From the beginning Jen and I knew we wanted to send our Save the Dates digitaly. There we a couple of reasons; first was money. I would love to say that it was because first and foremost we were going to save the world one Save the Date at a time. And being green was second and really good reason, we liked the idea that for this part of the wedding we were making a decision that utulized technology in a way to help us be economically minded. But the most predominate reason was money.
Our first choice was to use theknot.com. If you set up your wedding website with them, they have a function that sends out Save The Dates (STDs for those in the wedding world) with the same design and links right back to your website. The problem was that we didn’t like any of the layout options. So we started looking for other options. In searching for tips on sending an html email I discovered that gmail allows you to insert images into an email! That was it, that was our option. So I started thinking design. We wanted something simple. Since we were sending the STDs (I would be lying if I siad that didn’t make me giggle) before we had our invitations picked out we didn’t want to commit to a design or a theme. Searching the internet I found a site called Wedding Chick, and you know what? They have all these great templates for Save the Dates and wedding monograms that they offer for free. We chose this template:
Photo Save the Date Calendar Cards
I used the template as a jumping board. Neither of us really thought that the font was us, and we wanted to make it a little clearer. So I swapped the placement of the month and the “Save The Date”. We inserted a picture from our engagement session and here’s what we had.
Engagement photo by Leah LaRiccia Photography
After that I sized the image to fit in the email and viola! We had our save the date. We put some verbage beneath the image to direct people to our website so that they could fill out a google form with their addresses for us to use for the invitations later on.
That whole process sounds really clean and like there were no bumps in the road. And for the most part it was. There was one thing I hadn’t counted on and couldn’t have planned for. I was sitting in front of the computer with my finger on the send button and suddenly it was like “Wow, this is it. This is the point of no return.” I don’t mean the point of no return for being married. I mean the point of no return for our wedding.
Let me share the first couple of awkward things about our wedding.
1. My family hasn’t been 100%, jumping up and down, ecstatic about this wedding. They’ve warmed up, but it has taken some time and there’s still a long way to go.
2. I’m an enourmous people pleaser. I want all people to be happy all the time; sometimes to the point of denying myself what really matters.
And now one non-awkward thing about our wedding:
1. It will be the first time that Jen and I have met each other’s extended family. There will be aunts and uncles and cousins all there that have never seen us before that weekend.
These three things combined make me nervous about the wedding. The wedding should be a time to celebrate our marriage. And I have this irrational sense that through the wedding Jen and I have to prove that we belong together. It doesn’t matter that I know that we belong together. It doesn’t matter that I love her and can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her. That’s what makes it irrational. This imagined pressure. Needless to say I did press send and our family received our STDs. And it doesn’t matter what they think of them or the website or the wedding. I know that. I (and many times Jen) just need to remind myself of that from time to time.
And now that the deed is done and we are commited to having this wedding, I’m starting to get excited. Maybe sending the STDs took some of the pressure off. We sent them and no one hated them. Or maybe I’m just embracing it because I have no other choice. In either case, the wedding planning is in full swing now. Let the games begin!
We went back and forth about how to do the STDs. We finally decided to mail them, which as you mention is not the greenest thing to do, but the idea of our faces on people’s fridges really fed right into our overdeveloped egos!
Let the games begin indeed!! And, if it’s any consolation, a lot of wedding involve the meet-the-extended-family-for-the-first-time deal-io–straight or gay.