Jo, My Gosh!: The Easiest DIY Wedding Invites Ever!

Oh boy. Let me tell you, life has been crazy! I was hoping to get more posts out, but things (like my car deciding to lose all power on the highway) have popped up. This week, though, I promise to be much more diligent!

Last week I first wrote about our preparations for our wedding when I posted about our save the dates. Let's talk more about stationary and the wedding today!

Deciding on an invitation was especially nerve-wracking for me because there are so many companies-- brick and mortar or online? calligrapher? DIY? And then there are colors, envelope liners, fonts... You get the picture. For someone who is detail-oriented, it's both exciting and a nightmare.

We finally decided on ExclusivelyWeddings.com. I was originally interested in them because they offered free samples, but I stuck around because the samples were of great quality and the prices were fair.

We used Color Chic in black-- simple and elegant invitations. You can't go wrong with classic (which was my mantra during wedding planning)! Usually ExclusivelyWeddings.com has some kind of sale going, but we were able to order when they had a 35% off code, which turned into a savings of $115. Pretty awesome!

I wanted a black and white wedding with pops of guava, orange, and yellow. During the wedding, those colors would be in the bridesmaids' flowers, on the cake, and in the centerpieces. I wanted the color on the invitations as well, but the pinks that ExclusivelyWeddings.com carried weren't quite our color.... but Michaels carried the exact color in ribbons. Boom. An awesome, easy DIY was born.

You'll need:

stick-on pearls (found in the scrapbook/stickers section of Michaels)
a roll of 3/8 inch ribbon
self-adhesive dots
invitations

Directions:

Cut a length of ribbon that measures double the width of your invitation, plus an inch. (For my invitation, I cut the ribbon into 9 inch segments.)
Lay the ribbon on the table and place the invitation face-down on top of it. Stick a self-adhesive dot at the end of one of the ribbon ends, and drawing the ribbon as tightly as possible (without bowing the paper), and press the other end of the ribbon onto the adhesive dot.
Flip the invitation over and press a pearl onto the middle of the ribbon.

Check out my very Pinterest-friendly photo tutorial for a visual. (My sister, Rachel, was the hand model. Her extremities are so much prettier than mine!)

And here's the final product (minus some vital information that I erased for the internet version)! We took the RSVP card and envelope and reception card, stacked them, and slid them underneath the ribbon, so everything was in a nice, little package.