Save The Date On Top Of The Sheets

So, in a previous entry, I teased you with some photos of The Teacher and myself. What were we up to, you might ask. Well, we had plans in place to make some save the date cards, since we became engaged AND needless to say, we weren't going to settle for any pre made ones.

The Teacher spotted a very cool Crate & Barrel advertisement in a wedding magazine, that had a casually dressed bride-to-bed in a fun pose standing in front of a seamless background. It was a hit with the both of us, and we decided to try and pull it off with the two of us in a photo. However, we had a few issues, the main one being we didn't have a studio to shoot this in with a seamless background.

The Teacher acquired a veil for herself and a tie for myself. We also knew that we wanted some props in the photo as well. A logical choice was some form of cake and then a second item. We settled for a couple of champagne glasses, and for the cake we went with a gorgeous cupcake from The Westside Bakery. When I purchased the cupcake I mentioned it was for a photo shoot, and got an interesting look back with the statement that they had never had that request before.

We next visited Wal-Mart for some cheap sheets. This was easy and we got some low thread count flat sheets (1 queen and 1 full). We picked a fairly safe tan color and got both for about $11.

Next up was the seamless background issue. Previously I saw a DIY post on making background stands on a few other photography websites. I Googled a few and found a decent post on using PVC pipe. We headed to Home Depot and grabbed some 1 1/2" and 3/4" PVC pipes and fittings for less than $20. Bargain.

Back at my place we assembled the frame. I cut the PVC pipe into sections for a 8'-0" tall frame with a 6'-0" wide top bar. The sheets were pinned with safety pins (and some Duck tape was used as well- the Handyman's Secret Weapon) to keep it in place. The frame was nice and solid with the sheet attached, and the lower sheet was simply binder clipped to the upper sheet. I knew that fixing the sheet in post production would be easier than getting all of the wrinkles out on the actual frame, so we didn't fuss with many of those.

For the lighting I wanted to mix natural light as well as having a some flash fired through a shoot-through umbrella. I picked up a nice trick from Digital Protalk on using a small optical flash triggered by my Speedlite. This was a quick set-up, so it didn't take too many test shots to get it close to what I wanted for lighting that made The Teacher extra gorgeous and glowing.

All that was missing from the photo was me. Thankfully, I had a wireless shutter release, so that meant once I was in place I didn't have to run behind the camera after each shot to set it up for the next one. Nothing high-tech, but it made things easier and we shot about 5 shots, then I checked our poses and expressions. It didn't take too long and soon we had the one we liked.

With a little post production work, I cleaned up the background and fixed a couple issues with my pant legs that looked odd. Nothing huge, but I take details seriously.

Next, I cropped the photo and converted it to B/W. I choose a couple of fonts that I liked for the text and this is what we ended up with.

At Costco I printed up 150 of these, and two weeks ago we added a final magnetic touch and mailed them out.

Over the last few days they have started arriving in the mail, and the feedback has been very positive. I held off on this post as long as I could. It was too much fun and as you can see it won't be too much longer before I need a ring as well. Possibly from Superior Wedding Rings. It would be a nice touch to go with our superior save the date photo.

The date is set. Bring it on!

Ms. O said:
keeneye said:
Melissa said: