DIY Wedding Invites: Learn From My Mistakes

The first thing any wedding website (like theknot.com) or any wedding planning book says, is to create your budget. Decide on the things that are MOST important to you that you cannot and will not compromise on for your big day! Starting out you may be like me and already know what those things are, or you will have an idea and believe it or not, they will change!

For us, it was fairly simple. A wasn't too big into the idea of spending a bunch of money on a 'party' and I'm somewhat low maintenance in the sense of, I don't see the point in the price tag of most parts of a wedding. My biggest tip is to know where to compromise and REALLY think about what you're spending your money on. When it came time to think about invites it didn't take much thought for me. Whats going to happen with these?

You're going to :

1)Send out double the amount of the people that will actually shop up (Usually)

2) Once everyone gets the invites, they will oohhh and ahhh, and then they will lose them

So why spend HUNDREDS (yes, I checked first) on paper that is going to end up in the trash or lost. Its no offense to you, your friends and family do care, but in reality its paper that has no use to them. So I opted to make them, and while I LOVED them, they were an absolute pain in the behind. Really, it was my own fault, I tried to 'cut corners,' but in the end, they were beautiful.

What did I use?

-Cardstock. The HEAVY stuff (anything 110lbs and over) I would go with 8 1/2 by 11 inches in size. First, decide where you are going to get it printed. I used Office max and paid, 10$ I believe. However, staples can only print on certain sized cardstock, and non of the cardstock in that size was heavy enough for me. The paper is where I messed up, I wanted my invites in squares so I thought I would save time by getting yardstick already in that size. Nope. The printers aren't able to be set to certain dimensions, so check with your printer!

-Brown Twine (I already had)

-Watercolor paints (the CHEAP cheap ones, that you would never buy)

-Dried Eucalyptus

-White Gel pens (like the ones you loved as a kid)

-A plastics ruler, or something with a hard straight edge.

(Most of my wedding crafts were done at work, in between clients. This is what happens when you are taking 6 classes and wedding planning at the same time.

The very first thing I did, was paint each and every paper. I only used two or three colors from the watercolor pallet so actually ended up needing another since I messed up a few. I liked using the water color because you can make it as light or as dark as you want, just keep in mind the darker you make it, the harder it will be to see words printed on them. After each paper was painted I let them dry, even giving them extra time just in case.

While all of the invites were drying, I spent a great deal of time finding the proper wording and font for them. Yes, you can buy this information or pay for special fonts. Guys, I used the Pages app that came on my iPad. If I hadn't had my iPad, I'm sure I could have just used Microsoft word.

I then went on my adventure of finding a place to get them printed. This was when I realized my mistake of getting smaller paper, thinking I was saving time. LUCKLY the amazing staff at Office Max were able to cut down the paper to dimensions that would work for there printer. They printed all 50-60 invites for me and I think I spent 10-20$. Not much at all! Keep in mind at this point, all I've bought was the cardstock, watercolor paint and eucalyptus. Oh! Envelopes, check out Hobby Lobby for anything paper related. I mean it! They are ALWAYS having sales and I swear every time I go in, their paper is 50% off and that included envelopes, so 15$ for classy little craft envelopes.

At this point, everything is pretty much done. They can be finished off however you like, I felt I wanted a little more 'rustic' feel to them so I used a ruler to gently tear the edges. I then tied some twine around them, and slipped a piece of eucalyptus in there and thats it! All in all, I spent about 45-50$ on invites that were exactly how I wanted them but still nothing that anyone else had seen before!

Next up, a vendor wanted me to pay $900 for a back drop that I made for $40, and my wedding cake that wasn't cake!

xo

-B