Wedding Blog

An invitation vacation — that’s what my bridesmaid Honey Bunny kept calling our spring break getaway.

An eclectic group left Columbus, Ohio a few months ago for Myrtle Beach. Included in this posse were my mother, my 18-year old brother and one of his friends from school, Honey Bunny and her mother, myself, and the pieces of all 113 wedding invitations.

Each invitation will consist of:

1. a kraft paper envelope

2. an invitation printed on Luxe Cream cover weight from PaperSource and punched with the Martha Stewart simple scallop punch

3. a vintage postcard RSVP

and

4. a wallet-sized engagement photo

I spent the night before the trip prepping the engagement photos. I used Photoshop to put our wedding date and logo on the photo and had the photos printed at Costco. The price was 39 cents for a sheet of 4 wallets — not too bad!

I had to trim them myself using a paper cutter. Ugh. I must be the worst person in the world at cutting straight lines. I can’t imagine how these would have turned out if I’d been forced to make do with scissors.

Then I slapped some labels on the back with our wedding website address. The photos function kind of like Save the Dates (which I did decide to email out. Thanks for your input!).

I imagine most people will either stick them in their wallets or use a magnet to tack them up on the fridge. You would not believe how often I get asked when our wedding is. To me, it seems the easiest date in the world to remember!

We read and chilled for most of our spring break trip, until, prompted by the occasional nagging of my mother, I started working on the RSVPs on our very last day.

I used the Martha Stewart Laurel Wreath acrylic stamp set from Michaels to stamp the addresses (yay for online coupons!). My handwriting just isn’t neat enough for me to address them myself.

source

I bought that particular set because I liked the “Kindly RSVP” stamp included in it. What I didn’t realize is that there’s only one copy of each letter, which caused considerable problems when spelling out the address. If I were doing it over again, I’d buy the sans serif font set. We had to complete them in several steps, most of which I stamped on the 12 hour ride home.

Mama Bunny stamps each card with a single letter because there was only one “L” in the set.

I didn’t know at first how the acrylic stamps worked, but they’re pretty easy once you get the hang of them. I bought some acrylic blocks (a cheaper brand than Martha Stewart) and used the handy guides to line up the letters. I trimmed the letters down using scissors to get them to fit together tightly like I wanted them.

Even so, they weren’t exactly straight, but I just figured that added to their charm… um… yeah.

There’s also a flourish around my last name from a Stampin’ Up wedding set. I don’t know the name of it because I borrowed it from a friend.

Full reveal to come!

Did you involve a group of friends/family to complete your DIY invitations? How did you spice up the process so it would be fun for them?