Albi''s Save The Date Magnets, Thank You Card''s & Banquet Invites!

[SoonIHope]

So, I was busy last week! We finally ordered our Save The Date magnets, PLUS I ordered stamps and blank cards and made a few Thank You cards, AND got samples for the Chinese banquet invitations & rsvp cards which we have now decided to use! (We don''t have our invitations for the actual wedding yet - they''re going to be separate events in different cities a month apart.) Just wanted to share!

First, the Save The Date magnets!

We''re going to print up our own little cards and attach the magnets to the front of the card with rubber cement so people can take them off for the fridge.

 

[SoonIHope]

hehe a random pile of the magnets!

 

[SoonIHope]

Guests'' first views as they pull the invites & RSVPs out of their respective envelopes!

The color is a really nice crimson that isn''t quite as purplish as this looks, but it''s sooo much less red than the RSVP pic coming up...

 

[SoonIHope]

Out of the envelopes!

 

[SoonIHope]

Close-up of the invite cover! (That''s the Chinese Double Happiness traditional wedding symbol, which is also on the save the date magnets in a totally different font.)

 

[SoonIHope]

Boring picture of the inside!

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it look right even though it opens backwards? We''re probably not going to write it in Chinese (just English) so only one side would have writing, but it seems odd to have the left panel be the only one with writing...

 

[SoonIHope]

The generic pre-printed RSVP cards we''re going with. Because hey, they''re cheap! You can see how they''re a lot redder here than in the other pictures! The actual color is about half way in between...

 

[SoonIHope]

Okay, last item to post! These are the cute matching envelopes to our thank you cards...

 

[SoonIHope]

First view as you open the envelope of the thank you cards...

 

[SoonIHope]

Emerging from the envelope!

 

[SoonIHope]

A close up! These are Strathmore Creative Cards blank cards with a red deckle edge, and I bought the branch & flower stamp set and the "thanks" from impressrubberstamps.com (which also has a huge range of ink colors, I totally want to play more with stamping! I was so sad when I finished my batch last night and didn''t have any blank cards left!)

 

[SoonIHope]

And a whole stack of these, because I''m a loser!

See all the flowers are a little different!

 

[VRBeauty]

Albi:

Wow, you're getting an early start. I'm very impressed! I also like what you've selected, especially the invites and your custom-made thank you notes. Re the right side of the invite, would it be possible to put another symbol there, perhaps very faintly, as a watermark? Or maybe a saying or quotation that's meaningful to both of you, and captures the essense of what you want your marriage to be ...?

 

[SoonIHope]

Thanks MINIMS!

And regarding the early start...hehe, well we''ve already been engaged for 7 months so it seems like I''ve been stalling so far! But mainly we just know a lot of people who are engaged right now, so we want to get our save the dates out EARLY so people will commit to OUR date, and make their weddings on different weekends!

We''ve already told all of our friends to make sure if they hear anyone else say they might have their wedding that weekend TELL THEM THEY CAN''T! Our wedding is a semi-destination wedding (way way upstate NY where all our family and friends are in NYC and North Carolina) so no one would be able to do two things that weekend.

And I REALLY like the idea of a watermark or stamp or something on the right side! That will totally balance the pages better, woohooooo so excited to start looking for something now!

Thanks for the great idea!!!

 

[firstbase32]

your magnets are awesome...where did you get them from? I have been looking at a website as well and they''re about like $.50 a peice or so.

 

[curlygirl]

Wow, Albi--great job!!! I love the classy double happiness magnets. Very understated and cool! And those banquet invites are gorgeous too!!! But I truly love your thank yous. What a great idea to do the stamping. They look gorgeous and I love how they are part of your asian theme. Simply beautiful. You''re doing great--you''ve gotten a lot accomplished!!!

 

[amyg]

Wow!!! Those are all really great!!! And I''m totally impressed and envious of your photography skills...

 

[SoonIHope]

Yayyy, thank you firstbase & curlygirl!!!

Firstbase - the magnets are from theknot.com''s store, they have a very limited selection which is not very customizable, but I looked ten million places, and these were the only ones that looked right to me; everything else seemed a little too busy for my taste. They''re $1 a piece (in packs of 10).

Curly - hehe, yeah, I do seem to have an asian theme going on here! Which isn''t bad or anything, but our regular invites are going to be totally non-asian (and blue!) so I hope they don''t stick out toooo much! But I''m not a matchy matchy all the time person, so I think it will work. And our save the date caaaards that we''re attaching the magnets to have a similar type of design as the invites, even though the colors are different. Hmm.

