Jocelyn Shares Her Save The Dates

View CommentsMonday • May 25, 2009 • by DIY Bride

Clipart Saves the Day (and the Date)

My fiancé and I are in the midst of a nine month engagement and we didn’t even think about Save the Date cards until we had about five months left. Oops – most wedding pundits recommend sending these out at least six months before the big day, so needless to say, we scrambled.

As a recessionista bride (and groom), we intended to do these ourselves, yet we knew nothing about the process. We just knew we wanted something with a bit of pizzazz. So we visited a fancy invitation store to flip through their sample books to get ideas. We saw a lot of vines wending their way across gorgeous cards, intricate Asian artwork, and birds perched expectantly on delicate twigs. I wondered how we could incorporate something equally stylish (and quickly!) on our own.

When we got home, I beelined for one of my favorite websites, www.clipart.com.You can subscribe to this for as little as 14.95 for one week (or 299.95 for two years) and, in that time, download an unlimited number of images. There are also free sites where you can find good albeit less extensive collections.

By searching under ‘bride’ and ‘wedding’, I found literally thousands of images: cakes, wedding bells, ball and chains and bride and groom combos in many different styles (some even carrying shotguns, yikes). I narrowed my search to only black and white images, figuring this would cut printing costs then downloaded five of the more modern and simple illustrations of brides and grooms. Together, my fiancé and I chose a duo that seemed, to us, both elegant and also a bit quirky, as if they might be featured on a construction sign. Like: Wedding Zone Straight Ahead.

Because we’re getting married at an old electrical parts factory in an industrial section of Queens, New York, we liked that these had a rather urban feeling. But if you’re celebrating at a botanical garden or at a church, or if you’re focusing on dancing, or you have some other theme going, you can definitely find an illustration that makes sense for your event.

Next, my fiancé went to town in the program Illustrator: he made a few tweaks and played with the sizing to make the file work for a postcard. We chose a font that seemed to go well with our duo (arial) and decided that, though we’re advocates of grammar, we’d go renegade á la e.e. cummings and write everything in small case.

After a few short hours and a few different versions, our cards were designed and contained the relevant info. We had them printed out at FedEx Kinkos the next day on simple cardstock. The sage green paper we chose gave them a bit of an organic feel we were pleased with. Of course, these Save the Date postcards aren’t letterpress quality. Likewise, they aren’t refrigerator magnets and they don’t put on their own laser light show, but they seem to have gotten our point across. They cost less than $21.00 (not including clipart fee or postage). And though they were created with love, they ate up very little of our precious time: in fact, it took us longer to figure out our guest list and actually get them in the mail.

The best thing is that by choosing this clipart, we unexpectedly developed the ‘look’ of many of our subsequent DIY projects. For example, our clipart couple is currently appearing on our website (also designed by my talented fiancé). This time they’re dressed in a subtle grey. In sticker form, (i.e. round laser printer labels I found at a stationery store) they are going to help fasten together the ‘envelofolds’ of our invitations. We’ve even invited them to stand atop our cake on the big day and they cordially accepted.
Using one specific image across the board like this is almost like branding your wedding. I hesitate to use that word ‘brand’ because it sounds so cold and corporate (and also reminds me of something painful that happens on a ranch), but simple clipart, at the very least, contributes to a theme and creates a nice sense of cohesion.
Along these lines, lots of couples get personalized logos designed, for example with their initials cozily intertwined. I think that’s cute and has wonderful symbolism, but if you’re pressed for time and cutting costs, I recommend this quick, easy, and cost-effective option.  Let’s face it, any way you can streamline this whole wedding enterprise while still personalizing it, is a beautiful thing.

Jocelyn blogs at Current Skate of Mind and Upper East Side Informer