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.

Unwritten and Handwritten Rules

Weddings have rules for everything. And I mean literally everything.

The latest I have come across is how to address envelopes for the invitations.

This has only come up because we are at the point where we are presently getting ready to address our envelopes, and were thus exploring our options. Now, my handwriting is terrible. It's really quite appalling. My parents went through a phase of blaming my infant school for not teaching me how to write joined up (although I can, I just really have to concentrate), but then realised that actually it's just that their daughter is fundamentally incapable of writing neatly.

 haha I wish. For more beautiful gifs, check out calligifphy.tumblr.com.

As such, when my Mum presented me with a calligraphy set for Christmas just after I got engaged, this seemed like a potential avenue for exploration in the context of invitations. I began with a first burst of enthusiasm with the idea that I would naturally hand-calligraph ever single invitation, until I realised that would be SO MUCH WORK and did them on the computer instead.

I revisited the idea of calligraphy when we started gathering addresses to send out the invitations, as a way of addressing the envelopes. Naturally wedding planning is ridiculous, and Jon and I ended up having an argument that was far too involved for something as mundane as addressing envelopes. I didn't want to just write in my normal handwriting, because it would look awful. How awful?

However, Jon was of the opinion that a) calligraphy would be way too much effort, and b) my calligraphy skills were a bit rubbish really anyway, so what was the point if it was going to look crap?

I politely told him what I thought of his opinion, he responded likewise, and after a slightly heated discussion over the qualifications of both members of the debate, with a few less-than-generous allusions to each others respective intelligence and sense of taste, and queries as to what the other person knew anyway, the session was adjourned until we could be friends again.

When we reconvened half an hour later, the idea was batted around of printing labels with the addresses on, because that would be neater and we could be decorative without it looking awful. 

Except apparently that is Verboten. Not Allowed. Martha Stewart says NO.

"The address on a wedding invitation should be handwritten; printed labels are not appropriate (though calligraphy done by computer directly on the envelope is gaining popularity and acceptability)..." from HERE.

Well that's just dandy, Martha, but frankly I wouldn't trust my printer not to mangle any envelopes I put through it, and as demonstrated above my handwriting is less than appropriate if the reason you are declaring all this is for the sake of formality. And no, I can't afford to hire a calligrapher to write my addresses for me. I would rather spend that money on booze.

She then laughingly goes on to declare the invitation addressing etiquette has become more relaxed in recent years, but still gives 17 PAGES of exactly what you must and must not do.

 17 pages! And none of these rules are things which I even would have noticed were I the recipient of an envelope which broke any or all of these guidelines. I find myself wondering who has the time to sit down and consider how offended they would be if someone wrote 'Dr' instead of 'Doctor' on the envelope, or used an initial instead of a full first name, or god forbid printed labels instead of hand writing, even in aid of legibility.

Who has that sort of spare time? And who even spends that long looking at envelopes? Surely once it arrives you spend at most a minute investigating the postmark to try and guess who it is from, and then open it and immediately lose interest in favour of the contents which are generally much more interesting.

However, the overwhelming response from the internet was "NOPE". So for fear of actually offending someone we know who cares more about envelopes than we realised, we turned back to calligraphy. 

And lo, planning a wedding has accomplished what years of school could not - I am practicing my handwriting.

Eh, it's a start. Right?