Many of us are trying to stick to a budget when planning our Milwaukee wedding. To help stick to this budget, or if you simply want to inject a more personal note into your wedding preparations, making your own wedding invitations can be an excellent idea. There are many sites out there that will help you with wedding invitation ideas. For more ideas on how your can save money and personalize your wedding, here's another article on do-it-yourself wedding invitations and one from our sister site on making your own invitations.
Choosing Colors
As always, your color choices for the wedding invitations you design and make yourself should reflect the colors you have chosen for the wedding itself. Not sure how this works? Simply look at the colors of bridesmaid dresses, jewelry and other accessories to determine your color options for the invitations.
Generally, you are going to pick a main color for your wedding, and this should be reflected in elements such as bridesmaid dresses, and decorations. Accent colors for jewelry and other minor elements should also be considered.
With these colors chosen, you can then apply them to your invitations. You can use the main wedding theme as the principle invitation color, either by applying it to the invitation, the card stock, the envelope liner, or card sleeve. Then use your accent colors for ink and other decorative additions.
Shapes and Sizes
What about shape and size? Most pre-made invitations are square or rectangular, but if you are making your own invitations, you can choose any shape you like. You can stick to these traditional shapes if you prefer, but really, there is no limit to the possibilities apart from the practicalities of posting them. If your invitations are going through the mail, it is usually best to choose standard shapes, sizes, and weights, to keep your postage costs to a minimum and to ensure that your invitations arrive at their destinations in good condition.
However, while your envelopes should be of a normal shape, the invitations themselves can be any shape, as long as they fit inside the envelope. If you choose a heavy, thick envelope paper, or use a card backing inside the envelope to protect the invitation, you can choose any shape at all.
Adding Decorations
With the invitation completed, why not consider adding some extra decorative elements? These can be created for just pennies per invitation, and very easily, in many cases. Consider these ideas:
- Purchase some inexpensive ribbon and cut off lengths that are around two and a half to three times the width of the finished invitation. Tie a length around each invitation, making a pretty bow or knot with the ends.
- If you have designed foldout invitations, buy sealing wax in a color that matches your invitation and melt the wax to seal the invitation. Use a heart-shaped cutout to stamp an impression in the wax.
- Look for some inexpensive silk or paper flowers, or save dried flowers and leaves, to use as decorations and glue a single flower to the top of each invitation.
- Buy or print patterned paper in complementing colors, and cut out envelope liners to insert in your invitation envelopes.
Alternatives to Traditional Card and Envelope Invitations
If you would like to design a truly original wedding invitation, why not abandon the traditional wedding invitation format altogether. Your invitations do not necessarily have to involve an envelope with an invitation inside!
Destination weddings, beach weddings, and other non-traditional events are the perfect excuse to design a unique and unusual invitation, providing your guests with some insight into the tone of your wedding at the same time as you wow them with your creativity!
When thinking of invitations in this way, pretty much anything goes. From message-in-a-bottle invitations for a beach wedding, to extra-special wedding invitation boxes containing not only the invitation, but also extras such as confetti and rose petals, fragrant cinnamon sticks, or hand-made paper ornaments, you are limited only by what you can imagine.
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Lisa Parker is a freelance writer who writes about family and family events such as weddings, often focusing on one specific aspect of a wedding, such as unique wedding invitations.
Tags: Diy Invitations
