DIY Wedding Invitations : Final Package

We finally got our invitations done and sent out last week. It was a multi-step process. Ron and I worked out our aesthetic for it a couple of months ago, worked out all the text and then he went to town on designing. I'm glad that he pretty much knew what he was doing because with our multiple fonts and a lot of illustrations and clip art, it was a lot of work. We did use a few free clipart downloads from a great DIY wedding blog. Even if you're not doing a wedding, this site has awesome font and design ideas and freebies.

As you'd expect from Old Timey Ron, we wanted our invitations to look like 18th century handbills. I think that he did a great job at pulling it off.

We got our printing done at Kinkos and they were great about cutting down the paper to our custom sizes after printing. Then we just folded and affixed into our envelopes. On the front of the envelopes, we affixed paper cut outs of maples leaves for the addresses. I absolutely love the Love stamps this year and was psyched that they matched our colors and aesthetic so well. Lastly, to close the envelopes we used a wax seal in a bronze wax. (no picture)

All told, I think that the entire invitations packages including postage cost about $4.50/piece. Seeing as that's less than even some pre-made envelopes cost, I think that we did amazingly well.

DIY Wedding Invitations : How to make an Envelope

In the interest of cost-savings and personalization, we decided to make our own wedding invitations. If money were no object, I would have loved to have letterpress but alas we have a budget. So we figured that we'd design and make our own so that at least if we weren't splurging on the printing, we'd splurge on the attention we spent on them.

Here's a tutorial on how to make your own envelopes. We ordered paper from French's and got a cover weight in a large size so that we could cut it down.

First you make a template for the envelope. This is probably the most time consuming part because you want to make several trials and mock-ups to ensure that it folds correctly and is the size you want. Once you have a final template, you trace it onto the paper.
Next you cut it out. I highly recommend using a straight edge and exacto knife instead of scissors. It makes for much cleaner lines and corners.
Now score where your fold lines will be. This is especially important on a heavier weight paper so that you get a nice clean line. I used a bone folder.
Use the flat edge of the bone folder to help you get a nice sharp crease when you fold over the edges. Fold all the edges and then glue any pieces that you need to.

Here's our completed envelope. The right side has a pocket. The middle includes the side flaps and over on the left edge is the outside flap for closure.
And here are some completed and folded-up envelopes. I made 50 so that there were extra in the event of mistakes. It probably took me about 3 evenings to work on them. It's relatively time consuming with all the tracing, cutting & folding. But the major benefit is that all it cost us was the paper (~$25) and some new exacto blades. Per piece, it's far less expensive than ordering pre-made ones and we were able to completely customize it for ourselves.