Do it yourself Programs and Placecards

ABostonBride’s been a busy lady. I had a wonderful engagement photo session this past week (more on that in the future) and I’ve been wrapping up details on the gift bags/hair stylist/music/you-name-it.  I’ve also been having the most fun making programs and placecards believe it or not. I really wanted to keep with the theme set in our invitations / favors (read about that here). So here’s what I did:

1. I took the sheer enclosure from the invitation, opened it up, and scanned that into an image with a red paper behind it. What that did for me is create a graphic pattern I could use with the programs and placecards that matched the invites, yet started to break into the fun red color I have for the bridesmaids. The header on my blog is made from the pattern.

2. With that, I created a layout in Photoshop that is 4″ by 10″, the program length and height I wanted. I added the pattern, created a red band that matched the David’s Bridal Apple Red (copying the color swatch on their website), and then took the same “ALS Script” font we got from 1001 Free Fonts (which we also used in the invitations) to build the image for the front of the program.  Once we had a front we liked, I doubled the width of the canvas in Photoshop to 8″ and basically copied the front to the backside, removing the names and changing the Church/Place/Date to a thank you message.  After that, I exported it to a jpg and mailed it to Kendall Press who printed them on cardstock for a really reasonable price (less than print yourself at Staples).

3. We’re working on the text and information for the inside of the programs, but we’re basically creating a 2 column layout in Word and using the fonts we used in the invite (ALS Script as mentioned above and another more standard font called Candara).  We’re making the layout printable at home in black ink so we don’t need to have that professionally done.

4. For placecards, I thought about doing calligraphy work again like I did for the envelopes, but I like the consistency of the printed font for the smaller space that a placecard has. To tie it into the theme, I once again took my pattern in Photoshop and replaced the color with the darker red.  I also took the scrolling border from an image on our wedding website (thanks to the Knot) and matched it to the color of the pattern. I then added the names and table numbers in our script. As an added fun touch, since these are foldover, I printed a cow, chicken, or kid cartoon icon on the back folded part so the servers know what to serve.  They run about 4″ x 3.5″ folded, 4″ x 7″ flat each, so we can fit 6 on a standard 8.5″ x 11″ sheet. Once all the seating is figured out, we’ll send these over to the professionals to get printed as well.

In total, we’ll probably have spent no more than $50 on this project, which is a real steal for 80 – 100 people!

Cheap do it yourself wedding invitations – 50 for $20!!

I couldn’t believe it either. In my opinion, invites are not *the* most important part of your day as the stationary shops want you to believe. They are an accessory that sets a style and theme for your wedding, an accessory that most people will throw away.

I wanted an invite that was pretty and went with our theme, but I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars. I *really* wanted an enclosure, as I knew I would have to put some additional details in our wedding. EBay to the rescue! I found this great invite on eBay for less than $20 for 50 invites & response cards – and it included a pretty band to enclose the invite and additional pieces!

When I got the set in the mail, I saw some things that are hard to tell in the picture on eBay. First, the band had an iridescent glitter that I hated. I also wasn’t a fan of the chintzey bow. After brainstorming ideas on how to achieve a more elegant look, I decided to flip the band inside out, having the glitter face inside and pretty design still show up outside. (Notice the header on my blog is a scan of the same design….very cool!)

Here is what it looks like:

It’s hard to tell but the enclosure band has an ivory printed design that is also on the border of the invite and the response cards.

I printed them on my computer which worked great. I found a pretty font I liked and used the free Wilton print Word templates to build my invite. Here is what it came out looking like, minus a few details we cut from the picture:

The outer band covers all the text and also encloses the additional information sheet (which is an 8.5″ x 11″ resume paper folded in half with print on both sides, also made with Word) that fit perfectly with the invite.

The response cards and envelopes have a similar look and are also tucked inside the band. Finally, I hand addressed the envelopes with my own calligraphy pen to give it an additional enhanced look and used see through printed labels for the return envelopes and return address labels.

Since I did the envelopes by hand, I messed up a few too many and ordered an additional kit from eBay. With all the additional paper and enclosures, I used the material to build our favors as well.

We decided to go with a CD of our favorite mostly romantic songs. We have a Lighscribe enabled DVD burner, which we used to make these neat scribed labels on the DVDs with our picture and playlist:

We got 50 of them for $35 online, and the Lightscribe template software is free. This takes awhile, as each DVD is about 15 – 20 minutes to burn. Then, we burned our playlist, including a custom greeting we recorded and added to to beginning thanking our guests for coming.  We created pretty enclosures using the invitation kit from above and cheap white CD envelope sleeves (we got 100 for under $10 online also).

As you can see here, I opted to keep the iridescent glitter on the outside to make the set more fun and I did use the chintzey ribbon here to add detail. We used the round gold labels that came with the embosser we bought previously here. Due to the glittery surface, we needed to use a little Elmers glue to keep the sticker on properly, but in the end they look great. We did need to trim parts of the enclosure, given they aren’t the same size as the  invitations, but it worked great. We’re going to use the remaining blank invites for placecards, which I will also write out myself.

We got an embosser today

We want to have our monogram on our favors and invitations. First, we tried ordering small oval-shaped stickers from My Own Labels. They have great designs and gave us lots of ideas, but the style we chose looked horrible 😦 It’s hard to pick out this stuff online. Anyway, we decided to try the $40 embosser on Living Victorian. It came today, and I’ve been embossing everything in site. Literally every piece of paper. I love the way the monogram came out – very classy! The monogram goes Bride’s first initial, Groom’s last initial, Groom’s first initial, with the middle one larger. So, if we were Angelina and Brad Pitt, it would be “APB”.