Weddingbee Blog

Hey, guys, did you miss me last week? I am ashamed to say that I didn’t blog at all last week, but there was the perfect storm of work, school, and wedding tasks that all needed to be done at once. I had very little free time, and I chose to spend that time with my kid instead of the internet. Sorry! But I do have some exciting (kinda) new things to share.

The wedding task that was pressing this past week was getting the invitations out. I’ll show you the final invite in all its pocketfolded ribboned glory later this week, but today I thought I’d share my address label how-to.

Originally, I wanted to just print the addresses directly on the envelope, but Mr. Cannon told me that our printer would not print on the size of envelopes we have. Boo!

So I browsed around Weddingbee a bit to see some alternatives. I came across the wrap-around label, but didn’t see any real DIYs to explain exactly how to make them. I made up my own way to do it and thought I’d share what I came up with to keep other brides from ripping their hair out over labels. I know a lot of people don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator or anything (I actually have Photoshop Elements, but didn’t really need it for a label as simple as mine) so I thought I’d make a quick tutorial to show you how to do these using only Word and Excel. (I am using Office 2007. You can do this in other versions, but it will be slightly different.)

Step 1: Type up your guest list in an Excel file. I used four columns: Guests, Guests 2, Address, Address 2. I used Guests for our guests’ names, Guests 2 for large families that needed more than one line to all be named, Address for the house number and street, and Address 2 for the city, state and zip code. Obviously, you can set this up however you want. Save and close.

Step 2: Open a blank Word document. Go to the Mailings tab. Click the Start Mail Merge button, and select Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard from the drop-down. A window will pop up on the right telling you what to do. Select the labels option. Click Next: Starting Document at the bottom of the box. Click label options. A box will pop up asking you to pick what type of labels you have. If you have purchased printer labels, just find the type you purchased and select it. I did mine on regular paper and affixed the adhesive using a Xyron, so I just picked a choice in a larger size since it didn’t really matter.

Then click Next: Select recipients. Select Use an existing list, then click the Browse link and it will pull up your computer directory. Find the Excel file you typed up earlier. It will ask which tab you want to use, so select the one you typed up your list of addresses on. Then it will pull up the table showing the items in your Excel file. You can click to select the ones you want to print (most likely, all of them.) I actually printed all the ones with a Guest 2 entry first and then all the ones without a Guest 2 entry second, so that they would not have a blank space in the Guest 2 area. Click Next: Arrange your labels.

Step 3: This is where you’re actually designing your labels. I clicked the Layout tab and clicked Split Cells, selecting 3 columns and 1 row. I made the first column two inches, the second column two inches, and the third column whatever was left. The first column is where I wanted my return address to go. I changed the font to the one used on my invitation suite and changed the font size to what I wanted. I changed the font direction to a vertical alignment by pushing the text direction button on the layout tab. Then I typed my address there. In the second column I added a clip art picture just to demonstrate possibilities for personalization. In the last column, I’m going to put the guest’s address using the list specifications I made up in Excel.

Choose the “more items” link in your mail merge wizard at the right. It will show the names of the columns you designated in Excel. Insert them into your label template the way you want to see them appear on the label. Then click Next: Preview your labels. It will fill in the column names with your actual address list. You can look them over and make sure you like how they look. Click through and look at all the recipients to make sure you like how they look.

Step 4: Click Next: Complete the merge. That will create the labels so you can print them. Click print, and print them out. If your printer is as annoying as mine, it will take forever and jam constantly, print the labels at an angle instead of straight, and generally annoy you to death. Then you’ll finally print them all out one by one so you can make sure they are perfect as you go. (Hopefully you have an awesome printer and can skip that part.)

Voila! You have wrap-around labels in the font and size you want, you clever minx!

Cutting them to size.

A label!

Modeling the back

And modeling the front!

How have you gotten creative with your basic software for your wedding?