Gettin' Hitched - Literary Style: DIY Save-the-Dates and Invitations

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When the Mr. and I got engaged a few years ago, we weren't really sure where to begin planning. Should we have a big, white wedding or shoot for a destination wedding and get married on a beach somewhere tropical? Hire it out or DIY? How much should we spend? How much can we afford? Should we have a theme? Who should stand up with us? And on and on and on...

Theme-wise, we went round and round a bit, but really only threw around one idea seriously - books. Yep. We're nerds - and we embrace it. We love to read. On trips, part of our suitcases are reserved for books we buy along the way. We retrofitted bookshelves to hold our TV so that we could fit more book in our living room. So ultimately it wasn't a terribly difficult choice - but apparently it wasn't a common one either because I couldn't find Save-the-Dates or invitations to match up with our theme and our budget... so, whats an el' cheapo DIY gal to do? DIY them of course!



Save the Date

Running with the literary theme, I wanted to create Save-the-Date's that looked like library check-out cards. And to save money on  postage, I wanted them to be postcards... which meant the check-out card couldn't be on both sides - thus ruling out just buying the paper. Instead, I used Keynote on my Mac (nothing fancy here, folks!) to copy the look. I downloaded the font for free - it's called "Mom's Typewriter."And from there I just tried to create some thing fun!  These were printed onto 3x5" notecards on our plain ol' cheap-ish HP printer. 

INVITATIONS

For the invitations I did basically the same thing, but because I didn't have to worry about leaving one side blank to print addresses, I went ahead and ordered the actual library check-out cards to print the invitations on. I also ordered the book pockets that you find on the inside cover of your library books, so that when we put the invitations in, you could only see the top.

Important *your* versus *you're* usage.

From there it was just a lot of playing around with spacing and wording to make it all fit. And ultimately, I came up with this:

Our photographer is AMAZING - http://theshootinggallery.com/

The second piece was designed to look like a card from a library catalog - complete with the dewey decimal system code (you remember that from elementary school, dontcha?!).

RSVP Card
There was also an RSVP card included in the envelope with the invitation. It was designed to look like a library card application and printed onto blank 4x6 notecards. Again, to save on postage, it was a postcard with our return address printed on the back.

Everything was printed off on our little ol' HP printer. Total cost (not including postage for everything) was under $100 - with the most expensive part being the envelopes since I went with those inner/outer kind - with tissue paper. Yeah - cause we're fancy like that.

UPDATE:
If you'd like something similar to your wedding, digital files are now available on our Etsy site!
Save-the-Date Postcards
Wedding Invitation with Extra Info Card
RSVP Card