Do It Yourself Wedding Invitations

You don't have to spend a fortune on wedding invitations. Thanks to the World Wide Web and your friendly neighborhood craft store, there are now tons of options for making them at home. My wedding invitations were simple and nice. I chose an old style calligraphy font for the invitation itself, and hand-printed calligraphy for the addresses. My MIL suggested doing a vellum overlay and then securing them with a satin ribbon. She actually put them together and tied all the ribbons, which was great for me as I tend to not enjoy these types of tasks.

Here are all the details for doing wedding invitations yourself.

In each packet, you will need:

The wedding invitation itself. If you order yours online as I did, you'll get suggestions for wording. Some people choose the traditional verbiage where the parents of the bride offer the invitation (implying, of course, that they're footing the bill). But there are many variations on this - I suggest doing a Google search to see what people typically write, and then selecting one option that suits your style and situation.

Any extra embellishment – for example, we overlayed ours with a scalloped, vellum sheet

Ribbon, stick-on flower, or other decoration (finished product looks something like this)

The response card

The self addressed envelope to hold the response card

Postage for the response card

The hotel information card (once you arrange for a hotel they will mail you out a packet of these).

Direction card – to the ceremony from all major highways, to the reception from all major highways, to the ceremony from the reception (depending on what applies in your case)

Information card. We also included an itinerary of the day. Not typical, but we didn't want any confusion over the fact that the wedding ceremony and reception were going to be held in one location. We also wanted people to know there would be a buffet dinner and cash bar.

Outer envelope, large enough to fit all of the above.

Postage for all invitations.

You can purchase wedding invitation kits at Staples or Michael's craft store and print them on your own printer. Or, you can do what I did, which was mail-order them from the web. I can't find the site I used- thought it was "BudgetWeddingInvitations.com" but now I'm not seeing that come up as anything.

It only takes a week or two (I'm forgetting now, but it wasn't long) before they arrive at your doorstep, ready to be assembled and mailed out. Ironically, I ended up spending double – because I ordered according to our "head count," not realizing that the majority of guests only require one invitation per couple or family. Just thought I'd throw that info in so you can avoid making the same mistake!