The little wedding invitation

Having come back from a beautiful weekend away in Geneva for a friend’s wedding, I’ve got weddings on my mind. (While I’m here, I’d just like to wish my lovely friend, who I shall name Sunshine, and his wonderful wife a lifetime of happiness together). What a ray of sunshine he is.

Anyway, back to the purpose of the post- I thought I’d share our handmade invites with you. As I’ve mentioned before (http://thelittlepomegranate.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/the-little-wedding/), we quite like to make things ourselves and having searched high and low for invites we decided to make it a DIY job. We made quite a few, 300 (which in hindsight was a bit excessive), so it took a few days to complete but both being uni students we had enough free time! We also had a brilliant team of helpers who worked diligently. The results were beautiful; they were exactly what we wanted, a fraction of the price (~50p each), and made for some brilliant memories and our recipients had no clue that they were a DIY job!

If you have the time and enthusiasm I really do recommend making your invites yourself. All it took was a little research and some elbow grease- but to make it that much easier for you-here’s a quick run through with pointers for where to buy things (any shop links are based in the UK and would be thoroughly recommended for their quick delivery and professional approach).

Wedding invites

We basically followed the tutorial found on http://www.weddingcrafter.co.uk with some changes.

Materials

Card- we used tapestry broderie 300 gsm cardstock in cream (£2.85 A4 pack of 10, Wholesale at http://www.twiddleys.co.uk)
Inlay sheets 100gsm, felt effect in white (£1.89 DL pack of 50, Wholesale at http://www.twiddleys.co.uk)
Envelopes, cream (£2.42 DL pack of 50, Wholesale at http://www.twiddleys.co.uk)
15mm Double satin ribbon in Orchid (£2.99 25m roll, http://www.carnmeal.com)
Large sticky foam pads (£3.14 for 160, http://www.carnmeal.com)
A4 sheet of sketch book paper
Double sided sticky tape

We also bought a A3 paper creaser online for around £80, which we thought of as a long-term investments for future cards etc.

Instructions

Get the card trimmed to 210mm x 250mm- we did this at Staples for around £3, but any printers shop will be able to do this.
Crease the card 75mm from each end to end up with two folds folding inwards. Again, any printers shop can do this for you for a minimal sum, but we used our creaser.
Cut a length of ~43cm of ribbon (twice the width of the invite). Stick a foam pad in the centre of the top flap of the invite and secure the ends of the ribbon.
For the tags we created a print out on Word [Wedding invitation tags template], which we printed onto the sheet of sketch book paper (for the texture) and cut out with scissors and a guillotine. The font in the template is Times New Roman but for the invites we actually used the free to download font unfortunately named S*** Happens…despite the name, it’s a very nice font! The tag was stuck on top of the ribbon join with a square of double sided tape.
Cut a length of ~23cm and tie into a bow. Seal the ends by carefully hovering the ribbon near a flame (not placing into the flame!) -you’ll see the ribbon melt slightly. Make sure you don’t touch it straight away, it will be hot! It takes some practice but is quick and easy once you get the hang of it!
Attach the bow along the ribbon using the existing bit of double-sided tape (from attaching the tag), or a fresh piece.
After designing your invite print it off on to the inlay card (we used graphics from http://www.oneheartweddings.com) and attach to the inside panel using double-sided tape.