST YOUR WORK. Even if you are absolutely, positively sure that you did everything correctly - TEST YOUR WORK.

Did you learn any useful tips while working on your save the dates and/or invitations?

Read all about our save the dates here:

Part 2 (envelope liners)
Part 3 (handkerchiefs)
Part 4 (reception tags)