How to: DIY Wedding Invites

Hi folks,

The last couple of days you've seen an intro to our wedding planning, and all about choosing a colour scheme, and today I'm going to show you how I made the invitations for our DIY wedding. I hope this will help someone with their own invites!

The Invites
I'll be honest - I was frustrated with the wedding invites available to buy here in New Zealand. Most looked like tacky clipart printed on a sheet, selling for a ridiculous price. I knew I could do better and wanted something personalised, so I got out my paintbrushes...

... and created a base picture to put the invite on. It's a stylised painting based on the area where the wedding was to be held, which was surrounded by cabbage trees and pohutukawa trees and looked out over the Porirua harbour {we had an outdoor garden wedding}. It was something different and we both love our beautiful country, so it made sense.

Then I scanned it to the computer and completed the rest of the invite in Photoshop:

My husband printed them {2 per piece of A4 paper} and I cut each one out.

The inserts
Speaking of cutting, most invites require some extra info on separate inserts. I also made these doily-hearts with each guest's name on it, so that I wouldn't have to write it onto the invitation itself.

{the process}

It was a bit of a mission cutting 90 hearts and then glueing 90 pieces of doilie to them - but worked out being almost free as the doilies came in large packs from the $2 shop and I already had the cardboard.

As for the other inserts - I made one for the RSVP postcard, and one as an info sheet.

They were fairly simple designs and also done in Photoshop, then printed and cut out.

The cheap square brown envelopes were ordered from Australia, and were exactly what I wanted. You couldn't get them in NZ... it took a bit of research but I ended up getting them for 30c each... sweet deal.

The finished result

They turned out totally original and personal to us... but I was definitely relieved to finally post them away! 

I'm back after the weekend with more on the topic of DIY weddings.... this time how to make your own signage, favours, cake toppers and cake!

Would you make your own wedding invites?

Wedding Part 1: Intro

Wedding Part 2: Colours

Wedding Part 3: DIY wedding invites

Wedding Part 4: DIY Cake, Signage, candy buffet favours

Wedding Part 5: The morning-of (girl's morning)