But yes, the Thank You cards are totally my favorite of these three too! And also SO MUCH FUN to stamp!!! I can''t wait until the rest of my blank cards come in and I get to spend a long time stamping!

I realize thank you cards aren''t really something I neeeeeeed to have a full year before my wedding, but I just refused to spend like $2 per card, which is what most of the ones I liked were (at least) and just got it into my head that I needed to find a cheap way to have pretty thank you cards NOW!!!

But now I can actually move on to the REAL wedding planning.... I''ve totally just been getting all the fun stuff out of the way first!

 

[SoonIHope]

Whoops, and thanks amyg too; we were posting at the same time!

And it took me about 4 pictures for each one of the ones you see up there, in addition to the many hours I have already spent fiddling with macro on my new camera trying to get ring pics!

 

[firstbase32]

what size font, if you had to choose, did you make your normal text? We are still designing ours and i''m afriad the text might be too small. We still have some things to work on it because I designed them and put 2 pics of us and a pic of our shadows in the background....hopefully it''ll turn out awesome. I''ll post a pic when we order them in like 4 weeks.

 

[SoonIHope]

Hmm, we didn''t have an option of choosing fonts...let me print out some random things on paper and see about what this looks like....

Okay, holding the magnet up to my piece of paper, it looks like "save the date" is about 18 or 20, "laura & john" is 16, and "june 23, 2007" is 11. Hope that helps!

 

[BrightSpot]

albi, everything looks great! That''s really smart of you to reserve your date before any of your engaged friends steal it!

Your STD magnets are so classy & understated, your banquet invites are stunning (I second the idea of putting a symbol on the right side) & your thank-you cards are absolutely beautiful! I''m so impressed that you made them yourself! Great job!

firstbase32, I looked into Vistaprint for magnets when I was doing my STDs. The site was very user friendly & the magents were reasonably priced. Good luck!

 

[ellaila]

Albi, everything looks wonderful! I am in love with your thank you cards ...

- they are just the cutest things I''ve seen!

 

[AmberWaves]

Albi! Gorgeous!!! And those thank you cards are stunning. It makes me think that I can possibly do something like that myself! I think that with the red and blue invites, it''ll be lovely. Are you sending each to the same people? Like, are all the people getting two invites? One for the banquet and one for the ceremony? Again- LOVE them.

 

[SoonIHope]

Thanks Brightspot & Ellaila!!

I totally want to FORCE people to give me presents NOW just so I can send them thank you cards! Not even because I want presents! I was seriously thinking last night...hmmm, is there anyone I can thank just for something nice they did??

 

[SoonIHope]

Hehe yay, Amber, thanks!

And you could TOTALLY make something like this!!! I stamped all ten of the blank cards I had the other day in about 2 minutes; it''s soooo super easy (and FUN!) I really need to do more crafts; I got such a high off of watching my cards come to life!

And yeah, the guest lists for the ceremony and banquet are almost identical, although we expect different groups to come to the different events to some extent.... There may also be some additional cousins/friends invited to the banquet, but just to make it easier we''re telling everyone that if they''re invited to the actual wedding, they are definitely invited to the banquet. It would just be too hard to keep track of otherwise, especially since I''m sure there will be talk of the upcoming banquet at the wedding. ACK. But to the banquet-only people we''re emphasizing "small intimate ceremony" even though it''s now looking to be over 100.

 

[YumCarrots]

albi -

I LOVE your thank you notes! in fact, I''m going to check out impressrubberstamps.com right now!

 

[SoonIHope]

Hehe YAY thanks! I feel like I totally sounded like an ad for them, but I was just really happy with my stamps and wanted to share the wealth!

Oh, but their website is REALLY hard to navigate. The categories of stamps just don''t make much sense (eg. there are a lot of nature stamps in the "savvy" section but they''re not also in nature, so you have to plow through all 10 million "savvy"s to get a few more natures mixed in?) So just browse around I guess, and hopefully you''ll find something you like!

 

[ChargerGrrl]

Date: 7/12/2006 12:07:20 PM
Author: YumCarrots
albi -

I LOVE your thank you notes! in fact, I''m going to check out impressrubberstamps.com right now!

Me too! I''m getting married at a winery, so I''m hoping to find something with grapes.

I LOVE all your pieces- everything is so classy and goes very well together!

 

[SoonIHope]

Thanks Charger & SDL!!!

YumCarrots & Charger - did you find any stamps you like??