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Save the Date Cards: Styles, Tips, and When to Send

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Save the date cards can be a bold choice to set the tone of the wedding to come or be more sweeping to allow for any matter of future choices. Either way, this is a time for luxuriating in the immediate joy following a proposal rather than stressing. Paperlust is here to help with tips on choosing your save the dates!

After the proposal, one of the first decisions a couple will make is choosing their wedding day. This often has to be done far in advance to allow for adequate planning time for the wedding. It also often needs to be communicated to the guests you want to invite to ensure they keep that day free, especially if your wedding is occurring during those peak Spring, Summer months. There are no hard and fast rules for when to send out save the date cards but a good guide is up to 6 months beforehand for a local wedding and a year or more for destination weddings. Since it is so far in advance, even if you haven’t decided on a theme or design style for your wedding stationery, save the date cards can stand on their own like these from Paperlust.

Photo Save The Date Cards

Having a photo on your save the date cards is a great opportunity to feature an engagement photo. We are often used to seeing those moments on social media and yet we rarely keep physical mementos of that special moment. These photos capture the moment of joy and elation right after a proposal and are a wonderfully personal way to notify all your friends and family of the upcoming wedding. This is also a great opportunity to add magnets to the back of the save the date cards, allowing your guests to display your photo on their fridge.

Minimal Save The Dates

For those who don’t want to commit to a certain stationery design, minimal style save the dates are a great choice. These are usually black and white or monochromatic color palettes that lean more on typography and spacing. Minimal designs create some of the most eye-catching save the date cards since there is far less text on a save the date compared to an invite. They can be applied to a variety of tastes from people who want luxurious finishes such as letterpress and foil stamping, to those who prefer rustic save the date cards and print them on recycled or hand-made papers.

Floral and Greenery Save The Dates

A classic wedding stationery design style is one that features images of floral or greenery. They can add a splash of color as well as creating framing borders around the text. Even if you haven’t decided on certain elements at the time of sending out save the dates, designs with greenery of flowers are usually a safe choice. Gardens, wineries and parks are the most common destinations for Spring, Summer weddings and any stationery design that invokes those elements would work well. You can get more specific if you already know that the wedding is held somewhere with distinctive vegetation though, such as lavender for Provence or South of France or Australian natives for an outback wedding.

Postcard save the dates

As people want to trim back on the fuss that sometimes accompanies sending out wedding invitations, they’ve turned to postcard formats to dispense with the need for envelopes and assembly. Save the date postcards work especially well – as postcards are small and designed to convey minimal text information. They can either feature photos of the location or the couple to channel that authentic postcard feeling. Receiving a postcard in the mail is such a rarity for most of us that they are sure to stand out when arriving in the post. Save the date postcards are both nostalgic and noticeable for that reason.

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