From This Day Forward: Save the Dates & Evenings

As our wedding is next summer I decided I wanted to send some Save the Date cards. I also wanted to get them out before people book their summer holidays for next year.

I looked into magnetised STD's (Yuh, nice acronym) on Ebay and found this company http://i4image.co.uk/. They didn't have what I wanted on Ebay so I sent them a message and they were really quick in responding and were very helpful. I also wanted Save the Evening magnets. I'm hoping this is going to avoid any initial confusion as to who is attending which part of the day. In some instances, we have a couple of people from the same household attending the day and then others attending just the evening. They were able to mock up a design for me and sent me some proofs which were lovely.

Trouble is, we wanted about 30 STD's and 50 STE's and we were quoted £80. A pound each might not seem like much to some, and if you can afford it I'd recommend the company above, but for us it was too much. I also thought that we would need to know exactly how many of each we wanted which is easier said than done.

My mum (she of the "neverwrongs") came up with the idea of getting these from Ebay instead and making our own:

I think it was about £30 +P&P for 100 jumbo magnets (60x90mm) plus the cost of ink and some card. I fit 8 designs on a page so I used less card and ink usage was minimal. The magnets are also available in smaller sizes but for the information we wanted on them, the larger ones were more suitable. I suppose you could also make keyrings if you wanted considering Ebay sells the blanks in bulk!

The magnets will hopefully help avoid loss or damage of the STD/STE cards once they arrive at their destinations. I think it also gives it a personal touch and we have the added bonus of being able to make the exact right amount and make more if we need them at a later date.

I used DeviantArt (helpfully recommended by a friend) to find backgrounds and did an internet search for any free fonts to download. At one point I had about 40 designs to choose from but again, friends helped me to whittle that down. Being unable to choose between two of them, we decided to go with both. One design for the STD's and another for the STE's. I like to think the dark design on the STE's helps convey the evening message, too. The STD original image was actually black and white but, as this looked a bit like "a funeral notice" according to some, I popped it into a photo editing programme and changed it to purple.

Another friend pointed out that I could use the same design on placecards etc. if I wanted to and the design would be tied into the day.

The font used was "Little Lord Fauntleroy".