wedding wednesday: save the date

as some of know, two thousand and twelve brought me a husband, and a good one at that. planning our wedding day was a process that i relished, being the creative nut that i am. we did a lot of clever things to save money (for us and our parents...yes, you mom and dad) and make the day a special, unique gathering for our friends and family. wednesdays will be opportunities for me to share our wedding goodies with you. i realize many of you are not in the process of getting married, however, some of these ideas may be transferable to other celebrations as well. otherwise, i suppose you can ignore me on wednesdays. do whatever suits you.

save the dates are common tools for couples to announce their upcoming nuptials and give notice to their friends and family to block off the day they have designated for their wedding ceremony and reception. typically this involves sending out a card or a magnet of sorts. i have seen some really creative, unique save the dates come through our mailbox. 

with our wedding, husband wasn't really into the whole save the date thing, and i really didn't want to spend the money. that is why i proposed to him that we make a video and email it to our guests. he bit the bait and my gears started rolling. i ended up creating a stop motion video, which cost nothing but a whole lot of time. we had already decided on a "feel" for our wedding at this point and i knew i had to incorporate this into the video to set the tone... hence the skeleton key and the color choices.

i used my old digital camera, iphoto and imovie to create the video. you will need a lot of space on your memory card as this took well over a hundred pictures. many stop motion videos take hundreds more depending on the length and content. i followed the stop motion video tutorial here at photojojo where she goes step by step through the process. photojojo even provides links to other software to use besides imovie for those that don't have macs. in all reality, it wasn't all that strenuous. just keep in mind...you will need to take lots, i am talking mucho photos.

check out our save the date video below. prior to sending out this video via email, we set up a wedding website to direct all of our guests to from the video. you can check that out here at weddingwire.com. a video like this could be made for invites to numerous types of events...i could see some really sweet kid birthday party invites done with this method!