Weddingbee Blog

Those are the words I chose to use on our invitation to let our guests know that it would be more of a laid-back event than the normal, formal reception. You may remember that I wanted them to have a rustic yet fun feel. I also wanted to incorporate a playbill style format. Although I didn’t get the exact effect that I originally set out for, I’m still pretty happy with the way they turned out. You see, I originally wanted to incorporate some carnivalesque aspects like the pink stripes in this invite:

Invite by Thoughtful Day via 100 Layer Cake

I desperately wanted those adorable pink bags!

I scoured the internet and they did not come in our invitation size. After some pouting I decided to move on and  incorporate the pink stripes into our envelope liners instead. Well, slap in the face #2 came when our  envelopes arrived and they were not the triangular flap kind, but rather the straight across kind that barely has a flap at all. I decided to forgo my long hoped for liners since they’d barely be seen at all. I had already ordered our invitations to be printed through Vistaprint, so it was too late to change my design to incorporate the fun stripes on the actual invite. I could have stressed about it a lot more, but I decided to just let it go and be happy with the way they were. I worked long and hard on them and I’m proud of them, nonetheless.

Here’s the finished product!

Hugged in their belly band

the back

I got our monogram template from Wedding Chicks and had it printed on business cards from Vistaprint

We used a gel glue stick to adhere the cards to the kraft paper

We had a lot of information to include with our invites so in order to save money, I designed each piece to have a back. Here’s the back of the main invite

The next piece included the map/directions on the front and “other details” on the back. Since there’s too much to blur out on the map page, I’ll just show you the other details side

I did postcard RSVPs to save a little money on postage. I designed the front and again referred to the Wedding Chicks’ freebie’s page for the template for the back of the postcard

I love the postcard stamps

We got a custom address stamp for our envelopes

Did they turn out to be exactly what I first envisioned? No. Am I still proud of my hard work? Absolutely. It feels really good to get calls from family and friends saying how much they love them, how unique they are, and how it’s awesome that they represent who we are. The gratification of knowing that I created our invitations makes me more happy than I expected to be. RSVPs are starting to trickle in now and it puts a smile on my face every time I see one of my creations marked “Wouldn’t miss it!” in the mail.

Did you do your own invitations? Did they turn out how you initially envisioned?