As I continue my journey of planning my wedding I have learned some very valuable lessons along the way. What sparked my interest on writing this blog post was what happened this weekend…I learned something very important always have your soon-to-be mother-in-law proof your fiancé’s guest list and addresses before sending out your save the date cards. For about a month I kept on asking my fiancé to work on a  list of people he wanted to send our save the date/Christmas card to. I knew he had worked on it, so I figured everything was perfect. I shouldn’t have assumed anything…I spent two hours addressing our cards and making sure everything looked absolutely perfect. After I was done addressing all the envelopes and had put postage on the cards, my fiancé then decided to go through all the cards to make sure they were addressed to the right people and the addresses were correct. Needless to say we found about 10 cards that were wrong. After he figured this out I kind had a panic attack and started wondering how many other addresses were wrong. So, I went through all of them again to double check. I was relieved that this did not happen when we were sending out our formal invitations. For our formal invitations I will for sure be asking both of our parents to go over the list to make sure the addresses and names are correct so I don’t have a panic attack again right before sending out our formal wedding invitations. So, valuable lesson number one when planning your wedding is always have your soon-to-be mother-in-law and parents proof the guest list and addresses before sending anything out. Valuable lesson number two start looking for your dress as soon as you get engaged, it look me six months for me to find my wow dress!! I wish I would of started sooner because I was starting to get really stressed out about finding my dress.  I’m sure there will be more lessons to come as I continue my journey of planning my wedding!

Are you and your soon-to-be hubby sending out Christmas cards this holiday season? To save money on postage here is a clever idea on how to incorporate your save the date card with your Christmas card. If you already ordered your Christmas cards, no need to worry, all you have to do is insert a save the date card inside your Christmas card.  SimplyWeddingStuff.com has beautiful save the date cards to insert in to your Christmas card. The wedding save the date cards measure 3.5” x 5” inches, the perfect measurements as an insert for your card. As a bride-to-be I absolutely love this idea, it is a great way to save money on postage and to add something a little extra special into your Christmas card. Be sure to finalize your guest list before ordering your save the date cards so you don’t go over budget on the cost of printing the cards. If you are not certain who is all going to be invited to the wedding, just send the save the date cards to your close family and friends that you are 100% sure they will be invited to your big bash! Happy Holidays and enjoy sending out your cards.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to send out wedding save the date cards. I kept on wondering if this was a necessary cost to add to our wedding expenses. So, I started investigating different save the date ideas and why you would send one. The Knot stated that you should send a save the date card if your wedding is on a holiday…my wedding is on Labor Day weekend!! Sending a save the date card if your wedding is on a holiday is considered a courtesy because of its high-travel time. This for sure answered my question of rather or not we should send save the date cards.

As I was doing my investigation on save the dates I saw this beautiful engagement picture of a couple in the snow on their save the date card…Viola! Why don’t we send out a save the date card that is also a Christmas card. Granted it would be a little early to send a save the date, it would be something different and fun.(The Knot suggests sending save the date cards six months prior to your ceremony or eight months if you are having a destination wedding.) I am picturing the front of the card to be a picture of my fiancé and I in the snow, and the inside will be a holiday greeting and wedding information. Let it snow, let it snow (In November), so we can take a picture for our save the date card!!

If I hadn’t decided on using a picture as the main part of our save the date card I would of chosen SimplyWeddingStuff.com save the date cards. I love our save the date cards because they are simple and stylish. If you want to do a wedding save the date and Christmas card you could use save the date cards from SimplyWeddingStuff.com as inserts in your Christmas card. Our save the date cards would be perfect for inserts because of their size (3.5″ x 5″). Check them out at: http://www.simplyweddingstuff.com/savethedate.html. Enjoy designing your save the date card!