Saved!

Last weekend, while visiting wonderful Boston friends, Dave and I spent an afternoon addressing a stack of fresh-off-the-presses save-the-dates. These will be winging their way to people's mailboxes soon, but here's a little preview:


Ta-Dum! Some minor information has been removed, for privacy reasons, but otherwise, here's the winner!

I am thrilled that after months of sketches and designs and research, I finally settled on a Save-the-Date that perfectly reflects me and Dave. What this also means, of course, is that I took the plunge and designed my whole invitation suite! It was a daunting task, but ultimately I am so excited to see the final results--I know they'll be a wonderful intro to our wedding!

For the detail-minded, I drew and painted the invite myself. I used heavyweight watercolor paper, drawing first in pencil, then outlining in waterproof calligraphy ink. I watercolored the drawings, then scanned them in to my computer. I edited the image--some scaling and color correction--with the free image-manipulation program Gimp (because I am both pro-open sourcing and pro-not spending money). The font is Czaristite. We used Vistaprint to print our Save the Dates as postcards. Although I've seen some bad reviews of Vistaprint online, ultimately they were ridiculously reasonable (we printed 200 postcards for less than $30), arrived promptly, and printed beautifully.

I can't wait for our friends and family to find these in their mailboxes!

Saving...

I have finally (finally!) settled on a Save the Date that Dave and I love. And I'm thrilled! The best part? If I work hard (and also slightly lose my mind...), I can use it to form the basis for a whole lovely invitation set.

While the full design is still under wraps, here's a little preview, a sweet mini-sketch of me n' my kiddo.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

Because there's nothing else I should be doing right now (except sleeping/packing), I made another Save the Date! Yaaaay!!!

This one features some of our favorite things (cue Julie Andrews...). Clockwise from top left they are: soccer cleats, a radio mic, the Southwest icon, the Penn State Nittany lion, pointe shoes, the Martha's Vineyard black dog, a typewriter, the symbol for the Camino de Santiago, the Cabot House shield, and the Spanish bull.

I think if I did this in real life (meaning, not in 2 hours with random gifs from Google), I would probably add a few more icons and maybe shrink them. Cute?


Also, I've lost count of how many times I've said this, but no, that is not the realio date. It is top secret, for now...

Catch Me If You Can Save the Dates

Hooray for wedding planning! I will take any excuse to pretend I am a graphic designer, but it's nice to actually have a semi-legitimate reason now.

We're still debating Save-the-Date ideas, but I can't get the travel theme out of my head. With that in mind I made this Catch Me If You Can-inspired card (by "inspired" I mean "copied and pasted directly from the opening credits." It might have taken animators 4 months to make their credits, I knocked out this little number in about an hour).

I like it a lot--it's cute, funny, reflects all the hours we've spent sitting in airports for each other, and even the title, Catch Me If You Can, fits for a wedding.


*And no, that is not the date when we're getting married. Because that is still up in the air (although now somewhat narrowed down), I went with something generic: my birthday. Again, friends and family, don't go savin' nothing (this message may or may not be intended for my future brother in law. Just sayin.)

Save the Date (Place)

Because in my alternate happy life I am a designer/cartoonist/cupcake bakery owner, I've been enjoying playing around with mock save the dates and invites for our wedding. I put this one together last week. The numbers are longitude/latitude coordinates of all the places Dave and I have lived over the years, with a heart next to the coordinates for Morristown, NJ, where we're getting married.

I think the thing we're most excited for (aside from the general rah rah yay we're married feelings one should have) is living together in the same place after our years of long-distancing it, and we're looking for ways for our wedding to reflect that. Dave has already vetoed going for the obvious "maps" theme (fiance sez: "That is weird and cliche. We don't care about maps. They are not our thing."), but we're thinking about other ways to show our journeys around the world, the hours we've spent traveling to see each other, the time of our lives where constant movement was the norm, and the happiness we feel knowing that we can, finally, stay still.

I am not toootally in love with this Save-the-Date design, since it's a little obscure, but I also don't want to include a very obvious HI WE ARE COORDINATES OF PLACES!!! note anywhere. Dave also thinks we should include La Plata, Argentina, where he lived for the first three months of our relationship (we have a lot of long-distance practice...). I am still iffy, although I think it's pretty and like the basic concept (also like that I did it in about 3 minutes).

From top to bottom: Morris Plains, NJ (my hometown); Moorestown, NJ (Dave's hometown); Cambridge, MA (where we went to school and met); Astoria, NY (where I live now); Potes, Spain (where we got engaged); Chicago, IL (where Dave lives now); and Morristown, NJ (where we're gettin hitched)

Dear Shocked/Concerned Friends and Family: The Save the Date date is not for realsies, I just stuck in a somewhat random and semi-plausible day to see how it looked. Don't go savin nothin yet. Love, K+D