Save the Dates - a sneaky peak

Our Save the Dates should be going in the post this weekend.

Big step!

We weren't really sure how best to go about doing these - it's not as if we have received many in the past, not really being normal practise in this country to send them. But since we're expecting our guests to fly out for our wedding we needed to give them more of a heads up than the traditional eight to six weeks of an invitation, as well as information on where to fly to and where to stay etc.
Littlest Sister had promised some artwork for us but she has been frantically busy so instead offered us a painting she had done a while ago. It's a lovely Tuscan scene but not of our house or our church so, unless we clearly explained that Sister had painted it, not very personal.

What to do, what to do?

Then we had a brilliant idea™ ...

On a trip to Berlin a few years ago Nick and I came across a restored 1950s photobooth that took proper old fashioned film strips with four different pictures. We've had that little strip of us mucking about in the booth on our wall ever since and it occurred to us that something like this would make a great "Save the Date". We could hold cards with the words on and it would be personal without being cheesy. Yeay!

Everyone remembers these booths from their childhood (or Amalie!) but they have disappeared from streets and stations. Now they’re all digital and often just duplicate the picture four times – not fun. I googled “old fashioned photobooth London” but all I could find were other people looking for them and references to that one in Rosa Luxemburg Platz Berlin. Then suddenly at the tail end of a photography chat site I saw a message left this summer from the very Germans who’d restored that booth saying they were planning to come to London for a few months – were they still here? I clicked on the link and emailed them. A reply came minutes later – yes, the booth was still set up in Cargo’s beer garden. What luck! Two days later we made the trek east with ‘SAVE’ ‘THE’ ‘DATE’ ‘26.6.2010’ written on cards (in four different fonts as we couldn’t decide on our favourite) and even changes of outfits (don’t laugh.)

Disaster – a big “out of order” sign on the booth! Oh no! Now I know east London isn’t as far as east Germany but it was still some effort and we were devastated. But that email ... it had a phone number on it! I called. Alex answered. 10 minutes later he was there. Another 10 minutes and the machine was fixed. Several hours (and beers) later we had tons of strips and everyone in Cargo from the bouncers to the bands were laughing at what we were doing. We’re so happy with the results.

Once our guests have received them I’ll show you the final result but in the mean time here’s a little sneak peak

A big thank you to Alex from Photoautomat (look, that's him below fixing the machine for us!) and the dudes at Cargo who kept us supplied with pound coins and beer.