Save the Dates Made Easy

When I first met with my wonderful wedding planner, Adriel (Adriel Nutter Events), one of the very first things she told me was that Mr. Blue Moon and I needed to decide what to prioritize in our wedding budget. For example, some couples care more about great food and less about a great DJ. Or maybe we wanted to invest a significant portion of the budget into photography, and not so much into flower arrangements. After sitting down to discuss with Mr. Blue Moon, I quickly realized that he did not care one bit about invitations and stationary for the wedding. We could probably send all of our guests an e-mail or make our wedding a Facebook event, and Mr. Blue Moon would be fine. I, however, have a love affair with fancy paper.

Seriously. I can't go into most stores without stopping by the card section that sells thank you notes. I love to throw parties, if only to design and send invitations. I adore receiving mail, but I enjoy sending it even more. I have an entire drawer in my home office dedicated to cards, stationary, return address labels, and other accoutrements. I know, I know. I have a sickness. And before we even had a venue nailed down, I was lusting after gorgeous invitation suites and perfect save the dates.

How perfect are these Nashville skyline wedding invitations via My Lady Dye

Lavender Love invitations via SJ Wedding Invitations

Rustic save the dates from Sweet Invitation Co.

Sadly, our wedding budget, which is hovering somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000, does not leave a lot for invitations, and we originally had not even planned to have save the dates at all. But since I have so many friends getting married around the same time as Mr. Blue Moon and I, we have been receiving gorgeous save the dates and I really wanted to see if we could do some of our own affordably.

So we turned to Vistaprint. I don't know why I didn't think of Vistaprint sooner. I have heard nothing but good things, and while I'm still not sure if we will go with them for the invitations, it was a breeze to design my save the dates, and I even got to include engagement pictures like I had wanted.



It was as easy as selecting a design that I like, and putting in the relevant information. The hardest part was deciding which photos to use on our save the date cards! I selected this design. The website allowed me to preview before I purchased, and so I knew our cards would turn out something like this.

The front side, edited for anonymity.

I selected another one of my favorite photos to take up the entire back side of the save the date. We could have sent them as postcards, but I love cute envelopes way too much.

We were able to use a promotion code on our order, and since we only needed sixty of these bad boys, the entire order ended up being about $35.00. I threw in some matching address labels, paid extra for glossy paper, and of course, paid for shipping. All told, I was very happy with the quality of our save the dates for the price.

The only real extra I added was finding A1 kraft paper envelopes to send them in. I'm a sucker for envelopes and did not want to use the white ones that Vistaprint sends with their orders. They were the only part of my order that seemed kind of cheap to me. I found my envelopes at PaperAndMore.com and was very happy with the quality.

Of course, the final decision to make was how to address the fronts of the envelopes. My handwriting is completely atrocious, but I am also OCD about centering things and writing evenly. It's not a good match. So I decided to find a font I like to print the addresses on my envelopes. When it comes time to mail invitations, I hope to splurge on professional calligraphy.

I chose Janda Stylish Script, which I found here. They had plenty of other script fonts to choose from, too, so if you're thinking about going the home printing route, check this resource out!

 

Via A Practical Wedding

I wish I had saved a final product to show ya'll, but I'm terrible like that. I did, however, have the foresight to use one of the white Vistaprint envelopes to mail a save the date to Mr. Blue Moon and myself. Don't judge me, I wanted to have one to show posterity! 

Personal Photo

The finished products looked like this, but imagine them on kraft paper envelopes. I went with Summer Harvest stamps to give our guests a taste of the warmer months of the year since we're mailing these in the dead of February, but we will probably pick something more romantic to put on our formal invitations. 

So there you have it! My not-quite-DIY, cheap-and-easy guide to some swell looking save the dates. 

Are you mailing save the dates? How did you choose a look and design?  

  



Blue Moons on the Beach: Our Engagement Story and E-Pictures

Mr. Blue Moon proposed on April 14, 2014, during a trip with our good family friends, Aimee and Mike, to Seacrest Beach in Florida. Our friends own a beautiful beach house and were kind enough to invite us to spend a long weekend with them soaking up some sun and relaxing before our exam weeks at our respective universities rolled around.

On our last day of our trip, Mr. Blue Moon and I went to explore a nearby state park, Camp Helen, which was originally developed as a recreation area in the 1920's. It is a beautiful, secluded place to visit and we had a completely private proposal with Mr. Blue Moon writing "Marry Me" in the sand. 

We got a passerby to take our first photo as the future Mr. and Mrs. Blue Moon on our hike back through the park. It was such a lovely proposal, and Mr. Blue Moon could not have done a better job planning it...even though he was so nervous to pop the question!

Personal Photos

When we were planning another trip to the area the next summer, Aimee offered to take our engagement pictures for us on the same beach in Camp Helen State Park where Mr. Blue Moon proposed. She had dabbled in wedding photography before, and we already knew her as an amazing photographer because she had taken very pretty prom pictures for us in high school for years. 

