Mary wrote an awesome post yesterday on getting your name out there. In the post she mentioned us creating vendor cards, so I thought I would hop on today with a lil' short stack on just how we go about making those cards! And at the end, you'll find a free downloadable template we put together for you guys so you can get started right away on making yours!
Here are our steps:
1. Make sure you have all of the names of the vendors right from the get go! We do this by asking for them in our info sheet and that's a great way to go so you can get started right after the wedding is over.The cards are impressive no matter when you send them, but the faster you can get them out, the more impressive they are! :)
2. When you're shooting, be sure to focus on taking shots that really highlight each of the vendors' work. Take an extra bit of time to style the invitation set, take a shot of the table with table number in it for the paperie, but then grab a shot without it too of just the centerpiece for the florist making sure to take distracting elements like the salt and pepper shakers, butter, etc out of your shots, make sure to get a shot of the passed hors d'oeuvre tray before the guests eat anything off of it, etc. Here's a list of the vendors we send cards to (we don't send cards to this many vendors for every single wedding, but it's good to have a checklist to go through): planner, paperie, baker, location, makeup artist, rentals/vintage rentals, tent company, florist, bridal salon, caterer, DJ/Band.
3. Once the wedding has been blogged, choose a picture for each vendor. We then go right to their website and steal their logo....no one has ever complained! :) We don't email them to ask for it because we want to keep the cards a surprise! Since these cards are for them, choose a border color for your card that is part of their branding or compliments their branding. In a pinch, we've found that grey can work with almost any logo... and it looks great on the pearl paper! If a vendor doesn't have a distinct logo or the file you pull is low res and won't print well- we just make a simple logo for them. We choose a nice font and create a rectangle with their company name in it.
4. The front of the card looks like this. We use an image of the vendors work, a color border, and the company logo. We add a keyline around the image and border using the stroke tool. But the template we made for you guys has everything ready to drag & drop.
5. The back of the card looks like this. We include their website, their logo and if the wedding was featured on a wedding blog (or is slated to be) we include that information right under the website (Bride Name & Groom Name, featured on Blog Name). At the very bottom, we include a line that says photo by Justin & Mary. We don't include our website or our logo anywhere on the cards because the way we see it is, these cards are gifts to our partners and we don't want to make it about us- it's all about showcasing their work! This way it really is just a gift for gift's sake with no strings attached.
6. Now it's time to order them up! :) We order the 5x7 cards printed on pearl paper from WHCC who we ADORE. While House has some of the craziest fast turnaround out there and their products are always amazing. For the pearl paper post cards, they come in stacks of 25 at a cost of about $1 a card ($25 per pack)
7. Now that you've designed some really nice cards, make sure to package them up & brand them nicely! We put ours in the chocolate brown imprinted with our J&M logo boxes that we ship prints in (1" from DNL Photo) tie them up with a teal ribbon and include a personalized thank you note with them! We also include the disc of images from the wedding- which includes our faves, plus a few more of their work! I usually aim to give each vendor an extra 30-40 images!
I hope this helps! If you have any questions at all, just pop them in the comment box and I'll be sure to check back and answer them!
And to grab your own free templates so you can start making cards for your own vendors right away, just head HERE (vertical & horizontal templates are included....note that we use the same back either way).
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