DIY Wedding Invitations

I mailed out a stack of wedding invitations today, and we're going to pass out the rest in person. It's taken me about a week to make all the wedding invites and I thought I'd document the process here so I can look back on how I enthusiastically made each guest's invitation card. :D

First, I researched what would be the most affordable yet personal-and-genuine option for wedding invites. If I got professional wedding invites done, it would probably cost about an average of $3 per invitation, and with 30+ invites to go out it would've easily been about $100. So I slept on it and decided I would make all the invites by hand.

I bought a huge box of envelopes and note cards from Target for $14.99, knowing that would be enough cards to last me for Thank You notes as well as other arts and crafts. I printed out a bunch of items: little mason jars, pixel hearts, caricatures of me and Darren that I had commissioned years ago and got the copyrights of, and little maps to Chapel Dulcinea.

For the envelopes: I wrote each guest's name on a mason jar printout and cut out little pixel hearts to paste on the back of each envelope, as well as on the maps where the chapel is.

For the wedding invitations themselves: I drew wedding dress silhouettes freehand and cut them out, then wrote all the invite info on them (e.g. date, time, venue) and pasted them on one side of each card. On the other side I either pasted the map or the caricature of us.

Every card was handwritten and has glue stains. :P

In order not to feel overwhelmed, which I think can happen very easily for brides in terms of wedding planning, I'm taking it one week at a time to get a big task completed. So now we've got the venue booked, guest list sorted (more or less), and wedding invitations done. Today we also got our Amazon wedding registry done too! :D I don't know if we'll actually get any gifts from there since I didn't include our registry info on the invites, but we figured if/when people ask where we're registered, we can at least tell them they can find us on Amazon, haha.

Next on our to-do list are service providers: cake, photographers, music, minister/officiate, decor. And then there's the whole green card application to get planning for: we've kind of started the planning, but trust me when I say that the immigration process is 1000x more stressful and complicated than any wedding could be. :(

At the same time I still have work, as well as thesis prep, and miscellaneous life things to handle. Growing up is hard, I guess, haha, but I'd rather face the challenges of adulthood than be a kid forever. It's so strange for me to say that because I think I've had a Peter Pan syndrome for most of my life, but then it's like boom, I find myself in my mid-20s and I can't wait to make a life for myself.