Weddingbee

Invitation styles played a gigantic role in the grand scheme of our wedding planning. We wanted our save the dates and invitations to be able to tell a story, or give our guests a hint of what to expect come January 2008. Since we had a rigid budget, we knew that DIY would be our solution to infusing our style into our stationery, and making them affordable at the same time. When I stumbled upon Mrs. Eggplant’s post about her wedding invitations, I finally had a direction and a vision!

Typical Filipino wedding invitations include an insert that lists your entire wedding party, so we knew that we needed to add that to our other inserts (response cards, reception cards, etc), and a pocket folder seemed to be our best bet. We started with sample pocket folders that we ordered from Cardandpockets.com and Paper Source, completed several mock up pieces, and finally decided on the Vertigo pocket folder from Cardsandpockets.

Once the color schemes had been decided and the materials had been ordered, we conceptualized the design and looked at different ideas that we’d seen in the past. My MOH (who else?) used istockphoto for ideas of graphics that we would be able to use, and she came up with a design that Mr. Gardenia and I were both very excited with. We completed a mock-up and took it to a local printer for a quote, and they were able to produce a proof within hours. As soon as the proof was approved, our invitations were printed within hours.

So with the invitations printed, pocket folders, spools and spools of ribbon, stamps, crafting tools and lots of double stick tape on hand, we were ready to start cranking these out. I decided to get all of the print jobs done at the same time to make it a bit more organized and bearable.

Envelopes and RSVP Postcards

1. Print return addresses on all the envelopes using MS Word.
2. Print all of the guests’ names and their addresses on the envelopes using MS Word as well. Tip: I ended up using a calligraphy-style font to avoid the costs of a calligrapher.
3. Print return addresses on clear labels and attach them to RSVP postcards.
4. Attach stamps on all RSVP postcards and main envelopes.

RSVPS

Since we used postcards for our response cards, we were limited in the space that we had to put information and decided to number each response card inconspicuously to correspond with the number of each guest in our spreadsheet. I really wanted to use invisible ink, but after trips to numerous craft/art supplies stores, I was discouraged they didn’t carry what I was looking for. In fact, on my trip to Michael’s one of the workers pointed me to the Crayola washable magic markers since she thought that’s what I wanted.

Pocket folder, Main Invitation & Inserts

6. Measure the pocket folder with a ruler to get the center where the ribbon will be attached. Wrap the 7/8″ ribbon around the pocket folder using double stick tape. I found that double stick tape works wonders since it’s not as noticeable as other things I’ve tried (glue stick, fabric glue).

7. Use double stick tape and attach the blue hydrangea-colored matting to the top portion of the pocket folder.

8. Attach the main invite to the blue matting with double stick tape.

9. Arrange the inserts in order and put them inside the sleeves in the bottom portion of the pocket folder.

10. Place the pocket folder inside the corresponding envelope. Once we got to this step, we checked our spreadsheet to make sure that it was going to the appropriate guest.  We wouldn’t want our guest who only needs 2 seats to receive the response card for 6 guests.

Monogram Stickers

We printed the monograms that one of our groomsmen created for us on cream colored cardstock paper and matted it against the same hydrangea-colored cardstock.  Then we ran it through our Xyron machine to achieve that adhesive backing. These were used to seal the pocket folder flaps.

Embossed stickers

I bought a PSA embosser a while back to use for our STD cards and since they had our wedding date on it, I figured we could use them again for our wedding invitations seals.

I will make sure to blog next about the vendors that we used and the total costs for our invites. Looking at our invites now that they’re out of the coop, I feel that we came up with a harmonious piece that tied everything together from beginning to end.

• I Heart Pale Pink and Gre...
• Electronic Save-the-Dates...