When Owen and I got engaged, I had been waiting so long that I already knew exactly what I wanted for anything wedding related. This made wedding planning extremely easy and quick for me as I had already done a ton of research. For those getting married/already married, wedding invitation prices are actually insane, especially for the “extra-ness” of the ones I was looking into. I knew I wanted them homey, artsy, and well thought out. So, I did what I do best and DIY’d the crap out of it. The reel of how I put these together will be posted on Instagram!
We ended up spending just over $3.00 per invitation for 100 of them, including postage, which is really good compared to any other invite we looked at with the same amount of detail, and this also includes our $50 custom embosser which jacked up the price per invite substantially. Please note: if you are doing any wax seals in your invites, you will need to purchase what is called “non-machinable postage” which are butterfly stamps. They are around $1.00 per stamp, and all envelopes have to be hand sorted as they won’t fit through the machine. If you put regular stamps on, they will all get sent back to you. This makes them a bit more expensive, but those wax seals are just too pretty to pass up.
Amazon is probably the best place to find an array of stationary at a reasonable cost, but Vista Print and Zazzle are also great options if you wanted to do something a bit more professional, basic, and easy! Below, I’ll be breaking down where I sourced everything and how I put it all together!
All three designs that were printed were made on Canva, Canva runs my life- I love it with every fiber of my being. They have a ton of free options for designing, but I use Canva Pro- as you have access to everything from templates to design elements. If you are DIYing all of your invites as well, I recommend getting a paper cutter, as this makes the process go by 10x faster- and gets sharp clean straight edges. You can also find these on amazon, here’s an example:
To start, envelopes are from Amazon, these are amazing quality and they are a little larger than a 5×7, so if you have multiple pieces like I- these fit perfect! Plus, they have a TON of different colors.
Next thing that isn’t pictured in our invites above are the amazing, chic, beautiful wrap around address labels, for privacy reasons of course. I ordered the template off of Etsy, you can find that below. From there, I downloaded template as instructed. You can from there add in all of your addresses needed. These were so different and I fell in love with how easy they were. Here is the Etsy maker and product to buy from Amazon to print them at home.
When looking at paper, I have always bought premium card stock, you can get this at any office supply store or even amazon. Be aware when you are printing your own that the quality of your printer is important. Usually industrial printers are brighter and have better quality prints, but if you’re not too picky about this- your home printer is just fine. We decided to put our itinerary in the invite as well, as there is nothing worse than not knowing when you’re going to eat, if there will be a cocktail hour, etc. And I am extremely type A- so this was important. This was the back sheet of our invite, and was designed on Canva- printed at home, here’s the design of the back page as well as our actual invite:
The theme of our wedding is bohoish, using wildflowers as our main focus. So, when looking on Amazon- I found seeded paper, and I knew I just had to print our invites on it as I am a huge gardener. It’s very thin, so printing was a bit of a learning curve as two pieces would sometimes print at the same time. The biggest thing to note about this paper is that it is a bit difficult to cut and may clog up the path of the blade on your paper cutter. If you are wanting to use paper like this, I would advise you to lightly pull/push the blade through instead of applying a ton of pressure. This way the paper won’t rip, and then you can just pick it up and pull the two pieces apart from one another. Here’s the paper we used for this:
Next, we have the Washi tape and magnetic strips. The Washi tape was found at Staples and it is super easy to rip with your hands to get a more artsy vibe this is what we used to attach the invite to the itinerary. We also purchased magnetic strips, which we cut into small squares to adhere to the back of the itinerary. This way it could hang on their fridge etc with ease, it’s the little things lol. And also not sure why I’m saying “we”, Owen did not help lol, so ME. You can find Washi tape anywhere, and they have the cutest designs and colors!
To hold all of the pieces together, I ordered vellum jackets from amazon, as they are a bit expensive, I cut mine in half and it worked out really well, plus I didn’t think I needed the entire jacket
Next thing on the agenda, was finding string to tie the jacket, purely an aesthetic decision. Then I went down the rabbit hole and decided I wanted dried florals on them too. Below you’ll find the string, wax seal stamp I used, as well as a wax seal mold (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GETTING ONE AS THEY AREN’T AS UNIFORM IF YOU DO THEM ON REGULAR WAX/PARCHMENT PAPER) plus, the molds comes with stickers so you can adhere them to the vellum paper when the wax seals are dry.
Okay, next is the actual wax. I ordered gold wax sticks from amazon that go into a glue gun. Biggest thing to note is you will need a regular sized glue gun, not a mini one. I was able to get over 80 seals with one pack of these. I used 1 1/2 pumps of wax in the mold per seal.
Lastly, as far as assembly- I made all of the wax seals before hand. Note: if you place your wax stamp and keep it on ice while doing this, you’ll be able to get about 3 stamps at a time, which helps with efficiency. Otherwise you’ll need to wait until the wax has hardened under the stamp in order to move onto the next. So only put about 3 circles of wax in the mold at a time, or you’ll end up not having enough time to move on and press before the wax gets hard.
I placed all of the loose sheets in the vellum envelope, tied it with the string, attached the sticker on top of the string to hold it together, placed the dried florals onto the sticker, then added the wax seal.
To add an additional level of customization, I ordered a custom embosser off of Zazzle- It was very expensive compared to everything else, but I will be able to use it in the future, here is the one I ordered:
Overall, I was extremely happy with the way our invites turned out, and they were artsy and custom which made me extremely happy.
The last big tip I will say to do is to create a wedding website, we are using The Knot, and it has been a game changer for our guests, rsvp’ing, and our registry! And it’s FREE!!!!!
I hope you enjoyed the breakdown of this DIY, I can’t wait to share more.
XO, RYATHOME