Should I do save the dates?

Knottie57426687

we're having a small wedding (inviting maybe 60 people). It's probably an 7-8 hour drive tops for most of our family and friends. I also have a bunch of relatives out west that would need to fly out.

I have this fun idea for DIY STD postcards, but it's a lot of money involved. Or I can order some printed ones...haven't found any I truly love but they are like 50 cents a card. But are STDs really necessary?

manateehugger

STDs are not necessary at all if you don't want to spend the money. You can always just sent a casual email around to family announcing the date. 

But if you want to do them, you can do them very cheaply. We got 100 postcards from Vistaprint; including postage, I think I spent about $30 on the project in total.

atlastmrsg

Not necessary.  I just sent them to my closest guests and out of towners I really wanted to come.  I intentionally didn't send them to out of towners that I was obligated to invite because of my parents/because my parents had been invited to weddings involving their children/family members I'd never met or hadn't seen for 20+ years and didn't really care either way if they showed.  While I was still hammering out some budget details, I didn't want to send out a bunch then realize I didn't want to invite that many people.  Once you send an STD, there's no turning back.  If you do send them, make sure it's to people you're 100% committed to inviting.

Knottie57426687

I'm trying to invite as few people as possible. Unfortunately there are a lot of relatives (I'm not talking 2nd cousins on, I only mean aunts, uncles, and cousins...plus my parent's friends who are kinda like aunts/uncles). all the people who live out of town are relatives.

Knottie57426687

looks it'll be a little under $2 per STD (including postage). i think we'll have our picture on one side. we aren't officially announcing our engagement.so part of the reason I want STDs is to let people know.

manateehugger

Unless you are really attached to this design or having a very formal wedding, I wouldn't hundreds of dollars on STDs. Again Vistaprint can give you cute ones with a photo for dirt cheap.

Knottie57426687

can anyone show me their STD cards from vistaprint? i don't really like most of the ideas. i also want to see what the back looks like.

kat1114

If you want to design your own, you can always just print it somewhere. FI designed our STDs and then we used Catprint.com to do the printing. Including postage and printing, I think we spent around $60-75 for sending out 50 STDs.

manateehugger

Those were ours; we tinkered around with them a bit and then sent them out. Click (HERE) for the link to their gallery. 

Strawberry211chicago

Check with a local print shop. I designed mine in Photoshop & Illustrator and got 200 printed for like $60 for full color both sides and I was able to see the draft hard copy and go back and tweak the colors and margins before they printed all 200. Plus now I know them and am comfortable going there for the rest of my printing needs.