DIY Wedding Invitations

I am a bit of a stationery nerd. I love beautiful notebooks, I love exciting pens, and I love nice paper. I could have easily easily spent a lot of money on my wedding invitations, particularly when I discovered the gorgeousness of letterpress invites.

This is the 'Shelly' Design from Artcadia.co.uk.

I mean look. Just look at that.That gorgeous, thick, textured card stock, and the way everything is pressed into it, not just printed on it, giving this extra depth to the card. I cannot express to you how much I would have loved, LOVED, to have had beautiful letterpress invitations.

But we just couldn't justify the expense. Not with the knowledge that at best they would sit on someone's mantlepiece or fridge until the wedding, and then go straight into the bin. That's if they even made it to the mantlepiece, since I was recently told of someone's friend who had to fish the crumpled and battered invitation out from the bottom of their rucksack when questioned on what the date was, to the horror of the unfortunate bride who had lovingly commissioned them, getting a cartoon of herself and her groom done especially, and hand tied with lace and string. 

So, for both budgetary and pragmatic reasons, it was decided that making our own invitations would be the best way forwards.

I'd like to say we carefully planned what we would need and then sourced the most budget-friendly but high-quality materials, but actually what happened was that we got a bit overexcited in Hobbycraft and the Works Christmas sales, and then had to work out how to make the stuff we'd bought fit into a sensible design.

 We got the stamp at Hobbycraft, the craft leaves from The Works, and the gold ink and the cards from Amazon. Since we're having an Autumn wedding, gold and leaves seemed like a good way to go.

 

The tricky thing about the stamp was not smudging the ink as you stamped, particularly with the initial batch of cards, as the stamp was coming away more heavily coated in ink. I blotted as best as I could but they still took a bit of time to dry!

 

Once they were dried (I didn't do this with the initial batch, but did with later ones), I hairsprayed them, to hold the ink in place and try and prevent smudging. I just used my standard hairspray. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it meant that they didn't smudge all over the envelopes when I was putting the whole lot together. I think it would have stuck better had I not used a shimmery ink, as the shimmer came off when you rubbed your thumb over it, and that maybe contributed to a few smudges. Also perhaps the use of a more textured card stock might have helped grip the ink, although at the same time it might have made the smudging worse. You never know!


Next: Applying the leaves.

For this task, after contemplating with a dubious eye a sad-looking Pritt Stick, I remembered that I had, several years ago, bought a tiny glue gun and glue sticks in the vain hope that I might eventually start making my own cosplays and props (hahah yeah that didn't happen).

Every girl needs a tiny hot pink glue gun in her accessories case!

Ta-daa! The leaves glued carefully in place, not without learning that hot glue burns when you poke it (this is educational as well as entertaining, kids).

I ended up needing to make about 47 or so, but I did extras to compensate for smudging which had happened to some of them. Also spares to send off for alternative reasons, which I shall reveal later in the post!

The next step was to design the inserts - I ordered some lovely A6 postcards from PaperBox on Amazon, with a lovely texture to them. I designed the inserts in photoshop, using some free fonts gathered from pinterest and dafont.com, and then it was a case of some more glue gunning!

After that construction, it was a case of addressing the envelopes - which I had become a little nervous about since my post on the matter - however I realised that I could lightly pencil out the calligraphy first and then ink over the top. This actually worked as extra practice too, as I was making the shapes of the letters with the pencil, so my hand started to get used to the movements needed to achieve the desired effect.

 

I got these addresses from various blogs around the internet, which related that you could get a letter of congratulations from the Queen (only if you're British, I'm afraid), the President (possibly only if you're American, but no-one specified as most of the website are American) and the Pope. Plus it meant that I could show off my natty calligraphy without giving away the addresses of any of my friends and family.

To finish off, I made liberal use of some sealing wax I had kicking around the house, and the seal which came with the calligraphy kit.

Guys: Fiery wax also burns if you get it on your fingers. Just FYI.



And ta-daaa! That's it, my wedding invitations. Now just to wait for the RSVPs.

H is for....

Honeymoon! Or Hen Night. Both things which are on my mind right now.

Jon and I have booked our honeymoon - we are off to Berlin! I'm very excited, not least because I love German food (meaty, peppery things are really my jam), and I've never been to Germany before. And we've got a fancy suite and we're near the zoo and we're going to go see the Blue Man Group, and try out this fancy shooting range and it's going to be SO GREAT.

