Ess Tee Dee's

That's the most creative I can be with a title for the first of what I'm sure will be 473982 posts about save the date's, or as us bee's like to refer to them, STD's. And yes, like most people, that still cracks me up. They really need to give you a manual before you start delving into the whole online wedding world.. I was severely confused with all the acronyms here on Weddingbee for a good two weeks when I first started reading.

Anyway, you should all know by now that I'm a planner. When I first started seriously thinking about the save the date's, we still had 18 months until the wedding, at which point we also already had a venue, invites, preliminary guest list, dj, possible photog, and my dress. #overachiever

I quickly came to the conclusion that we MUST have save the date's, 1. because I like making pretty things, and 2. because 99% of our guests are out-of-towners, coming from Philly and various parts of New York. And I was determined for them to be a DIY.

At first I was thinking about doing something with a Scrabble board:

sorry about the blurring!

It's cute in theory but it just looks a little all over the place in reality, at least in my eyes. It would be more in depth than what the picture shows and on the classic board, of course, but still. I'm vain and want our picture on it somewhere. And while we bust out Scrabble weekly and it's definitely "us", it just doesn't fit with what I'm envisioning.

So.. scratch the Scrabble.

Then I thought maybe I could do something with our engagement photos..

...and I quickly realized that I was doing a terrible job at designing them. Don't laugh at how bad these are. They're also kind of boring, and I want something more FUN. Granted I was just messing around for a few minutes to see what I could whip up, but I really want something more us.

So my current (genius) idea is inspired by photo strips.. you know the ones you can get at the mall or some restaurants that are (usually) black and white and you have four vertical frames to fill with shenanigans?

I've seen other couples do something like this for their STD's. I think it's so much fun! I would set up my Mac and take a couple pictures of us, most likely holding hand-made signs saying "save" "the" "date" "6.xx.2012", using one for each frame. After printing, I'd adhere them to some magnet tape and cut them out, so everyone would get a photo strip magnet!!

I don't know why this excites me so much, but it does. Mr. Foxy and I had a mini photo shoot a few months ago using said method of picture taking, so here's a basic idea (sans hand-made signs) of where my mind is off to:

Sorry about the faces. Still not sure why we felt compelled to take a bunch of crazy pictures of ourselves. But you get the idea.

So.. thoughts? What did you do or what are your plans for STD's?