SAVE THE DATE Design Failure

I'm a save the date snob. :) Oh no, I definitely couldn't just have something generic. And to add to the problem, I have wine taste on a beer budget. There was really no choice but to make my own. Only problem was... I had absolutely no experience designing.

It took me a lot of time to figure out how to design something I considered "cool" on the computer for free. One issue I had was that I refused to pay for graphics (pictures, drawings, etc), which meant I either had to make it myself or limit myself to free graphics. FYI, most of the time, free graphics suck or are difficult to find. It look a lot of time to find the things I was looking for. My other issue was that I had no idea how to edit graphics using photoshop or gimp. I ended up teaching myself to use these programs through trial and error and then designing the rest of the project in powerpoint. Powerpoint has come a long way and you can do a lot in it, but it has its limits. And as I said before, I really had never designed anything paper material related ever. My first few trys making a save the date and invitation design were lacking, to say the least. Want to see my disasterous attempts? Don't laugh too hard...

The first one just looks sad to me. The second one is boring (and it looks funny because I removed our last names). The last one was supposed to be trees. One from Michigan and one from Florida. But, this just didn't have a fun factor. Besides the poem, of course.

We have had the "poem" for quite some time. We wrote it at 3am while driving from Michigan to New Jersey in the summer of 2010. It has changed slightly over time, but most of it was written while we were sleep-deprived that crazy night so long ago. Yes, I did have to nag Wes a bit to participate in writing the poem, but he got pretty into it after awhile. Some of the best parts of the poem were written by Wes. I think our poem is cute, funny (in a ridiculous way) and is "us". So, it was a must that it went in the save the date.

I was so hell bent on having something original. With the limited resources I had, it was very difficult to make anything look professional. I am not sure if I was successful or not in making the save the date I sent you look professional, but we love them and that's all that matters in the end. Still, I have this crazy goal to have one of those fabulously styled weddings  (on a limited budget). I am quite proud of what Wes and I accomplished. They were supposed to have some more details, but then real life happened, as it always inevitably does, and I decided that other things were more important than adding those details. They probably look better without the extras anyway.

My suggestion to anyone wanting to design a paper material who has no experience in design is to do the following:

1. Ask yourself if you really really want to design them on your own or just sort of on your own. There are lots of fabulous people in the world who went to school for graphic design and will design something for you...for a price. For example, I found people at Etsy.com and Weddingbee.com who will design everything (save the dates, invitiations, rsvps) for someone and then send them the file so the person can print it out themselves. Sometimes I found people on Weddingbee.com who would send me a design they used for free that I could alter.

2. Make sure you give yourself lots of time to design before needing to make them, especially if you are a perfectionist like me. I went through a lot of designs.  Even if I thought I loved something, I would alter it just to see if I liked it another way more.

3. Accept that it may not look exactly perfect ever and don't feel bad if you realize that your first few attempts were "lacking".... like mine.

4. Less is more. Try to remember that. :)

Happy designing!