Weddingbee Blog

Planning and mocking up DIY ideas is both fun and frustrating, but there comes a time when you actually have to get serious and get ’er done. For me, that time was Monday night.

I’d already done much of the design work on Sunday morning, and since I haven’t shown you that yet, I’ll do that now! Like the Save-the-Dates, I made these in Adobe Photoshop CS3. I said it then and I’ll repeat it now: Photoshop is complicated and is not something I recommend you buy just to make stuff for your wedding. I can’t explain to you step-by-step how I made these, and there is no template. But nevertheless, here they are! My fonts are Isadora (capitalized portions), CAC Pinafore (cursive portions), both from dafont.com. They’re the same fonts I used for the Save-The-Dates. (I changed info where I could so I’d be able to show you as much as possible without blurring.)

For the design above, FMIL Mary Jane had given me this text:

We invite you to a neighborhood barbecue* to celebrate the marriage of our son, [Mr. MJ], to [Miss MJ]. [caterer] Café of [town], Minnesota, will be catering barbecue ribs or chicken with dinner served between 6 and 7 p.m., Saturday, September XX, 2009. It is a come as you are event whether coming straight from the field or coming home from church. We would love for you to stay and get to know [Miss MJ] by the campfire or with yard games after the meal weather permitting.
–FMIL and FFIL Mary Jane

*Yes, “barbecue” is spelled wrong on the mockup. Whoops. I did fix it afterward!

I ’styled it up’ a little, but tried not to omit or add anything. I hope she likes it OK!

So there you have it. Notice the size of each card. I had to pay attention to the margins in order to line up the titles properly with my cascading design. Resizing for this blog has made each one look taller than the previous, but in fact they are all the same height (4″) - it’s the widths that are different.

You’re Invited is 5″ wide (1″ left margin + 4″ of design space).
About the Couple is 5.75″ wide (1.5″ left margin + 4.25″ of design space).
Directions is 6.5″ wide (2″ left margin + 4.5″ of design space).

The RSVP card will be attached separately (did you think I forgot about my paper clips?) and is designed to be printed on a 4″ x 5.5″ card.

Did you notice that the first three cards each have a faint orange border? I intended to print several of them on one page of cardstock (making the cuts after printing), so I added these borders to help me measure my cuts. The RSVP card doesn’t have these because I intended to use the same paper I used for the Save-The-Dates: blank “Value Pack” Ivory greeting cards that have been cut in half.

As I just mentioned, I decided to print several cards on each piece of cardstock. I wanted to have the least amount of waste possible, maximizing the cardstock I had on hand. I had 50 sheets of 12×12 ivory cardstock to work with (bought in 2 packs of 25). I also kept in mind that my printer can’t handle paper wider than 11 inches. Additionally, only about 20 of the invites will need the “Directions” card, so I wanted to print less of those. (So, as opposed to laying out one full “invitation suite” on each piece of cardstock, I decided to keep multiples of the same card on each piece.)

Here’s what I figured out.

I actually need to make about 63 invitations, but I wanted some extras just in case (70+ of each piece except for Directions). I needed to cut:

26 pieces of ivory cardstock to 12″x10″ size,
6 pieces of ivory cardstock to 12″x11″ size (I wrote ’17’ on that card shown above, no clue why)
32 pieces of unfolded blank “Value Pack” ivory greeting cards to half-size

I decided to do a few extra of each one in case of printing issues.

Then for the enclosure, I needed to split:

35 pieces of brown cardstock to 12″x5″ size (yield: 2 per sheet)
12 pieces of floral cardstock to 10.5″x 2″ size (yield: 6 per sheet - this used up all but one piece of my floral paper))

Here’s what I started with…

…and here’s what I ended up with, after about 2 tedious hours of Measure - Mark - Chop - Repeat.

You can see the contrast of the different browns in the photo above. If they’d had enough, I’d have gotten all Mud Pie (the darkest of the three), but of course they had the least of that one. The French Silk (the one Michaels had the most of, and hence the majority of my paper, of course!) is my least favorite.

All of this freshly-trimmed paper made me feel really good. Really accomplished. Until I remembered just how much more chopping, punching, aligning, and folding I had still ahead of me! Up next: I print, chop, and assemble.

Previously in this series:
It began with a Post-It note.
I had a change of heart.
A new plan emerged, and a crisis was averted.