How We Spent Less than $70 on Our Save the Dates

We're back from our honeymoon! I'm working on getting our apartment in order, but I am so excited to share so many things with you! I couldn't figure out where to start, but after eating some left-over hibachi and thinking for a long time, I decided that the best place to start is at the beginning. (If you don't know about our loooooove story, check it out here.) And the beginning-- other than our love story-- really starts with our save the dates. It was one of the first decisions that we made as a couple for our wedding, and one of the ones we knew we had to make-- we had so many friends and family from all over the country who were invited to the wedding. We had to give them plenty of time to make travel plans!

The wedding industry is very persuasive.  I felt a lot of pressure, especially at the beginning of planning, to conform to all of the bells and whistles all of the wedding magazines, Pinterest boards, and websites were trying to sell me. There are an array of endless, dizzying choices-- magnets, specialty cards that have bracelets and balloons attached, koozies-- but we knew that those didn't fit into our budget and we were committed to being financially responsible.

So, here's how we spent less than $70 on our save the dates: We used Snapfish to create a save the date collage card. Snapfish has a variety of collage choices and a fairly easy online editor.

At the time, John was in Afghanistan, so I designed a few mock-ups, made screenshots of them, and emailed them to him. We went back and forth for about a week, trying to decided which we liked the best, and proofreading... and re-proofreading... and re-proofreading... before we logged our final order. (And, to give credit where it is most certainly due, we used the engagement photos from our fabulous photographer and friend, Andy Colwell.)

This was our final choice:

And here's where I'm super proud of how saving-savvy we were. We bought our save the dates when there was a free shipping code. We completed the transaction through Ebates (which, if you're not signed up for it, you really need to be!) and received $17.36 in cash back through PayPal. 

All told, that means we spent $69.44 on 150 save the dates. We would have saved more by ordering fewer, but I was so nervous about not having enough that I over ordered.  (And now, we have a few extra for our scrapbook.)

Because the cards were 5x7, we could use first class postage on them rather than more expensive postage. All told, we spent a little over $115 for everything... and we loved our save the dates, which is the most important thing of all!