Weddingbee

We’re giving something away every day for the rest of the month… and beyond, so be sure to tune in daily!

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For our 2007 Hawaiian wedding, I just wanted to share my very favorite DIY accomplishment for our wedding to-date: Our boxed invitations.
 
I purchased everything separately, from clear packaging, to the boxes, to the starfish, to the cane paper to the clear labels for our addresses. I had my invitations printed up (by mygatsby) on pearly white cardstock and adhered it to the pearly seafoam cardstock.  
 
Additional elements - Real 4-5″ white finger starfish (ebay) was glue dotted onto the cane paper sash, then tied with mason line to invite package where cane paper (paper.com) sash was cut to hold together the invite, RSVP Hawaiian vintage postcards that we customized with our rsvp message and address ( islandartcards.com), map created freehand with Adobe and printed up on postcard cardstock, and hotel resort business cards requested for hotel contact. These were then boxed, clear package sealed, stamped and then off to our wonderful guests.
 
For our save the dates, we sent out DIY message in the bottle invites on our yachting engagement reception as a precursor to our tropical destination wedding this fall.
 
Enjoy! Our guests most certainly did.
 
An

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If you’ve got a diy project you’d like to submit, please send it to guest@weddingbee.com.  Read the full contest rules here.
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You also still have until 3:00 pm EST to enter yesterday’s Ideal Favors Gift Certificate contest - we’ll be announcing the winner later today. 

We’re giving something away every day for the rest of the month so be sure to tune in daily!

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If you’re a vendor and would like to donate a prize for a contest, please contact us at info@weddingbee.com.
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Hi! Thought I’d submit my wedding invitations. I picked out a lovely rose at the florist and had my artist bridesmaid paint it in watercolor. Then I scanned the painting and added the wording in photoshop. The same method was used to make the matching info inserts and reply postcards. I had the images printed on textured paper, rounded the corners, then attached the main invitation to gold vellum with decorative corners. They were mailed in gold envelopes with custom stamps (the link to which I found on Weddingbee!) I learned that DIY does not necessarily mean cheaper. I went double over my invitation budget on these little things!
 
Thanks for everything you do.
 
Vanessa

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If you’ve got a diy project you’d like to submit, please send it to guest@weddingbee.com.  Read the full contest rules here.
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So I got way into our paper materials.  I thought our save-the-dates were time consuming with much sewing involved, but they couldn’t compare to the daunting task (IMO) I undertook for our wedding invitations.  My FI’s only comment when looking at various invitation designs at different stores was he liked the “one in the tube”, so of course to keep him involved in the process, I set out to make our invitations in tubes. 

I had used the common destination wedding cane paper in our save the dates and needed to incorporate that into our invites, so I decided to use the paper to cover the outside of tubes - both the outer “envelope” and the rsvp “envelope”.  First off though I had to figure out how to adhere an address label to it that wouldn’t come off.  I ended up tearing very thin japanese rice paper into strips and had a calligrapher do the addresess.  I used spray glue to adhere the paper and used a bit of overlap at each end to wrap it around the cane paper.  I then had to use more of the spray adhesive and regular glue on the edges to glue the cane paper to the tube.
 
For the actual invitation, we had a calligrapher draw up the invite, we printed our Hawaiian quilt motif on the thin japanese paper, and then had the invites letterpressed on top.  The Bhutan paper came in much larger sheets, so we tore each one into the size we wanted for the invite, the map and the rsvp.  To give it more of an antique look vs. just torn, I dabbed the edges with a wet sponge and rubbed them a bit with my fingers to rough it up.  Oddly enough, it worked quite well.  To adhere the rice paper to the Bhutan background paper, I had to use Xyron Cheetah roller glue so that there wouldn’t be bubbles.  For some reason, the spray glue wouldn’t adhere the rice paper to the almost-glue-resistant Bhutan paper. 
 
To roll the papers, we got cylinder dowels the size we needed to keep the paper from getting too crinkled in the wrapping process.  We wrapped the rsvp sheet around the dowel, inserted it partially into the rsvp tube (so that folks would understand what it was for), then wrapped the invitation around the rsvp tube, wrapped a japanese lace paper around that and a strip of the Bhutan paper with the invitees’ names on it as our “inner envelope” around the lace paper and tied it and closed it with bronze thread and drops of wax.
 
To give the invites the “Hawaii” flavor where our wedding was taking place, I swabbed pikake oil around the edges so that the invites were aromatic.  And after all of that work, the most comments generated from our invites were from the stamps which we did in about 30 minutes - we spelled out “A-L-O-H-A” on individual stamps.  It was funny to see how long it took our guests to figure out 1.) what the stamps said and 2.) who was in them.
 
Enjoy.
 
From, 
 
hapahaole

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If you’ve got a diy project you’d like to submit, please send it to guest@weddingbee.com.  Read the full contest rules here.
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Hi! I’m entering my silk-covered pocketfold invitations into the contest. First I got the cardstock cut into custom-sized sheets, which I sprayed with adhesive and covered with scarlet dupioni silk bought on eBay. Then I cut the cardstock into the appropriate dimensions, painstakingly covered each cut edge with liquid adhesive to prevent fraying, and scored and folded them.

I designed the invitations in Photoshop, using the scanned image of a cherry blossom rubber stamp, which I manipulated to make all the floral designs. Each insert has a unique motif on it. Then I sent out the design to a printer to have it thermographed in black and metallic gold onto ivory linen-textured cardstock. The invitation and all the inserts fit on one 8.5 x 11″ page, which I then had cut at Kinko’s. I layered it with gold paper and bronze stardream cardstock, attached it to the pocketfold with gold photo corners, and closed the pocketfold with brown grosgrain ribbon and a seal customized with the name of each guest (except for my own invitation, which has our names and the date on it).

The envelopes were a matching ivory linen paper, and I used the original cherry blossom rubber stamp (and a tiny blossom one I picked up to match for the RSVP envelopes) to emboss the back flaps with gold embossing powder. I printed them out with fonts matching the invitation.

I was so happy with how these turned out!

Tanya
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