Giving Away STD's!

..Save the dates that is. John thinks its hilarious to call them STDs.

We wanted to do save the dates since John's family and most of our friends are from out of town. We needed a way to get people the information regarding the hotel blocks and the timing of the events. I created a website that has timing, the hotel blocks, activities to do in the area, driving directions and information about flying, etc. To get this information out, I designed a save the date. (These also served as a bit of an engagement announcement since I'm sure most of my family hadn't even known I was engaged prior to receiving the STD.)

First, some inspiration:

I have no idea where I got most of these from- sorry :(

I love these photostrip save the dates!

For my save the dates, I decided to do a booklet style. The outside is kraft paper (receycled!). I wanted to use as many recycled paper items as possible, since we are using so much paper. Kraft will show up in several places throughout the wedding stationary- it adds a nice touch of brown too!

Inside of the booklet is a magnet with our date. Underneath the magnet guests found a note letting them know that the actual invitation will follow, along with our website containing all of the important stuff.

How did we make them?
After I designed the magnets, I set up as many as possible on an 8.5x11 sheet and then made them a PDF so that John could print them (he doesn't have Adobe InDesign on his computer).


I bought 8.5x11 magnetic paper (from Paper Source) which John fed through the printer and then I cut them with my craft rotary paper cutter.

We ended up with around 70 of these:


As you can see, the color came out really nice, which I wasn't really expecting. Yay!

The next step was cutting the kraft paper for the outside of the booklets. I designed the STDs so that I would get two booklets/8.5x11 sheet, and they would fit into an A2 envelope (4x5 I think). I designed the inside in Adobe InDesign (just like the magnets) and the John printed those as well.


After that, all I had to do was cut the kraft paper in half length-wise and fold it in half:


After I cut the booklet covers, John stamped them with a custom s&j stamp and some red ink.


After all of the booklets were stamped, John used adhesive plastic corners to place the magnet over the text on the inside of the book.


Lastly, I tied the booklet up with a red ribbon:



We put the STDs in a little kraft envelope, put on a custom wraparound label that I designed and printed on 8.5x11 label sheets and applied the awesome new Eames stamps.

I don't have any pictures of the envelopes all did up, but here is a picture of the wraparound label- the s&j return address is on the back (sealing) side of the envelope and the "please deliver to" is on the front left.

Boo all of the blurries. :(

From what we have heard, they have been received well. The only issue with them has been that people didn't realize there was a magnet on the inside (thus, they didn't see the information which was the reason to send them out!). I'm not sure WHY people didn't realize this- the magnet made the STD heavy in that spot, the magnet is a completely different paper/texture/thickness than the kraft paper, and there are those clear plastic corners on the booklet.

Oh well. We have been trying to spread the word when we can.