Weddingbee Blog

Let me tell you a little secret, my friends: it is a very good thing that I got most of my DIY projects finished early on! There were a few things that I left to the end, and I have hated those things! Exhibit A is our rehearsal dinner invite. I really love the design for these, but they were a lot of work and I only ended up making half of them (half the guests, mostly bridal party, were invited by word-of-mouth). I have to say, though, I do think they turned out pretty cute.

Our rehearsal dinner is at an old-time touristy Chinatown restaurant with karaoke. I really wanted the invitations to reflect the feel of the dinner, which was fun and kitschy. Here’s what I came up with:

The paper lanterns were folded up and stuck into an A6 envelope:

Lantern #1:

Lantern #2:

Lantern #3:

How did I do this? Well, it actually wasn’t that hard–it was just labor intensive. I printed the gold ink using my gocco machine. The supplies for this project, other than the gocco stuff, were simple:

1) Red scallop card from Paper Source:
note: for some reason they don’t have the red available online. Here it is in strawberry.

2) Gold tassels from my local Paper Source. They’re Paper Source brand, but for some reason they’re not online and I can’t find a picture.

3) 1/8″ hole punch

4) Paper cutter

All I did was cut off the tops and bottoms off the circular cards to shape them like lanterns. Then I punched a hole in the top & bottom and a hole on either side (or both sides for the middle lantern).

The tassels were attached to one another with gold cord. I snipped off the tassels with a couple of inches of cord to spare and tied them on, and used the extra gold cord to tie the lanterns together and make a little loop for the top of each one. Although it sounds complicated, it really wasn’t difficult–there were just a LOT of steps. If you want to do this, do it before you’re burned out!

I hope this inspires some of you to make your invites a reflection of the party!