Handmade Wedding Invitations

Well, I got married last September.  After we got engaged I was so excited to start planning an amazing event.  I had visions of fine linens coordinated with pink roses in vintage silver decanters, a large bridal party in satin, and me, as the center of attention in my one of a kind gown on the most special day of my life....

I have a confession....all of that is bullshit.  I was not excited about, nor did I particularly enjoy wedding planning.  If that makes me a terrible "girl", I don't care.  I fought, and mostly managed, to keep the event and the budget small.  One of the few things I did enjoy was designing and making the wedding invitations and thank you notes.  We wanted something personalized but we also needed to keep costs down. 

We had accidentally stumbled onto a pear theme since the venue was in a pear orchard and we had decided to give away pears as wedding favors (inexpensive and the guests really enjoyed them).  I found these inexpensive pear and leaf stamps online (http://www.rubberstamptapestry.com/) and started my design from there.  I ordered the paper and envelopes from paperandmore.com

I was very happy with the paper when it arrived but I decided the invitation would need some sort of backing.  I decided I liked the look of brown craft paper.  Also, I happened to have a roll of the stuff hanging around already.  Cutting out the backing paper and preparing it was my least favorite part of the project.  I used a cutting mat and straight edge to cut 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch pieces for each invitation.  Afterwords, the paper had to sit under heavy books for a bit and needed some coaxing to straighten out.  Luckily, I only had to send just over 50 invites.

It took some work to get the backing paper flat!

I created a template for the invitations in Word.  Two invitations were printed on each page and the margins were set so that, when printed,  I would be able to cut about 1/4 inch off of the bottom and one side of the invitations and be left with perfectly centered text on a sheet of paper slightly smaller than the brown craft-paper backing.  I also created a template for the RSVP information inserts (10 per page).

Next, I made my trusty aileen's tacky glue-water mixture and glued the printed sheet to the backing.  I added just enough water to help the glue spread easily.  If you add too much water the paper will warp.  These, again, sat under heavy books for a bit so that they dried nicely.  

I stamped the top of each invitation with the pear and leaves.  My dear husband cut all of the RSVP inserts from the main sheet into lovely leaf shapes and hole-punched one side.  I thought the leaf shaped tag was a nice way to include contact and RSVP information.  The "leaves" were then tied around the invitations with a single string pulled from a length of twine.

The finished product (not our actual names). 

We also used the stamps and remaining paper for some items at the wedding (signs for the gift table, family tables, etc) and for the thank you notes!