We mailed paper save the dates first. They lasted about a week before they ended up in a junk drawer or, in my aunt’s case, used as a coaster. Then a coworker handed me one of those little magnet ones at her desk and it had been on my filing cabinet for months. I went home and changed my whole plan that night.
Here is the thing about a magnet. It does not get filed. It does not get tossed in the pile of bills by the door. It goes on the fridge, next to the grocery list and the takeout menu nobody throws away, and your face is just there every morning while people pour their coffee. People genuinely forgot our date until they saw the magnet, and then they knew it cold.
These are the ones I poked at, ordered, or talked a friend into. Some of these are affiliate links, so if you grab one a little something comes back to me. Doesn’t cost you a dime.
Heads up, some links here are affiliate links. Grab a template through one and I get a small cut, no extra charge to you.
The bundle I wish I’d found before I bought singles
I did the dumb thing first. Ordered magnets one design at a time, panicked I’d guessed wrong on the look, and paid for it twice. This bundle would have saved me that whole spiral. A bunch of laser cut styles in one go, so you can sit at the table with your fiance and a cup of tea and actually compare them instead of committing blind.
We spread three of them on the counter and lived with it a couple days. My partner liked the rounded one, I liked the skinnier shape, we landed somewhere in the middle by Sunday. That part was kind of fun, honestly.
One thing. With a bundle you do get a few designs you’ll never touch, so don’t expect to use them all. I used two. The rest are just sitting in the file. Still cheaper than ordering blind.
A single clean magnet for people who already know what they want
If you’re past the dithering stage and you just want one good shape, this is the one I’d point you at. It’s a single laser cut wedding magnet, no fifteen variations to second-guess. My maid of honor is decisive like that. She picked hers in about four minutes and never looked back.
The cut edges are the whole appeal. A rectangle magnet looks like a fridge magnet. This reads like something you meant to send. I held a printed proof up under the kitchen light before I trusted it, because screens lie about how crisp an edge will actually be.
My gripe, and it’s small. The shape eats into your text room, so if you’ve got a long venue name or both your full names, you’ll be fighting for space. I trimmed ours to first names plus the date and it breathed a lot easier.
The shape that made my grandma ask where I got it
There’s a version of the laser cut look that’s simpler, and this is it. Less fussy. I sent one to my grandmother who is, let’s say, not a fan of anything she calls busy, and she called to ask where I got it. That’s a win in my family.
What I noticed living with it on the fridge is that it doesn’t fight the rest of the door. The takeout menus, the kid drawings, the magnet from the dentist. It just sits there looking like it belongs, which is more than I can say for the loud floral one I almost picked.
Heads up on color. The proof looked deeper on my laptop than it did in hand, a touch more washed out in real life. If you want it rich, ask for a printed sample before you order a stack of forty.
When I wanted to do it myself at the copy shop on Mercer
Not everybody wants to order finished magnets. I had a stretch where I was printing everything myself at the copy shop on Mercer to save money, and a template you can open and just type into is gold for that. You put your names in, your date, and the layout holds instead of sliding all over the place the second you touch it.
I printed our test on plain paper first, taped it to the cabinet, and squinted at it from the doorway. If it still read from across the room it was good. This one passed. The spacing already knew what it was doing, which meant I wasn’t nudging text boxes by half a pixel at midnight.
The catch is on you, not the template. Printer streaked anything dark, so I ran ours light gray and it came out clean. If your home printer is moody like mine, test before you commit a full sheet of the good stuff.
The one I texted to a friend who swears she can’t design
My friend Priya is convinced she has no eye for any of this. She doesn’t, by her own admission. So I sent her this one because it’s the kind of template where you genuinely cannot mess it up much. Type, swap a photo if you want, done. She had hers ready before I finished my sandwich.
What made it easy for her was that nothing important sat near the edge. So many templates run the date right up to the margin and a home printer clips it, and then you’ve got half a number on the most important card. This one leaves room. Priya printed hers at a Staples near her place and not one thing got cut off.
Small annoyance, the font it comes with is a little thin. In a dim apartment it can read faint. I told her to bump the weight one notch before printing a pile, and that fixed it. One wasted page taught me that on my own.
Florals without it looking like a garden center exploded
I have a low tolerance for flowery stationery. Most of it goes overboard fast. This floral template stays on the right side of it, the kind of thing my cousin who got married in a vineyard would have loved. Soft, not a riot.
We tried a version of this for a friend’s spring wedding and printed a test on cardstock, the heavier 110 lb kind, because thin paper makes florals look like a paper towel. The weight matters more than people think. It went from flimsy to something you’d actually stick on a magnet sheet and be proud of.
One thing to watch. With all that color, your text can get lost in the blooms. I darkened the date a shade and moved it off the busiest corner. Took me two tries to find a spot where the names didn’t disappear into a peony.
The hand drawn one that doesn’t look mass produced
Last one, and it’s a soft spot of mine. Hand drawn save the dates feel like a person made them, not a machine. There’s a little wobble to the lines that I find charming, and a neighbor of mine who is an actual illustrator nodded at it, which I took as a real endorsement.
We used a hand drawn style for our own welcome sign back when, the one that fell off the easel mid ceremony, so I’m biased toward this look forever. On a magnet it works because the imperfection reads as intentional. It looks like you cared, not like you grabbed the first thing in a catalog.
My one note. Hand drawn line art can go muddy if you print it too small, the fine strokes blur together. Keep it at a decent size, test it, and don’t shrink it down to save on magnet sheets. I tried that to be frugal and ended up with a smudge.
What People Keep Asking
Are save the date magnets worth it?
Short answer, yes. I was skeptical too, figured it was a gimmick. But mine has lived on three different fridges that I know of, and people who lose every paper card we mailed still had our date memorized because they saw it every morning.
The only people I’d tell to skip it are folks doing a tiny backyard thing where everyone already knows. Otherwise the magnet just outlives paper by a mile.
How do I make magnets?
Two roads, and I’ve done both. You can order them already made and cut, which is what I did when I was short on time and didn’t trust my own printer. Or you grab a template, type your stuff in, print on cardstock, and stick the printed card onto magnet sheets you can get at any craft store.
I did the DIY route for a friend’s batch. It’s cheaper and a little fiddly. Buy more magnet sheets than you think, because you will mess up a couple lining them up. Ask me how I know.
What size magnet works?
We went with something close to a standard photo, around 3.5 by 5 inches, and it felt right on the fridge without crowding everything else. Big enough to read the date from across the kitchen, small enough that nobody resents it taking up the door.
I’d steer clear of the tiny business card size ones. A friend ordered those and the date came out so small her dad couldn’t read it without his glasses, which kind of defeats the point.
Before You Print a Stack
I still have ours. It moved apartments with us and it’s on our fridge right now, a little faded, next to a magnet from a pizza place that closed two years ago. That’s the whole pitch, really. The paper stuff is long gone and this one stuck around.
Pick a look you won’t be sick of in a year, order a sample before you commit to a stack, and don’t print the line art too small. Beyond that, hard to go wrong. People keep these.