The OurWeddingDay Blog

Celebrity weddings and glamorous bridal magazines are a lot of fun, but nothing’s more helpful than learning how real brides plan their big day.

Meet OWD's Real Brides: real OurWeddingDay.com Brides-to-be sharing their experiences.  It’s not about the “right” way to plan; it’s about each bride planning the wedding that’s right for her.

Brooke from Corolla, North Carolina writes:

Since our wedding technically qualifies as a "destination wedding", and it's on a Friday evening, save-the-dates are a necessity. We're planning to send them out by next month, which will hopefully give our guests plenty of time to make travel and work arrangements.

I knew I didn't want to spend a lot of time on these and I also wanted to be able to order everything online. That said, I gave myself enough time so that if something had gone wrong, I wouldn't be scrambling at the last minute to put them together. I had three main criteria:

1. Most importantly, they had to be cost-friendly;
2. I wanted them to look professionally made; and...
3. They had to go with our beach theme.

I found PrintsMadeEasy.com through a furious Google search, and decided to try them after reading some good reviews. I knew that I wanted to do postcards rather than a magnet or regular card because I thought it went well with our overall theme and I didn't want to have to worry about envelopes. I was able to upload our image (using a picture I bought on iStockphoto.com) and personalize the back of the card with our information in a matter of minutes. They had a wide variety of fonts to choose from for the text, which was great because I am absolutely in love with the vintage typewriter font but can rarely find it. They provided a pdf proof via email, which I looked over for typos and misspellings and gave to Chris for his approval. The next day, I bit the bullet and ordered 100 of them, which was the lowest quantity they would allow.

The best news? I got 100 personalized postcards, which were delivered in less than a week, for about $30!

Also, I found these great lighthouse stamps on the USPS website, which are perfect since there are a few historic lighthouses in the Outer Banks, and one right next to the church where we are getting married in! Unfortunately we'll have to spring for $.44 stamps since the only $.28 postcard stamps have polar bears on them

All in all, I'm very pleased with the end result, and I would definitely recommend Prints Made Easy to anyone who is doing this type of project for their wedding.

One of the things Mr. J and I wanted to include in our wedding decor was our love of books.  We wracked our brains, and I trolled all the wedding blogs I could find and did some research.

We finally settled on authentic library cards, hand-typed.  I ordered "check out" cards from a library supply store, and borrowed and old fashioned typewriter from my aunt and went to work!

It was a long process, but we picked out a book for each person attending.  Then I had stamps made with our wedding date, names and a monogram, and ordered some orange ink.

The final effect was a personalized card that said when and where we were getting married, and some other fun stuff too.  Then we purchased some thick envelopes in ivory and hand-typed our address and theirs on all of our Save The Dates.

The finishing touch (and a hold up!) was the last detail.  We had our engagement pictures (and other pictures of us we love too) made into stickers from London-based company Moo.  I placed them on the back and our Save The Dates were completed!