Wedding Wednesday: Save The Date!

Remember how I said that Caroline from Pink Orchid Invites was great?  It's been confirmed - look at the lovely note she sent me with our Save the Dates!  But you're not here for notes, I know; you want to see the goods.  So, without further ado, I give you our Save the Date postcards. Drumroll, please...

We're so pleased with them!  They're classic and crisp but still warm and pretty, I think.  We first decided to use postcards for our Save the Dates because they're a bit cheaper, both in terms of product and postage, but I also love the simplicity of the look.  Our monogram is on the front - we wanted to be a bit traditional here rather than using a photo or any other graphic.  And we decided to include our wedding website on the back with the rest of the information because, for a destination wedding, it's crucial for guests to have as many details as possible as soon as possible so that appropriate plans can be made.  (Sorry, dear readers; you don't get to see the address.  Some things must be kept sacred!)

I love the idea of using wedding-specific stamps for all of the stationery we'll be sending out, but I wasn't crazy about what USPS has on offer at the moment- and Jon vetoed the ones I did sort of like as being too cliché.  However, our relationship came to the rescue!  Did you know that our milestones fall on the dates of major events in US/UK history?  It's true - we started dating on October 19, the anniversary of the day that Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781, leading to the end of the Revolutionary War.  (Jon wants you to know that, loss or no loss, he was Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis, thank you very much.)  And our wedding is on the same date that the British burned Washington, DC and torched the White House in 1814.  So it seemed appropriate to use stamps that celebrated our shared history, which is why we picked the stamp commemorating the War of 1812:

Jon's also a sailor, so it's about his hobby just as much as it is about my country kicking his country all over the Atlantic seaboard.  (Of course, Jon totally disputes the veracity of this last statement, but he likes the stamp, too.)

However, our next money-saving idea after using postcards for the Save the Dates was to post the ones going to England domestically from England.  Sending them through USPS would cost $1.05 each; sending them through Royal Mail alone will cost £0.60 or $0.95.  (Yes, that's only a $0.10 difference, but the total savings of $10 means that I can... well, actually, I don't know what I'll do with that money.  But it will be great, I promise!)  Plus, I'd rather not put two stamps on the postcard because there's not much space in that corner anyway and it looks a little messy.  Royal Mail doesn't do wedding stamps, though, which I know because we tweeted about it.  (See, Nana?  Twitter does have a purpose!)

In the end, we're just going to go with the classic Machin stamps with the Queen's profile on them.  Hey, it's traditional! The English love tradition, right?  Right.  And on that note, I'm going to go save my date from my other date - sorry, I couldn't help myself!  But really, Charlie has taken a real shine to Jon, who can't quite match the physicality of puppy enthusiasm, and I think I need to moderate.  Wish me luck!

linking up with something charming for #WeddingWednesday