Save The Date

We are now up to the Save The Date portion of the wedding preparations. Which, now that I think about it, does seem to be a somewhat tautologous practice. Basically because by the time most people get around to the Save The Date bit, they have already gone and booked the wedding venue and the reception. Or maybe thats just us...? And, if you already have the information regarding the times and locations for both your ceremony and your after party, why wouldn’t you just send out an invitation?

One argument for this is that invitations are best sent out at a date closer to the actual affair so they don’t get lost or forgotten etc . The Save The Date card is therefore a way to ensure that people don’t double book themselves in advance of receiving said invitation. One might also argue however that if the person to whom an invitation was sent quite early was close enough to you that you really wanted them at your wedding, they wouldn’t be likely to forget the date in the first place!

So anyway, despite the fact that we currently have both a ceremony and a reception venue, we have opted to send out Save The Date cards to our nearest and dearest. We came up with a concept that we liked and did the artwork ourselves which had the dual result of providing something personal that The Boy and I created together and facilitating one of the biggest disagreements we have had with each other over this whole wedding process so far. Who would have thought this would hold such potential for headaches and misunderstandings!

We actually really like what we came up with in the end. It did result in us making a couple of shameless infringements of copyright here and there but the final idea struck us as quirky and fun and we hope that other people will like it too. Getting to this point however took a bit of effort. It definitely didn’t help that we tried to do this late at night but our artistic sensibilities, or at least the manner in which they are manifested seem to...clash. Or maybe its a men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti thing but the longer we were working together, the more frustrated I was and the more irritated he became with me. Or maybe that was the more frustrating I became, the more irritating he was...?

I like to start work with a blank canvas, adding components here and there, visually comprehending what looks good before rearranging it to suit the final edit. The Boy likes to have a full brief in advance, knowing all the requirements and limitations in detail so he can manipulate it all together and come up with the best possible version. Both are completely valid and effective approaches. Pity they don’t particularly work well with each other. He didn’t understand that I couldn’t tell him exactly what I wanted until I’d actually seen it in order to know whether I liked it or not. Since he had commandeered the laptop, that left me as the backseat driver only. I could quite easily say that I didn’t like where we were going but I felt unable to actually do anything about it. And apparently its extremely unhelpful to tell someone that you don’t like something when you can’t offer an alternative.

Towards the end of the process, there were quite a few impassioned words as to whether I was completely contradicting myself constantly and whether he was being totally unfair. We did get through it however. Obviously. He put up with my hissy fit when I got fed up and told him I didn’t care anymore and he could do what he wanted. And I think I managed to impress upon him that if he wants to work with me on something then he can’t just take over. And then we all lived happily ever after. We also got a website.

It started off as a bit of a gag because we ripped off an ad which had a web address for the save the date card. We then figured that if you put a website address on the card you were giving to friends then it may as well actually go somewhere in case they checked it out. So we set up that as well. Or rather, The Boy set that up and I provided artistic direction from the back seat. Fortunately for both of us, this process was a little smoother than the Save The Date cards. So now, we just need to get the cards printed and distributed so that we can honestly say that in the long list of wedding associated duties. Another one bites the dust!