Wedding Wednesday - Save The Dates

So months weeks before Keegan proposed, I was Stumbling (using StumbleUpon) wedding ideas and I stumbled save the dates that looked like film strips from photobooths ala here. Automatically, I knew that I had to use that style as my own save the dates. I wanted to use a prop of some sort to write "save" "the date" and the actual numerical date on. We found a small white board at WalMart and found our photographer in my good friend from back home, Kelly. After Kelly did the rest of our engagement photos, we told her what we wanted for our save the dates. Kelly, being the artsy person she is, wrote the message for us in her awesome handwriting and took the photos against a brick background so that it was somewhat neutral, but still made our green shirts pop out. 

After we got our pictures back from Kelly, I set about making our save the dates. Wait what? Yes, I made our save the dates myself. Both to save on money and to make sure that I got exactly what I wanted (and I'm going to do the same with our invitations, but that's a different post all together.) We figured out that it would be cheaper to print three of the STDs (hehehe yes, I'm secretly a child,) on an 8"x10" print from WalMart and cut them ourselves. We had to figure out the dimensions of each one and then it was basically a plug and play. Put in the pictures, make sure they're evenly spaced, add some text and.....

voilà! 

One save the date. In my opinion, it doesn't look exactly like it came out of a photobooth, mostly because you can tell that we're outside, but I'm ok with that. I love how they turned out, and we've gotten really good responses so far. 

I really wanted the STDs to be magnets so people could put them on their refrigerators and not forget about us in the months before we sent out our invitations, so I bought a few rolls of magnet tape from Hobby Lobby (one of my favorite places in the world.) It was like $1 each and I cut it into 1 inch squares. I put a square into each of the top corners and one in the middle of the bottom side so that it wouldn't flop around. 

And voilà, one magnet save the date.  

Easy, cheap, and if I wasn't trying to do it all over Christmas, I probably could have had them done in a weekend. 

Cost breakdown (as best as I can): 

Photos: We paid $250 for all of our engagement pictures including the ones for our STDs

Printing the STDs: $96 at WalMart for ~105 individual STDs

Magnets: $7 (We got 7 rolls which were $1 each)

Envelopes: $5 for 100 envelopes, just the right amount

Stamps: $44 for 100 stamps 

If you do the math, not including the cost of the taking the engagement pictures, each STD cost us approximately $1.42, I'll even round to $1.50. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Wedding Wednesdays

Will all the stress and craziness that a wedding brings, Wedding Wednesdays is something that I want to start doing now to give myself a place to vent about annoying caterers, post cute ideas that I'm thinking about using, and most of all, remind myself that even through the craziness, the ultimate goal at the end is totally worth it, and when that day comes, I'll be the happiest person alive. 

So without further adieu, my first Wedding Wednesday:

I honestly should stop drinking the tap water around here. I noticed a few months ago that when I would drink it  instead of our filtered water, I would have the strangest dreams. Not nightmares necessarily, but just really odd dreams. Well when we got back from our Christmas vacation in Missouri, we noticed our water pitcher had molded, and it took us a while to get to the local Wally World to get a replacement filter. This means that for the last week and a half or so, I've had to drink the wonderful tap water when I take my nightly pills. Enter crazy wedding dreams. 

Dream One: 

I'm at David's Bridal with a Facebook friend who in real life has just recently gotten engaged. Now, I'm not really close with this girl, so I don't know why my sub conscious decided to implant her into my dream, but whatever. Anyways, "FB friend" is busy trying on dresses while we all watch and all of a sudden a David's Bridal consultant comes over and tells me that my dress has arrived and I can try it on for my first fitting. Again, this is strange because I didn't buy my dress at David's Bridal. But, in the middle of "FB friend's" special time of trying on her dress, I get my butt up on a pedestal and start trying mine on again. And I HATE it. Everyone is telling me how good it looks on me, but I'm trying to convince them that I can't stand the dress. Maybe this is the small part of my heart wondering if I chose the right dress and freaking out that I can't see it again until June?

Dream Two: 

This one really makes NO sense to me whatsoever. I was in what looked almost like a grocery store in their flower shop and I *think* I was trying on dresses again. Anyways, there was a couple there that was also trying on dresses, and all of a sudden I realized they were some sort of animal. I think they were a panda, but I can't remember 100%. Why would  a panda need a wedding dress in a grocery store flower shop? Oi vey

Dream Three: 

This dream honestly has me a little freaked out. In real life, my dad is marrying Keegan and I, so in my dream, all three of us were up at the alter. For some reason or another, my wedding went down.the.drain in less that 2 minutes. Like everything you could think of went wrong all at once. Jump forward a few dream hours and it's nighttime. Apparently we were having a do-over and again, all three of us were up at the alter. Just when I think my dad is going to start the ceremony, he goes "Why am I trying this again, it didn't go right last time, and it won't go right this time. This just isn't going to work!" and walks away. Now this totally isn't like my dad at all, but I woke up with tears in my eyes. I guess it's every brides' worst dream to have everything go wrong on their wedding day, so naturally I'd have at least one dream of this happening right?

Now that we've had our water pitcher back up and running for a few days, I haven't had any more crazy wedding dreams, but I did have a wild dream about having kids last night. Let's wait a few more years before those start ok?