Save the Date - the process

I never quite know how to describe our wedding when people ask. It's in Panama on the beach, so the immediate assumption is 'Destination Wedding'. But there will be 200 people there, and half of them are Panamanians from Mr. Tango's side, so it doesn't quite fit that categorization. Either way, people not in Panama are going to need quite a bit of notice to plan vacation time, money, lodging, and all of that good stuff to be able to come. We therefore set one of our #1 priorities: get the Save the Dates (STDs.... giggle) out as soon as possible.

We went to a cute little stationary store in Bethesda, MD entirely by acccident - it was cute and we were passing by. We got carried away and ended up being there for about 2 hours looking at all the pictures! Here are some pictures of ones we liked, taken from my cell phone:

While we really liked a lot of them, they were not in our price range and we couldn't find anything that really represented us. I know that's vague and not a very descriptive response with respect to what we were looking for, but we don't know what it was. We just didn't find it. Not being a graphic designer, I decided to look on Etsy and asked a few people if they were interested in totally creating a new idea from scratch. TwoSillySistersPhoto (Highly recommended!!) responded. We sent her pictures of some of the invites we liked and she came up with a few designs. Here's the one we liked best:

Stacey was beyond flexible and responsive as we made changes, nit-picked details ("can we make the line on either side of the '&' sign a bit thinner?"), and finalized colors. She then sent them to us, and we put them on top of a backing paper (Cards & Pockets' coffee bean), and admired. Look how pretty!

They're actually much prettier in person, but you get the point. We wanted people to know that the trip to Panama wasn't as expensive as most would think ($250 round trip and cheap hotels!) so they wouldn't immediately discard coming. We decided to, beyond the wedding website, include some basic information in the STD. Very basic. How to do this cheaply?

I bought white 4x6 postcards from Staples and created an MSPublisher document (ask if you want the template I created) using the file Stacey had sent us for the STD and added in some words. We printed them out, tore along the perforated edges and.... VOILA! A total of $21.99 for 100 postcards! They weren't quite as classy as the main thing, but didn't look too shabby either! Take a look:

We addressed them to all the non-Panamanian guests (who, by the way, are still somewhat undetermined as Mr. Tango has yet to finalize his portion of the invite list) and sent them out. One thing done, 9 million to go!

What about you? Did you totally DIY your STDs? Did you even do STDs?