Weddingbee boards

Hello all,

I have recently come to the conclusion that I will have to make my own invites, as the custom ones are out of my budget and I haven't found any I really love in my budget.

I am wondering, how long did it take you to prepare yours, from the first concept to the actual assembly?

Which was the hardest part?

Any tips for someone who is most definitely not a DIY master?

I went through a website called VISTAPRINT. They have great sales.

They have templates, where you can custom make your own invite, or you can even upload any pic you want.

I played with the website for about a month, using different fonts.

Luckily one of my cousins is an artist a drew a beautiful pic for me to add to the invites. I uploaded the pic, and went from there.

I got the invites in about 1 week.

@gabrielleelise1981: WOW

I did most of the figuring out while I was at work. It took me probably 2-3 months here and there (maybe a total of 20 hours because there were a few times I started completely over), messing with fonts and sizes for the inserts. Also during that time I got photos for free from various Snapfish email offers, to use for under the vellum piece. I also had to mess around a lot with what text I wanted on the inserts and how to word things, and what to include and not include.

Once I had the inserts sizes right, plus all the wording and fonts how I liked, I worked on a few different ways to do the DIY pocketfolds, That took me about an hour, plus probably another hour of researching how to do them.

Then I had to decide on the papers I'd use. I did research on how heavy my RSVP card had to be, and reserached a ton of websites for the different papers to get the cheapest possible options. I used www.paperandmore.com and ordered samples. When I finally had all my samples, I put together my mock-up invitation, which is the photos I've attached. I'm really happy with how it looks! I'm not sure how long each invite will take me yet as I've only done one from start to finish, and I am going to go ahead and order all the papers in the upcoming weeks.

If you have time to devote and ENJOY doing these things, it's not that bad. I really lucked out that at my job I have a lot of lulls and can do things like this using Word. I like messing around with fonts and layouts so it didn't get stressful for me. However there are a lot of people out there that would rather die than devote that much time to something like this.

In all, I suppose I spent at least 40 hours total getting to my "final draft". When it's all said and done, each invitation will cost me a total of $1.60. I think that's a great deal for the entire package!

Wow what beautiful wonderful invites!

@Eye Candy: Love the style, the fonts and the design, it all fits together so well!

@gabrielleelise1981: The raffia and the box are wonderful ideas! I've already checked the shipping costs and for me it's a bit prohibitive (lots of international invites) but I'm sure all your guests were really exited when opening the box!

@totheislnds: I haven't looked into that option yet, thanx for the tip! I can see from yours and other samples that you can make some great invites like that...

@Ugoob: Another great tip, will check it out!

@Wannabe-diy-bride: Lol not bad to be able to use some work time - and totally worth it, those invites are so pretty!

@LatteLove: Lots of work but congrats on the result! Very classy

Thanx for your feedback, it sounds like a bit more work than I expected but I should have enough time if I can dedicate as much time as you did to the task!