It was towards the end of July. The beach was a mile's hike through this park. The three of us had the wisdom to go barefoot because all of the walking is through sand. It was 107 degrees. 

There were no tears, but there was definitely sweat, and even blood from some blistered feet on that hot, hot sand, and it is a testament to our friendship that Aimee still carried on with taking our engagement pictures and even managed to make us look like we were not sweating buckets and totally miserable. Even after all my make-up melted off and my naturally curly hair EXPLODED in the humidity, Aimee kept my focus on the wonderful man I'm marrying. And it was super fun!

Here are some of my favorites:

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Mr. Blue Moon is so handsome. How did I get this lucky?

 I wore these shell earrings that we had bought the same day Mr. Blue Moon proposed. 

 This is probably my favorite of all our pictures. Mr. Blue Moon had just said something completely hilarious. 

Aimee captured this surprise picture after we had been romping in the ocean to cool off.

All photos by Aimee Aver.

What was your engagement shoot like? Did anyone else use a friendor for their engagement or wedding day photography?

The Perfect Reception

Sorry for the short hiatus, ya'll. You might remember that I'm a middle school teacher, and with state tests coming up in seven weeks, things are starting to get hectic around here.

Since Christmas came and went, Blue Mom and I have been searching high and low for a reception venue near our church. The church we chose is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, so reception options are kind of limited.

 

New Hope Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee // Personal Photos

The very first place we looked at is called Homestead Manor, and I LOVED this property. It is an antebellum home just down the street from my parents and about ten minutes from our church, and they recently added a big events barn to the property with a fireplace, beautiful chandeliers, and a pond in the back.

 

 

Photos by Kristyn Hogan Photography via HomesteadManor.com

The venue also has a beautiful bridal suite inside of a re-purposed schoolhouse, and groom's quarters on the second floor of the house. Everything about it seemed so perfect, but Blue Moon and I decided to look around some more before we decided. We needed something closer to our budget, which is $15,000, and something that is not too big for the number of guests. The Manor's equestrian barn seats a ton of guests, and I was so worried that it would swallow our small reception. 

The second venue that we looked at, and went as far as penciling our date in with, was a restaurant just off Main Street in our hometown called Franklin Mercantile Deli. Though I have never seen them listed on a wedding website or anything like that, Blue Mom somehow figured out that they will do wedding rehearsal dinners or receptions for an extremely reasonable price. For under $10,000 and with the ability to seat around 85 guests, they will do a dinner with two appetizers, bread baskets, and two main courses with sides. The owner will also arrange the tables and chairs however we want and include white table cloths, twinkle lights across the ceiling, and some basic arrangements, like candles, on the tables. As you can see, it is already beautifully decorated inside.

 Decorated for a dinner // via Franklin Mercantile Deli on Facebook

I was honestly so in love with this venue, and definitely in love with the price. I only had two major concerns. The first was that the restaurant is twenty minutes from our church. Even though I know that's not a very long time in the grand scheme of things, we do have a lot of guests coming in from out of town and I was hoping to keep things closer together. Secondly, though I love the intimate feel to this place, I was worried about fitting our guests into here. I hope the final number of people coming hovers around 85, but we are inviting 107 total at this point. There's no way that many would fit inside! So Blue Mom and I decided to look around just a little bit more.

Meanwhile, there was one venue that I have had in the back of my mind almost since Mr. Blue Moon and I first got engaged. It's called Graystone Quarry, and it has been in construction for many, many months. It was not supposed to be ready in time for our wedding, but I kept dreaming about it because it was only four minutes from our church and looked like it would turn out so beautifully in the pictures. 

 

A couple in front of the quarry wall during their engagement shoot // via Leah Michelle Photography on Graystone Quarry's Facebook page

 

The grounds at the quarry are so lovely and will make beautiful pictures. // Via Graystone Quarry's Facebook page

 

 

  

Sketches of some of the buildings that are being constructed // Via Graystone Quarry's Facebook page

 

I had reached out to the owner of the quarry a couple of times to check on its progress, but it really seemed like it would not be ready nearly in time. So imagine my surprise when she reached out to me right after the holidays to say that we might be able to work something out! 

It turns out that the smaller of the two buildings, which will typically be used for ceremonies while the larger building is for receptions, will be ready in time for our wedding! And though they are not booking couples until October, when the entire facility is scheduled to open, she let us book because our guest list is small enough to have a reception in the small building. It will look something like this inside: 

Via Graystone Quarry's Facebook page

I think that the wood beams and chandeliers will be so beautiful, and they are using rock from the quarry to do the walls and the rock wall outside. I never dreamed that we would be able to score such a beautiful venue, but Graystone Quarry has been great about helping us stick within our budget and answering all of our questions. Though the search was long, I think we really found the best option for our wedding! And I am so excited for Mr. Blue Moon and I to be the first to use the venue.  

What was your thought process as you picked a reception venue? Are you going all-inclusive, or picking your own vendors?