Save The Date/Us

Who would have thought that saving the date would be so hard?
-By Wendy


My fiancé Kevin and I decided long ago that we would like to save a tree and use recycled paper for the many pulpy aspects of getting married: save the date cards, invites, RSVP cards, programs, etc. Trees probably don't care much for marriages.

I started exploring paper options right away, since I was planning on making my own paper products for the wedding. Much to my chagrine, the Michael's and Hobby Lobbies of the world care not for the environment much in their scrapbooking departments. I looked online, but I didn't want to mess around with ordering paper that I couldn't look at and feel in person. Nothing ever looks as glamorous as it appears on the web, and I assume that paper would fall into this category.

Luckily, a small art store right in the town we live in featured recycled paper. What a relief! We could order pre-cut cards for our save-the-date announcements, which would save us the time of painstakingly cutting out pieces of paper (I can't cut a straight line to save my life anyway). Also, the price was reasonable and the salesperson assured me that the size the paper came in (A7) was both extremely common and would be perfect for mailing as a post card (at the cheaper 26 cent rate).

It took about ten days for our paltry order of 100 cards to come in, and as soon as they did, we got to work. We started with our home printer, which we recently purchased. I once thought this machine to be a top-notch piece of technology, but actual use of said equipment proved otherwise. Apparently HP has designed their latest printer-scanner combination to only print a few sheets at a time, nothing more than 5 pages in the standard 8.5x11 size.

A7 is not a common size of paper for home printing. Not only is it not an option in InDesign software, but it proved troublesome for our poor little printer. After painfully wasting cards and adjusting the layout for the darn cards to print out normally, we noticed that although the cards' designs were to be printed in grayscale, some were bluer and some were redder than others. We thought, "No matter, we're already a third through the printing process. No one will notice."

Then Mr. Printer decided that it would no longer accept these pieces of paper we were forcing down his throat. Wimp.

So I decided to take it to work to see if the cards preferred our fancy laser printer. After spending an hour trying to network my personal laptop to the company printer to no avail, I eventually just transferred the files to my work computer. After the files transferred, I readjusted the card layout back to normalcy, as the nice printer would accept paper of any size. How gracious, Madame Laser!

While spending the time on setup, I grew confident that the laser printing was the answer to all of my save-the-date woes. . . until I actually printed one.

Recycled paper does not take kindly to laser printing or powdered toners in general. The texture resulting from the reprocessing of recycled materials rejected the ink I tried to force upon it, rubbing off when touching the sample.

After consulting with Kevin over the phone and basically being talked down from the ledge of a building, we decided that it was time to go to a professional printer.

I contacted two professional printers in our area with specifics about the job, saying that we probably needed to use inkjet ink that could be absorbed into the paper. Their response was disheartening, as no modern printer even dreams of straying from the quality of laser printing.

Things were getting desperate. We were not going to buy a new printer over a piece of paper telling our guests that they will receive more paper from us in the future.

After borrowing an old unused inkjet printer from work and determining that it was left unused because of its inability to output anything printed, I sat sulking in our office trying to think of a way to save this ship. And then my eyes grazed upon our old printer that we had replaced with the snazzy printer-scanner that would have nothing to do with size A7 paper.

Kevin reminded me that we replaced the old printer because it tended to not print the data that you sent to it until after spitting out pages of nonsensical numbers and letters. But this would not stop me.

I created "dummy" cards so as not to waste any more of the precious 100 we had ordered until I found something that worked. After an hour of testing conjectures and hypotheses to find the method behind our printer's madness, I finally stumbled across a ridiculous way to achieve our desired result. Eureka!

I found that if I go through the maddening process of turning the printer off and on again, sending the job to the printer, feeding through a card it could print its gibberish on, and then feeding through the card I actually wanted to be printed, I could achieve the desired result.

So now I am finishing the last of the save-the-dates, and I will wash my hands of this and go to Kinko's for the invites like a normal, sane person. I am hoping that they have recycled paper options, but honestly, I have wasted so much paper up until this point that I think I have undone the good I tried to do with ordering these confounded A7 cards in the first place. Oh, and by the by, Miss Art Store Employee, A7 is too big for postcard postage, so I'll be paying the full 42 cents. Thank you for your expertise.

So now that it's over, if you're invited to Kevin and my wedding, please won't you save the date? And be sure not to compare your card to anyone else's.