I have always loved the idea of saved the dates.

Well let me restate that.

I really love sending invitations or notifications for any of life’s big events.

So sending save-the-dates was fun.

And practical, in a way. I was so tired of answering the question, “When is your wedding?”

I didn’t want to spend a lot because there are so many other more important things that needed to be paid for.

I did some searching around the web for fun ideas.

I wanted something very informal and that gave a little hint as to the feel of our upcoming wedding.

After looking high and low, I settled on Wedding Chicks templates.

Weddingchicks.com has been great resource for me in all my wedding planning. Lots of free goodies, too.

Anyway, I settled on their mason jar template mostly because I have always wanted to use blue mason jars for my wedding, even before it was a trend. Ugh, trends!

Their free templates are so easy to use and require no large downloads, editing or heavy lifting, aka any non-computer person can do it.

Side note: Because I wanted to use the save-the-dates as postcards to save on postage, I did have to tweak the final copy in order to get it all to fit but it turned out fine.

I saved the front and back of my document; took it to a local printer in town. Viola!  80 “custom” save-the-dates for $15!

Then came the postage.

The “new and improved” postcard stamps from the USPS have a bright Hawaiian shirt on them. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

But bright Hawaiian shirts are not what I wanted on my postcard.

Most normal people would have smacked that stamp on there, and moved on with their lives but oh no! I can’t let a detail like that get by me. I have to fret about it until I come up with a solution.

I went to stamps.com and created my own postcard stamp which in the long run cost me more than regular postage, but I didn’t care.

Common sense note: Because stamps.com is an independent company not associated with the USPS, I did a quick Google search for coupon codes. Thankfully, I found a few good ones that worked! Yay, $ saved.

Here is the finished product. I loved the way it turned out except for the fact that one side was glossy.  I really wanted a matte finish all over but oh well.