Do It Yourself Project #3: Wedding Invitations - Part 1

Since we're on such a tight budget, I'm going to be making our invitations myself. At first I looked through pages and pages of invites, had samples sent to the house, picked out favorites and fell totally in love with one beautiful grey and blue design. Unfortunately, wedding invites can be crazy expensive and the one I picked was right at the top of the are you out of your mind? budget at over 500 dollars for the suite.

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It was love at first sight, Magnetstreet's Something Blue

Since I obviously couldn't have the invites of my dreams, I started designing one from scratch. I made tons of photoshop mock ups and came up with a design I would have been happy with. The only problem here was production. To make the invites work, I would have needed to order each piece separately; a black backing card, a white linen card for printing, white linen cards to print up RSVP and direction cards. This also meant that I'd have to design RSVP and direction cards and there was no feasible way to make my round ornate frame look decent on a small RSVP card. After running the numbers at various budget paper companies, I retired my custom design.

 My custom design, beautiful but ultimately too expensive

This left me once again at square one. We needed to find invites that would fit our theme and colors without being too expensive. After doing a little more research, it looked like a do it yourself invitation kit would be the solution to our problem. The only issue with this idea was style, the do it yourself kits were pretty bland and boring. None of them came in our colors and I didn't want to give up my cornflower blue. Thus, a compromise was born. 

Using 40% and 50% off coupons, my honey and I picked up the Brides Black and White Premium Invitation Kits from Michaels. Now, alone these invitations look lovely and if your colors are black and white I'd say use them as is. However,  I also think they're very use at your own risk. I would never feel comfortable sending my invitations as a self mailer as these are designed, can you just picture the state they'd arrive in after being sent cross country or worse, to a different country? They're also a little boring in my opinion and the templates they include are a pain in the ass to use. 

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Brides Invitation Kit

If you decide to use these invitation kits like I did, there are a number of steps you need to take. If you plan to use them as is and know your way around the computer, you might be able to get away with the one included test page. Either way, I would HIGHLY suggest cutting some printer paper to 5 x 7 and testing your template on those, not the actual invitations. Be aware that changing the invites up will likely cost you more money. If you're like me and plan to change them completely, here's what I did:

Do It Yourself Wedding Invitations: Brides Collection

Company: Brides Collection Invitations, from Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon - check your local paper, it's one per item per person so bring a lot of friends!
Cost: $167.30 for 120 invitations, supplies, and extras

Step 1:

Find envelopes that fit the invitation!!! Do not, I repeat, do not send them as self mailers. Even hand cancelled, I just wouldn't risk it. You'd be surprised at how hard it is to find an envelope to fit something already designed to be mailed, I found mine in light blue from Paper Presentation.   They were a little pricey at $31.25 plus shipping for a total of $42.69 but I got a lot of extras. If memory serves, I got the outer #7 in blue feather. 

Step 2:

Purchase or make labels to cover up the ugly "stamp here" square that for some reason is positioned upside down on the self mailer pocket. I designed mine using photoshop off my altered version of the invitation design and had them printed up by my old standby Vistaprint. Using their free address labels promotion, I got 250 of them for $3.99 shipped. They're just the right size and are incredibly cheap. A square letter monogram could also work but I haven't seen any for $3.99.

Step 3:

Redesign the invitation. It'll be tough since everything is already cut to size and most printers don't like true borderless printing. You'll also find that printing companies really mean 0.25" border when they say borderless. Don't let this stop you. Cut a million sample invitations from printer paper and print the invite over and over until you have your design positioned perfectly. I just had to have a borderless design but you could save yourself a lot of headache by not having one. My house was littered with test invites by the time I got mine right.  Make sure you redesign the RSVP card and direction card as well to match. 

Step 4:

Replace the included black ribbon. For mine, I bought five spools of light blue sheer, satin edged ribbon from Michaels for $8.17 and used it instead. It's a small change but it makes a big difference. Since I didn't want a bow, I bought some permanent glue tape and used it to attach the ribbon ends to the back. 

Step 5:

Replace or change the included sticker. For mine, I'm planning on just changing them from white and black to blue and black. I don't mind the design so I'll just run them through the printer. As of yet, I have no plans for the included address sticker but I'm sure I'll come up with something. 

Step 6:

Purchase additional blank enclosure cards if you need to include hotel information or additional guest notes. I just got plain black and white ones from the Brides collection from Michaels for $24.69 and will print the design on. 

Step 7:

Assemble your awesome wedding invitations and let them fly free! Don't forget to put a small piece of tissue paper inside the invitation as some reviewers have said the pocket bleeds. 

Part 1: The Main Invitation Card

Thus far, I have only managed to start printing the main invitation cards. The RSVP cards, direction cards, and hotel information cards are going to require more tweaking to get the borderless design right so I decided to go ahead and post what I have so far. 

Wedding Invitation Supplies


Brides Black and White Kit



Brides Kit Spread Out



Pocket Back and Main Card



Pocket Front and Main Card



Main Invite Card with Custom Design



Main Card Close Up

Of course you'll have to use your imagination to fill in where our information would go, but what do you think? I think we personalized them nicely and made them our own. The color comes out a little funny in the photos but it's beautiful cornflower blue in person.  Simple but elegant. Once I've figured out the RSVP and enclosure cards I'll post those as well.