DIY your Polaroid Picture Save the Date

Elishba Forde
May 12, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Feb 20, 2021

I wanted to go for a polaroid picture look, with a calendar on the other side showing our wedding date outlined in a heart. I’m not a Microsoft Publisher wiz, but my brother is. So, I asked him to design the template for me while I told him exactly how I wanted it to look and which pictures to use, and voila, I had my save the dates within a couple of hours!!

What you need…

1. A4 Photo paper: this is what the templates will be printed on. Follow the link below to where you can purchase high-quality affordable photo paper. https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-a4-glossy-photo-paper-20-sheets/p/0261757

2. Guillotine paper cutter: ask around to see if anyone has one of these at work. You’re bound to find someone who does! I was quite lucky that Ronan had one at work, so we borrowed that one and used it to cut the polaroid picture templates out of the photo paper. 3. Mini wooden pegs: I added a wooden peg with each save the date so that people could peg them up straight away! Clink on the link below to buy a really cheap pack of 50 for only 75p.

https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-mini-pegs/p/0413985

4. A few good pictures of you and your future hubby: these are going to form the main look of your save the date, so make you pick some good quality pics. If you’ve had an engagement shoot, you may want to select some pictures from here! Our engagement shoot wasn’t booked for another 5 months, and it may be unlikely that you would have picked a photographer at this stage (or, you may well have!) I am lucky enough to have an amateur photographer brother who did various photo shoots with us throughout the year before the wedding, and this gave us a wide range of photos to choose from. Get in touch with @snapsbymatts directly to enquire about more information.

photos by @snapsbymatts

4 Simple steps to creating the polaroid/calendar Save the Date

1. Create the template on publisher, ensuring that your picture is on the front in a polaroid format, and the calendar of the month, year and date of your wedding day is going to be printed directly on the back. Click here to subscribe and receive a free template.

You can see that we had created an Instagram account at this point to really help build up all the pre-wedding excitement, and made sure that we advertised it on our save the date to encourage our guests to follow!

2. Once printed on photo paper as show on the left, measure out guidelines if you wish using a pencil and ruler so that when you cut it, the border of the polaroid picture is even. Make sure you practice with plain white A4 paper first to get your dimensions rights.