Friday October 12 was the most magical of days. It was one for the books!!
That evening, my love and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. He made a bangin’ 3 course Italian meal complete with my new favorite red wine (so good!) and Jamie Oliver Chicken Skewers. (Tangent… when I studied abroad in Florence, my favorite lunch place was I Due Fratellini. Their numero quattro panino had a salsa verde on it that blew my mind. I have dreams about that salsa verde. Going to Florence? Go there.) So he makes this Jamie Oliver chicken dish, right? Well, I promise you - the salsa verde was so spot on with my dreams of I Due Fratellini that I cried right then and there.
But wait! The salsa verde was only the start! We cooked and we chatted, and by the end of the night and the bottle (bottles?) of wine, he got down on one knee and proposed! It was so homey and so very us. It was perfection. I cannot express how excited I am to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.
With a proposal and wedding planning beginning, I was so excited about designing a Save the Date for our wedding guests. I was hoping for something simple and budget friendly that could share details of our big day with family and friends. We also chose a wedding date that is close to a big holiday and in a city where both of our families are out of state, so sending these early was a priority.
One of the first vendors we confirmed for our wedding was Rob + Kristen Photography. Rob + Kristen are the kindest two people around, and from our first meeting with them at Sycamore Brewing, I knew I couldn’t possibly have anyone else at our wedding. (I also want to be best friends for lyfe … so working on that.) They put us so at ease about the process. Because my now fiance (yeee!!) and I are maybe not the most comfortable in front of a camera, we also booked a engagement session with Rob + Kristen. I never know what to do with my hands and definitely needed some practice. We had a glorious time adventuring around Charlotte, and the resulting photos have become the heart of our Save the Date!
All pictures below by Rob + Kristen Photography.
Over the holidays, it was dress shopping time! The second store we went to had the most beautiful dress... it looked like it was covered in hand drawn flowers and blooms. The drawings were all white and quite subtle, so they made the dress almost shine! I was in LOVE. In terms of design, it was totally opposite to what I thought I’d wear, but the flowers were lovely. Turns out I didn’t end up saying ‘Yes to The Dress’, but the drawings became a huge inspiration for the save the date - all done on my iPadPro’s Procreate app.
Then came the moment where we fit all the pieces together! I used Procreate and Canva (I didn’t have access to Photoshop at the time) and played around with different Rob + Kristen pictures, colors and layouts. Some early examples and stages are below! The design got busy FAST with the delicacy of the line drawings and background of our photos, so I really had to be careful with one aspect of the design detracting from the other. All of our family members also had a different favorite photo, so it took some time to decide the right fit.
In the end, we simplified it down to just saying “Save the Date” on the front along with with the larger of the two floral patterns. (Here’s to hoping the simplicity makes these babies fridge-worthy for all of our guests!! That’s secretly the goal, right?) The design was also set on Procreate to fit into the largest of postcard sizes as we wanted send it with postcard postage (less expensive!) and without envelopes.
Once given the thumbs up by our families, it was off to my amazing Printer here in Charlotte to make a proof for review. I so recommend anyone making postcards by themselves to take a proof to their local post office to measure and review. USPS requires a postcard to be no more than 4-1/4 inches high x 6 inches long x 0.016 inches thick. That said, it seems some post offices are picker than others, and we’d rather be safe than sorry. Their weights and measurements confirmed we were set to go, and nothing would come back in the mail unloved.
The reverse side of the postcard additionally went through some edits & reviews (like my glorious mother recommending that “Formal invitation and good times to follow” might be a bit too spicy for a Save the Date. It was so nice to be able to hand write everything directly into Procreate, so the edits were quick. These burgundy words match the wedding colors, and the smaller of the florals fit right in the center. (The real deal has the full website URL, I promise!!)
Making my very first Save the Date was such an adventure and learning experience. With a great team of family editors and the best photographers possible, it was a total joy. The one thing I’d say was that if I were to do this all over again, providing additional space on the right hand side would maybe make address writing less cramped, but it gave me a great excuse to bust out my tiniest micron pen and I LIVE FOR THAT, FRIENDS.
Thanks for following along, my friends! I look forward to sharing more adventures as I design a full invitation suite and keep painting away here in Charlotte.
All my love xx - Sofia