DIY Handmade Wedding Invitations

The selection and assortment of wedding invitations out there is overwhelming!  We decided it might just be easier

(and cheaper) to make our own.

Fortunately I had a lot of the supplies I needed since I had previously purchased them for my
Etsy store (which desperately needs my attention),
including a mini-hole-punch, paper cutter, and yarn. 

Our invitations had 2 main parts - the actual invitation with the wedding date(s)and our names and blah blah, and a secondary info sheet that had details about the resort/travel.  

For the actual invitations, we bought a book of 12" x 12" differently patterned 'thick papers' - its not quite as sturdy as cardstock, but it's hardier than construction paper.  You can usually find it in the scrapbooking section. (Hobby Lobby classifies it as 'cardstock and themed papers' on their website.)
We used a mini paper cutter to get them to an appropriate size. 

We bought a translucent velum paper for the invitation text, and I wrote something up after looking around on the internet for appropriate invite verbage.  After a few tries, I finally got the formatting right in MS Word to print 2 copies of text on 1 sheet of velum, which I could then conveniently cut in half to size.

I went the easy route by crafting a lot of stuff straight out of MS Word, but if you have great handwriting/calligraphy skills, you could make really beautiful invitations by handwriting the text and then scanning it to print in mass.

To put the invitations together, I punched 2 mini-holes in both layers of the invitation, and tied them together with a lovely dual-stranded yard - a wispy creme mahair with glittery gold highlights.

I actually really loved that there were 15 different background patterns on the invitations.

We neatly organized them by pattern on the kitchen island.

For the secondary information sheet, I bought a set 

of smaller 4.5" x 6.5" cardstock (read: no cutting involved) in patterns that coordinated with the invite patterns.  We thought the colors in both sets matched really well, and I'm so glad that we found all of this stuff in one trip!

I had envisioned having a cute little picture somewhere in the invitations, so I drew a little 3 part cartoon - a boy chasing a volleyball to the right, a girl chasing a volleyball to the left, and a boy and girl finding each other (and love!).

After finally drawing a cartoon I was happy with,

I scanned that sucker up, formatted it in MS Word, and printed

4 per page so they could be cut apart easily.

I happened to have some heavy duty creme paper (perhaps for a resume back in the day?) so we printed the drawing on that.

To attach the pictures to the cardstock we took a dual-pronged approach: we cut corner slits in the cardstock (mostly for aesthetics) and then used glue sticks to glue them down.  Then I glued the actual information to the back of the cards. I thought about printing the info directly onto the cards, but the awkward size and thickness of the cardstock made printing on them seem like more trouble than it was worth. (I tried two, and they jammed in the printer).

For the RSVPs, we bought some 'natural-colored' blank

cardstock that came with matching envelopes, and printed them up.  As I was once again too lazy to deal with printing on 

overly awkward items, we hand wrote our address on all of the return envelopes, hehe.

Because the invitations and information cards were filled with different patterns, I'm not sure if any of our recipients actually received the exact same combination.
I loved how each invitation was fairly unique in that way.

The full package:

A couple more invitation combos:

When all was said and done, I think the invitations (we made ~90) cost us around 65 dollars and 10 hours of time.
Way cheaper than buying invites, and a
lot more personal.

If you wanted to make similar invites, I'd recommend the following items:

- Large envelopes for full invitations
- Cardstock
- Scrapbooking paper
- Velum Paper
- Yarn
- Paper cutter
- Hole punch
- Small blank cards + envelopes

:)