Wedding Blog

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

Grooms are perfectly capable of assembing invitations while watching TV, as long as you give them an example first.

Estimate the amount of time you THINK it will take, and then double that.

If you’re having friends help you assemble the invitation. Show them a completed invitation FIRST so they understand what they’re doing.

As every last piece of my invitations was DIY right down to cutting, gluing and folding the paper to make pocket folders, I feel very qualified to answer this.

1) it may not cost less than you think it will…especially when you factor in all the other paper projects you end up having that ‘just have to’ match the invitations

2) it is a labor of love…to save money on paper, I made the save the dates from the scrap paper from the aformentioned pocket folders…since the STDs went out in Jan, that meant the invitations were in some form of creation for 7 months!

3) I wish I had had a list of all the places to go find cheap paper before starting out

4) I wish I had heard of gocco before desiging my invites (although, I don’t know that I would have used it…it would have been nice to know about the option)

5) Get. a. Xyron. Machine. (http://www.save-on-crafts.com/sticmaklamma.html). It is the only way to get edge to edge adhesive application so your invites don’t buckle

I DIYed pocketfolds. It would have been a lot cheaper to order regular invites with someone else doing them. That being said, I had a lot of fun. It also took a crapload of time. Having friends/a fiance to help is nice.

1. Try and order samples of your paper before buying bulk. This way you can experiment until you get what you want.

2. Make your sample, then set up a schedule of completion for each component. For example, one day I’ll cut all of the vellum, next day I’ll tape background paper to the cardstock.

3. Make sure you’re scheduled to finish the invitations a month before you need to send them out. Then you’ll have some leeway and won’t be rushing at the end.

4. Do you think you’ll need 4 rolls of double sided tape? Get 8.

Find one basic sheet of cardstock that you want to use as a background for everything. We went to a paper store and got a really “organic” looking cream cardstock with little bits of green/taupe/tan flecks in them, and we used that as the background of the invitations, the rsvps, the placecards/escort cards, the programs, everything. We bought it in bundles of 250 and used it as much as possible–it saved so much money.

Figure out what’s the best looking AND easiest. We had been thinking of doing an invite with lots of layering (which means gluing), cutting, and ribbon. TOO much work. Instead we went for a a “barn door” sort of look, with some layering and no ribbon or excessive cutting. Make sure you have similar looking or nicely contrasting envelopes.

Go to a craft store and DEFINITELY buy a scoring/cutting board, you’ll use it for everything. Also get a “glue stick” — the nice kind, with the liquid glue. we used one from “stampin’ up” that was permanent if you placed it immediately, or moveable if you let it dry for a minute before placing the paper down. Worked excellent.

Find a stamp or embossed thing or anything, and use it a lot. Don’t use it on everything, but it will definitely pull things together.

GET HELP. My husband helped, my mother helped, my father helped, the more people you have helping you, the better. Just make sure you’re all on the same page.