DIY Digital Save-the-Dates

I only started to see the trend with save-the-dates a couple years ago.  I wonder how long this stuff has been going on with mailing out postcard save-the-dates and whatnot.  But seriously, when I first thought of it, I just thought it was kinda ridiculous to spend extra money on postage.  I'm already spending a buttload of money on stamps to mail out the actual invitation itself, why would I even want to spend MORE money to tell people to keep their calendars open on my wedding date 6 months in advance?

Sure, the save-the-date (STD) notion is a good idea.  BUT spending money on the postage to send them out isn't a good idea in my book (sorry, I'm just not that old-fashioned and I don't think any of the wedding invitees would care).  In this day and age, I find nothing wrong with doing things digital and doing it over the internet. 

That being said... I decided our STDs would be a digital photo of some sort and we'd email it out to all our friends!  Solves the problem of postage!  Woohoo!

I'll be honest and say that I wasn't completely original with the idea of our STDs.  But apparently the people on Pinterest thought it was unique!  Ha!  Woopsie. 

And of course, if you know me and Mat, then you'd understand the significance of photobooths to us (first kiss, proposal... yadda yadda yadda).

This idea seemed easy enough:
- Camera?  I'm a photographer, duh.  check!
- Chalkboard? Bought it at JoAnn's Fabrics.  check!
- Chalk?  Got some chalk from a friend who's a teacher.  (Thanks MyLinh!)  check!
- Backdrop?  That would require some creativity, but... check!






So we had to be a bit innovative for our backdrop.  We were doing this at Mat's house.  I wanted something bold like the red curtain in the above example.  But we didn't have any red curtains.  I actually wanted to use a dark brown curtain that I have in my room, but I forgot to bring it.  So we had to work with what we had.

Debated on using plantation shutters as a backdrop.  But it was too boring or plain to me.  Especially with the white.

After browsing around Mat's house for potential backdrops... looking at his mom's bedroom curtains (which had a pattern), to his sisters' bedroom walls painted red and another blue... we decided on Mat's shower curtain:

Hm yes... I think this will work!

But Mat's shower curtain is a bit neutral.  Soooo... we'll contrast it with his sister's red leather wingback chair!  Put it all together and we've got our makeshift photo studio!

All this was set up in Mat's sister's room... while she out.  Haha, she didn't know we were doing this until we posted pictures later.

This would have been a lot easier if I had a remote for my camera.  But no remote, so it was a lot of going back and forth with the camera set on timer.  Here are a few okay pictures from our photo shoot that we didn't use:

So with a little bit of editing, cropping, and more photoshopping... we got this for our digital STD!

And I also love Mat for his spirit.  After our photo shoot was done, I said, "Okay!  Torture over!"

He said, "Torture?  But that was fun!"

Ah, I love him.


I've already started to send out the STD as well.  And we've gotten back some replies from friends saying this is the cutest thing ever.  Haha... it's funny, but I'm glad I'm doing something a little different from the norm (even though our idea wasn't really that original).  But it's unique if our guests haven't seen it!

Cost of this project: less than $3 (for the chalkboard)