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What words of wisdom do you have for brides diy’ing their invitations? What lessons did you learn, and is there anything you wish someone had told you?
Start early, plan ahead, make as many “trial” versions as you need before you buy all of your supplies in bulk, and ask for help!
you need LOTS OF HELP & everybody who’s contributing to the guestlist be as meticulate about the names, suffix & addresses as possible. when you buy your materials, you also need to buy more than what you need, coz someone (if not everyone) has orgotten a bunch of people they’d like to invite, when they first put together the guestlist.
Figure out your ENTIRE invitation before buying anything. I have 50 sheets of extra plum-colored cardstock that testify to my not having followed that advice!
If possible, make a full invitation suite before deciding that “it won’t be that hard to make 100 of these.” You never know until you try.
Print before you cut. It’s always easier to print on large sheets than to try to align small sheets and keep them from printing crooked.
When typing in your wording, make sure it’s in an easy-to-read font when you proofread it. Script fonts make it all too easy to miss typos.
Get a paper cutter if you plan on doing any of the cutting yourself. Go to Kinko’s for cutting of large stacks of paper, and stand there while they do it. Make them show you a sample before they cut the whole stack.
Make sure you make your invitations in a size that will fit in an envelope! Easier to change your dimensions than to make custom envelopes.
Start early!!! And pace your self. You will not be able to get everything done in one day. Ask friends to help, you may not want to give up control but they can put a stamp on the envelop at least!
Proof, proof, proof, and proof again - then have 3 other people do the same.
be prepared because it’s a lot of work! start early and it’s really easy to make grammar mistakes or even spelling mistakes despite how many times you’ve reviewed the invitation! try to sleep on the trial version for a bit before plunging in and printing everything out at once.
always buy a little extra because mistakes will happen.. and you’ll be wishing you had an extra pack of paper.
start early. buy pre-cut paper. only attempt double-sided printing on pre-cut paper, otherwise it’s a lot of formatting/centering/cutting headaches.
Pick your envelopes FIRST….. and then work from there. Fancy envelopes sometimes only come in very specific/very few sizes, so if you base the size of your invitation off of the size of the envelopes you want to use, you’ll have much more smooth sailing than if you save the envelopes for last.
have help, but be careful who you ask help from. if you care about straight lines and very very good presentation, do not ask the very happy go lucky friend who won’t care about such things. ask them to come and stuff the envelope or cut ribbon, not affix straight edges or borders or cut paper to an accurate size.
most importantly, be able to make quick decisions. it’s hard when weddingbee gives you such a plethora of options, but make decisions as quickly as you can (then stop looking around!), so you can move on to the next step. after you decide on your entire formatting, then all that’s left is the assembly-line production. but for me, it’s the decision-making process that is holding up the entire production.
If your invitations have some type of folding i recommend investing in one of those paper cutters that comes with a scoring blade (i think Miss Corn had an entry about the Fiskars cutter, i own it too and love it).
Be *prepared* to modify as you go, if necessary–we ended up omitting envelope liners and changing the stamp pattern on the invites. Even though I liked my mock-up, I ended up changing.
Oh, and like “t” mentioned: proof like you’ve never proofed before! Go through character-by-character, test your fonts (do your o’s look like a’s?), ask your Maytag repairman to proofread it, and be consistent about punctuation and abbreviation!
mock up a few different designs, set it aside for a few days and return later to make the final decision. what you thought you loved initially could easily change in a matter of days! and that’s ok. you should love your design even if it means redesigning it.
don’t worry about having ALL of your invitations looking exactly alike. after all, they will be going to different people, and no two guests will compare their invitations for “quality control.”
also invest in a paper cutter…it was the best $10 i’ve ever spent.
finally…the biggest judge is yourself. no one is going to look at your invitations and think “i don’t like the way she formatted it.” have fun with it!
Yea, I agree, it definitely isn’t always the cheapest route to go!! I DIYed for the love of it, not to save money…
The 3 tools I could not live without:
- Cutterbug paper cutter w/score blade attachment
- 3M permanent double sided tape
- Corner rounder - rounded corners make everything look nicer!!!
It will take longer than you ever thought possible! Brainstorm in advance and start them as soon as you can–as in, right after you sign your venue contracts!
They are not necessarily cheaper than ordering!
Grooms are perfectly capable of assembing invitations while watching TV, as long as you give them an example first.
If you’re going to design your own invitation but are going to use a professional printer to print, talk to the printer first before ordering your paper. They’ll have good suggestions as to what type of paper works best for what type of printing. That way, you won’t end up with lots of paper that’s no good for the printing you want to do!
Estimate the amount of time you THINK it will take, and then double that.
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Words of Wisdom Feature Launched: July 9, 2007 About: A forum where users share their best advice on various wedding topics.
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