So that's actually pretty much sorted, and because it's just Jon and I to coordinate, the stress is minimal. We both know what we want to do, what we can afford, and when we can do it. Bish bosh done.

The Hen Night, on the other hand, requires coordination on a much larger scale. It's me, and my friends, and my relations, all trying to work out when we are free and how much we want to spend.


Problem the First: THE DATE
One of the first obstacles which you have to scramble over whilst dragging everyone with you, fussing and squabbling, is the selection of a mutually agreeable date.

This is made naturally trickier by the fact that, now you and your friends are all adults you now have to work around not just work schedules, but commitments to other family and friends, at weird times, in different countries, which are perhaps booked up months ahead.

Seriously, at one point I asked one of my friends when she was free and she said she had a spare weekend in September. This was in April. Now multiply that by however many people are coming to your event.

You spend ages sending  emails backwards and forwards slowly narrowing down a date, and then by the time you find a date, it is much closer than you initially realised and you now have four weeks to plan something that you were certain was six months away.


Problem the Second: THE LOCATION
Over the years, the Hen Night has gone from being a nice night with friends to a HEN NIGHT and even to a HEN WEEKEND. People seem to be regularly going further afield and for longer to celebrate this supposed last night of freedom (although what you would be able to do whilst you're engaged that you wouldn't do when you were married boggles the mind, surely the relationship commitment level is the  same in all but name?).

It seems like in the UK, places like Ibiza or Marbella are pretty popular for Hen Weekends (there's also a saying - "No Carbs, before Marbs", but screw you, The Only Way Is Essex, no-one comes between me and my bread), but mainly for people who want the sort of party where you just get noisily and thoroughly bladdered and sunburned, on cheap booze, surrounded by hundreds of Brits doing the exact same thing, and a few clever Spanish people who have realised they can make a hell of a lot of money selling that booze to these Brits.

The intention is to be drunk from the time you arrive at the airport on your way out, until you land back in the UK after the weekend, so that at no point during your sojourn out of the country are you ever sober. This is why most airports have branches of Wetherspoons in the departure lounge.

Now,  I am pretty certain that approximately no people on the invite list to my hen night would be interested in that sort of affair. We prefer something a bit more sedate and cultured - a nice meal, some museums, maybe a bit of tipsy laserquest. Who knows?

This didn't stop suggestions such as Edinburgh and Dublin being thrown out there which, whilst admittedly geographically closer than Marbella, probably cost more and take longer to get to. Plus, there are varied budgets within the group and some of them (mainly mine) would struggle to stretch so far, or at least allow me drink and eat as much as I plan to once I got there after fare was paid.

Eventually Liverpool was settled on - comparatively close for most people attending, major rail links for ease of access, and more than enough pubs and museums to go around (although disappointingly it appears no laserquest, unless we wish to hire packs and guns and just laserquest our way around the city centre, which would be pretty darned awesome, actually).


Problem the Third: THE ITINERARY
As mentioned above, the traditional Hen Party themes of Drinking, Drinking More, and Novelty Penis Items are not the sort of thing which anyone I know would be particularly interested in. Well, maybe some of them, but only ironically. And anything penis-related has been banned for the peace of mind of Jon's little sister, who is coming and who deserves to get through her life without getting any kind of information of that sort on her brother at all, and I deserve to get through my life without having to give it to her.

So it is important to work out what we can all do and enjoy doing, which will suitably make the use of the time we have in our destination. Liverpool is fortunately filled with an abundance of museums and galleries and entertainments to fill our time, and if we get really bored we can hop on a boat and experience a ferry across the Mersey first hand.

But getting the balance is key - whilst some people in the group are big Museum fans, I think others may prefer to limit the amount of time they spend in a museum, even if the Museum in question is the Tate Liverpool (or particularly if that Museum is the Tate Liverpool, depending on whether or not Tracy Emin has an exhibition on). Alternative, additional activities must be found. Don't worry guys - Jungle Rumble Crazy Golf is open until 10pm! (Although actually that really appeals to me, that might be actually really good fun, crazy golf is the best)


However as we are just at the point of booking hotels (i.e. the end of Problem the Second), I have not yet addressed Problem the Third yet. This will come in the next week or so I imagine!


What sort of stuff did you guys do for your Hen Night/Bachelorette? Did you find the coordination tricky?