My first DIY attempt

One of the most prevalent topics in wedding planning is invitations. There are sooo many strange words for us rookies: letterpress, pocketfold, cardstock, A6, hand cancel. While my eyes swam at the many beautiful options and choices, another aspect jumped out at me. How unbelievably much these darn things would cost!!

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I decided early on that I could do without letterpress (though beautiful) and I was determined to give (semi) DIY a chance. Since this is basically a destination wedding, I knew I'd have to include a lot of information, so a pocketfold with multiple inserts quickly seemed to meet my needs. I found a great example of what I had in mind on weddingbee.com and another on the Cards & Pockets blog.

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I decided that I should give the DIY a try (even before we had a venue or date!) because if we had to order them, I wanted plenty of time to shop around and design.

Green. Pocketfold. Belly band. Grapes. Here we go.

Step 1: Microsoft Publisher. I already had it free on my computer. Hadn't used it before, but I was relatively comfortable with Word & Powerpoint and it was similar. (Side note: I don't know how to use Photoshop or anything fancier than that. Microsoft Office has helped me with a whole host of design tasks: business & personal.) Especially for the little inserts (on the right hand side of the pocketfold), I wanted similar styles with different sized paper and Publisher was super easy to figure out.


Step 2: www.istockphoto.com I search for most of a morning on various graphics websites and found a perfect image for ~$10. I just copied the free version to play around with.

Step 3: www.cardsandpockets.com Their sample sets were perfect for playing around with and had sufficient extra paper for a few mistakes. I found the company easy to work with, timely, and the quality was excellent. You don't have to worry about cutting or matching, well well worth it, in my mind.

Step 4: A morning in PJs with a pot of coffee & my handy at home printer (Nothing fancy, a $150 Canon).

Working on the wording & layout.


Lots of things will end up differently/better. In particular, that map is a disaster at the moment. BTW, that little "Respond" card is a mail-able size postcard for our guests to RSVP with and it fits nicely into the invite suite.


Let's be honest, there's no chance I have money in my budget for calligraphy. I think this pretty little font on my computer worked JUST fine.
(*A great tip from my MOH: Remember your audience. My family is not uber-wedding savvy. And will not cry over a lack of hand lettering on something they will immediately throw away.)

Optional Step 5: A frivolous little detail that I fell in love with was envelope linings. It was seriously easy and I really love how it turned out (especially when combined with the matching belly band). Remember how I mentioned Mr. SB is a good paper cutter?? :) Mrs. Champagne has a great tutorial. I used glue, not tape and didn't love the little line you can see in the envelope pic above. The paper I used was left over scrapbooking paper from the clearance bin at Michael's. I liked that it was a little thicker, so held up well with the wrapping around the invite, though almost anything will work, so I'll be keeping my eye out for various green papers over the next few months.

Voila!! I am marvelously happy with how they turned out and sent the copy to my family with a positive response. With this little boost to my confidence, I decided to move forward with the plan to DIY these. Stay tuned for the final, final result!

What major projects are more reasonable than you anticipated?