When we first set out to design our save the dates – my mind started racing. I wanted ours to be unique and funny – nothing cookie cutter here! I had scads of ideas.
Idea #1
An album cover for an imaginary folk band starring Faye and me. We would be decked out in vintage 70s outfits – I would wear a paisley vest and lousy hairpiece. Faye would be barefoot wearing a sun dress; her uncombed hair dotted with small flowers. I’d sit on a stool with a banjo on my knee and Faye would laze in the grass holding a triangle. We would be called “The Date-Savers” the debut album’s release date would be our wedding date. We could even list the song titles on the back providing all the usual wedding information (“Arriving into Logan, Departing With Your Heart”, “The Buh buh backyard Blues”, “Hotel New Hampshire Ain’t Got Nuthin’ on the Holiday Inn”).
Idea #2
While at a friend’s wedding in Seattle, Faye and I took a picture of the mid-day shadows we cast upon the sidewalk. Our favorite is the one where I look like a strange woodland creature kissing the hand of a princess underneath the bough of a tree. Our Save the Date would feature that picture and a quote from a fairy tale.
Idea #3
We would record our personal message on a DVD. That way everyone who hadn’t met one of us could be introduced before the wedding. We considered making each one unique to the person we were sending it to. We even wrote a script. We practiced it. We sucked. We decided we couldn’t do it.
In fact we decided against all of these. The problem with ideas 1 and 3 was not that they were horrible, in our humble opinions, despite confused looks when we’d describe them to others. The problem was just the good old time factor. Where would we find enough of it to actually pull these off? Now, the problem with idea number two, on the other hand, is that everyone openly hated the idea. Especially Faye’s mother, who was worried that nobody would know who was getting married if we were just shadows. I suppose she had a point – if you consider it a strong possibility that there are more than one couple in our friends’ lives named Faye and Eric.
Then one night, Faye and I were hanging out in our apartment and the song “Together at Last” from the 
musical Annie came on my Itunes (don’t ask). We naturally started singing along (okay – fine I like musicals and I know a lot of the lyrics – there, it feels better to come clean. My rendition of Summer Lovin at Karaoke kills. Why are you looking at me like that?). Halfway through the song, inspiration struck. We felt like we had waited our entire lives to be together – to be in this exact moment. We knew what our Save the Dates should look like.
We had our mother’s dig up a couple of our childhood snapshots: we settled on one of Faye as an 8-year-old on Valentines Day holding a rose from her Dad and one of me, about the same age, looking kind of irked and holding a stick. Then we took a self-portrait on a romantic bridge in Connecticut. In the middle of the postcard, we put a picture of a handwritten sign which read “together at last.”
Our friend Sarah (who’s been a savior through this process) used her graphic designing skeelz to help put the whole thing together. It didn’t even look too cheesy. I think it was the perfect save the date for us, and best of all, we didn’t spend a month making it. Sarah did.
What I am realizing more and more as I go about this insane ordeal known as wedding planning – is that it is okay to go with simple. And it is even more okay to turn to people you love for help.
I would love to hear some of the cool things you all did for your Save-the-Dates. Or, if you have the time, you are welcome to use one of the ideas I proposed earlier. I won’t mind – I don’t think I’ll be needing them again.
Go back to episodes guide to view upcoming episodes.