Remember all of those times I showed off our DIY wedding collateral (for lack of a better word) but chose to blur out all of the significant deets? I’ve been wanting to show you what the full suite looked like, without so many of important date/time components hidden. It’s a work of art, the most precious of all of the works of art that Pete has designed for me yet. I hope that this whole series is a friendly reminder that you can make great DIY wedding materials yourself – especially if you take the time to search around for great stock photography and graphics.
With exception of the landscape-oriented wedding invite (which we had letterpressed), each and every one of these pieces was printed at the previously un-fabulous but now officially fabulous FedEx Kinko’s, a go-to that saved us a boatload of time and money and was able to grant us really nice looking wedding pieces at next to nada (<$30 for everyyything). I suppose we got lucky with our 100# cardstock (which we bought 200 sheets of on Amazon for just $125), because the employees at the store were surprised that it ran through their printer so nicely every time we stopped by.
It’s a little hard to deduce what’s happenin’ in the above collage of materials, but in addition to the save the date card, shower invite, and wedding invite, we produced a mini-program for all of our guests, and a table card that sat beside our guest book and DIY succulent favors.
The program was something I had in mind for several months, inspired by a fold out card I noticed during the early phases of planning; I knew that I wanted more than an single piece of paper-sized program, and I didn’t want to get into making a whole book because there wasn’t a lot to be said, but with a little noodling and folding of paper, I realized that for this application, I could have all of the ink printed on a single side of paper (precisely the long half of our 8.5″x14″ pre-purchased laper), and fold it carefully into a square Z-like accordion to only present the cover. And get this, the best part decided by Pete, is that it was scaled to be small enough to fit into the back pocket of your pants/jeans/whatever. Because who wants to be trying to hold on to their program all night or remembering where they stashed it? BAM, solved.
It turned out better than I even imagined because Pete also took it upon himself to creating all of the precise creases in each of the 100 pieces that were required to guarantee a perfectly aligned fold. This took several hours in a single night. (And I had a much different plan in mind that would have taken just as long, but our finished pieces would have probably looked like they were folded by a hyper preschool class). His way (and I’m convinced this won’t make a lot of sense so direct all questions to him): he created a gouge on a piece of scrap wood out from the edge of the board that pre-determined where each of the two folds needed to be marked. This is the mark on the left, ignore the gouge on the right, I don’t believe that he used that side.
Aligning the left side of the program to the left edge of the board, Pete held a ruler firmly in place, and then scored over the left-most gouge using my latch hook to create a firm indent in the paper, but not break through it.
He would then flip the paper, align the paper to the left again, and perform an opposite crease on the other end of the paper so that the paper would be inclined to fold in two different ways to create that “z” shape. Remember: I don’t think he ever used the gouge on the right.
In any case, adding creases to the paper made the folds pre-measured so that every one was a perfect square, and a pinch to fold together.
The design of these programs matched the rest of our materials perfectly by using the same typefaces and peony graphic. Our ceremony was simple and didn’t include any religious traditions or specific readings so the program didn’t need to include very many details, just simple acknowledgement of our parents, officiant (my cousin Matt), and the best girl (Julia). It thanked our guests again for spending their holiday with us (really, it still means so much that we had over 80 people attend), and stated that “The ceremony will be followed by drinks, hours d’oeuvres, and dessert.” so that guests weren’t wondering what came next or if there was a bar or if we had a delay between the ceremony and reception.
This is also where we clued our guests in on the idea of using the instagram/twitter hashtag #merrywedding, and we were thrilled that many of our friends took to it. (As of today, they’re still almost all our wedding’s photos, but a few other people prior to and since have used it for their own purposes too, haha. Go ahead, check it out and see one of the 5 apple pies I baked on wedding-eve, some amazing photos of us cutting the cake and spending time with our families, and an unexpected photo of me guzzling prosecco, by request of my own mom.)
The only other thing that we bothered to have printed was a simple sign that sat beside our guest book and favors as a polite reminder to our guests. It was a simple sheet of the same legal-sized paper folded in half to stand unaided. And it cost 10-cents, all of which I basically found in pennies outside of our ghetto FedEx Kinkos.
We’re just so happy that it’s over–I mean–that we were so inspired to create the whole set of materials ourselves. It didn’t end up being an extraordinary amount of work, especially when you think about how much many couples DIY for their big day, but was the perfect personal touch for us.
What’s your inspiration for DIY wedding materials?
5 Comments
Beauuuuuuuuutiful … and so inspiring in its simplicity and budget-friendliness!
Thank you, Katharine!
Hello! These invitations are great! they have been a real inspiration for me in designing my own.
I have one question, what font did you use for the lettering of your first names? My name is Emily too and I just love the way the E curls and loops in the font you used:)
Thanks!
Hello again! I found the font. It’s Mardian. Thanks anyway:)
Glad you found it!!