…our electronic save the dates: a virtual reality…

We sent our Save the Dates back in December, so I'm a little behind in blogging about them... but what else is new???

I originally talked about our decision to go green/cheap/digital with our STD's and invitations here. This is a decision I absolutely do not regret. The amount of money we saved and the waste we managed to avoid by making this choice was well worth the very few complaints we received from guests who felt confused or inconvenienced by our email delivery. More often, we heard rave reviews from fellow tech-savvy and/or environmentally conscious friends.

All that being said, let me point out that this option is not necessarily a good fit for every couple. There is some somewhat meticulous maintenance and follow-up to do in order to pull it off, but thanks to a post on Elizabeth Anne Designs Weddings, I found a great resource which made all of that work pretty easy. My fellow type-A personalities will appreciate this. {Hypothetically speaking, does one classify as type-A if they manage the entire process of planning a wedding in a 13 (and counting!) sheet Excel workbook complete with pivot tables, color coding, and complex formulas?} Anyway, back to my story. I used MailChimp, a free email marketing service (up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails per month), to send and track all of our STD's. This website is genius. First of all, these people are clever, from the branding down to the instructions, it's all very tongue-in-cheek. Makes you feel like you're talking to your socially-awkward, yet adorable, IT guy-friend. I was won over from the start. We had been collecting email addresses for a while, which I obviously kept track of in my trusty spreadsheet...uh, hypothetically, I mean, I could have. Importing the guest list was as simple as a little copy and paste action.

Once the list was set up, I created our "campaign" in which we basically just designed the email and pushed send. Simple as that. As soon as guests began opening and reading and clicking, MailChimp was reporting open statistics and bounces and all sorts of helpful things, which gave us the ability to make sure no one got left out.

So enough of the technical stuff. Here's what we did….

Inspired by the amazing invitation I'd found so long ago, I wrote up the story of me and DG from way back when in a short and sweet little format. Once again our generous and talented groomsman/graphic designer worked it out. (Click the image to see it up close.)

Then I created my email campaign in MailChimp which lead our guests to our wedding website, where the PDF of our Save the Date was hosted.

(Photos by Will Knowles)

We learned a couple lessons about the process along the way, which came in handy when we got ready to send out our invitations. If, by chance, you're considering sending your STD's or invitations via email and you'd like to know more, leave me a comment or shoot me an email and I'd be happy to answer questions or give you some tips. All in all, this worked out really well for us and saved a LOT of money. J

More on our website and invitations coming soon!

…save the dates…

So, I fall hard for good ideas. Mine are typically the brain child of the many inspirations from those who've gone before me and already done it well. Call me a copy cat if you like. I think I'm just well informed...and the product of my creative predecessors. J Thus the concept for our save the dates. Long ago I stumbled upon this ingenious wedding invitation via A $10,000 wedding.  Bless you, Matt Dorfman, for reaching out your hand to pull us from our engraving and thermography box.

Pretty sure most of you cyber-brides have seen this by now, as it's been circulating for quite some time. I think it's genius. DG and I both love the idea of something so personal, so in the days to come, it is my quest to write up our story in a similar fashion.

Wanting our first contact with our guests to be very us and very Nashville, we've decided to mimic the Hatch Show Print design we all know and love. Something a little like this guy…

(by whitebox weddings)

Or this guy…

(by Phindy Studios via Ashley's Bride Guide)

Engagement photo session coming up next weekend. Save the dates to brag about shortly thereafter. Time to get excited!

...of wedding progress and procrastination…

I've always got these really great ambitions to write about all the little thoughts that pop into my head on a daily basis, but my life seems to be moving at a faster pace than I. Here it is, another week later before I've even made it to posting again. There are moments when six months and a handful of days seems like all the time in the world…and others when I start to get that panicky feeling about whether or not we'll pull off this wonderland of a wedding we've dreamed up before the end of the millennium. Thankfully, DG is a mastermind when it comes to execution of…well, just about anything. I love that I can just do the conceptual thing and let him figure out how to make it happen. It takes so much pressure off of me, and I can't explain what a relief it is to have his help and insight and expertise in this endeavor. It makes my heart warm. J

Some really great things have happened on the wedding front while I've been silent. I bought my dress…which is precisely opposite what I thought I'd end up choosing, but it is so very, very me, and I couldn't be more excited about it. (Now it's time to get down to the business of looking as good in it as possible, but that's another topic for another day.) We have also potentially chosen a church for our ceremony, but being non-members of the congregation, we are unable to reserve it prior to six months before our wedding date. Thus, we will not have that nailed down until November 1^st, but that date is quickly approaching. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we'll have that item checked off the list very shortly.

What I'm most excited about at this moment in time is branding our wedding. That may be the left side of my brain talking there, but basically, I'm a sucker for a theme. And I intend to carry our lock and key theme all the way through the wedding. DG and I are meeting with a very talented friend this evening to discuss all of the graphic design elements of the theme. (Can I just say we are so fortunate to know and love so many talented and generous people?? Our wedding is going to be one giant collaboration of brilliance.) First up, save the dates. We're planning to have our engagement photos taken either this weekend or next, so as soon as they're finished, we plan to get our save the dates out to family and friends far and wide.

As a semi-faithful blog follower, I am constantly looking for inspiration and ideas. Thanks to my dear friend, Google Reader, there is usually a surplus of fabulous DIY ideas. I had been really uninspired with a lot of save the date ideas I'd seen, simply because they to ultimately end up in the trash…which just seems like a waste. I'd toyed with the idea of sending them completely electronically when I stumbled upon this from Mo, of Elizabeth Anne Designs. DG and I are fairly tech savvy, as are most all of our friends and at least some of our family. Virtual save the dates seemed like the perfect fit, especially considering all the beautiful functionality offered by MailChimp, which is the FREE email marketing service Mo used. Excellent news for this spreadsheet addict. Sign me up.

The more we talked about it, the more DG and I got excited about thinking outside the box. Unconventional has become yet another theme in our wedding planning. Keep people guessing. Don't conform to narrow-minded ideas of how all this should go. That's pretty much where we live. Thus! We fell in love with the idea of going completely digital. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, digital save the dates, digital invites, digital everything. It's good for the environment, it's good for my budget, and it has the potential to be ridiculously cool. I can't wait to see how it all comes together. We'll be able to relay so much more information to our guests, and it just feels like 'us'. We've heard some skeptical comments, but it's our wedding and we can do what we want. Plus, I am confident that if we do it right, people will love it.

I'll leave you with some inspiration for our monogram…