Operation: Complete Save the Dates, is in full swing around our home right now. I knew that getting those cute little postcards in the mail would be a time crunch on my end. You see, I really had my heart set on using a photo from our engagement pictures on the Save the Dates. Well, due to weather and our busy schedules, we had to push the date of our engagement shoot back about a month. This change therefore caused us to bend that rule of sending your Save the Dates at the six month mark before your wedding. (We are five months away as of Sunday!) In order to make this process go as quickly as possible, my choice of vendors made all the difference in keeping my sanity and expediting the process.
For our Save the Dates, I used a free download from The Wedding Chicks. I loved the design and was really happy that all I had to do was drop my information and photo in and BAM, there was my beautiful Save the Date postcard.
With that said though, I did run into a few mine issues. First, the photo that I wanted to use had to be scaled to an exact measurement in order for the template to work correctly. I was very lucky to have a photographer that was so kind to oblige and edit the image for me in less than 24 hours. Once I had my wonderful Save the Date files I started looking into printing online, figuring this would be the fastest and most cost efficient way to get these printed. I started finding that a lot of the online printing sites only allow you to upload files to a sized template; unfortunately my print job wasn’t with those predetermined sizes. I tried to complete a customer order with the size I needed, but the proofs weren’t scaled correctly. With the clock ticking, I started to panic a bit; at this rate I should just wait and send invitations!
I contacted a local printer in town to check on the pricing for printing and see how fast the turnaround was. Not only was I so happy to work with a real life person, not one of those customer service chat screens that you get online, but the printer actually found a slight formatting error near our names that was causing the letters to have extra spaces in some locations. (YIKES!) They offered to fix the problem for FREE if I went ahead and had them printed there and that the turnaround would be three days. I was so excited that I signed off on the proof ASAP and got my Save the Dates at the end of the week.
In my own experience, having the printing done local was a HUGE life saver. Not only was I able to see the proofs in person, rather than in a digital file that was emailed to me, I completely avoided a potential freak out regarding the spacing in our names. Yes, I am sure I would have been the only one to notice this, but hey they still would have bothered me. That is just who I am, obsessed with the details and perfection. If you can find a printing company in your area my suggestion is to print local, avoid online printing and go with the real life person that can help you if something isn’t right with your final product. With that said here are our wonderful Save the Date cards that I am happy to show off. 
I went through zazzle.com to order some custom postage for our cute postcards. Did you know there was such a thing? Me neither until a friend told me. Forget those American Flags on your wedding invites, you can upload a photo of yourself or choose from a ton of other customer options to add some flare to your invites. I went with a classic “love” stamp in our wedding colors.
Source: zazzle.com
Anyone else have a panic attack when it came to the deadline of getting things in the mail? What are your experiences with printing online vs. printing local?