Wedding Crafts

Making Our Save The Dates and Invitations

We get married this year! Our wedding is in France, and we thought we'd try and add a little French to our handmade save the dates and invitations. We chose France mainly because WINE. and CHEESE. Mmmm.

Making your own wedding stationary isn't always cheaper than getting them made - this depends on how much will power you have in the stationary shops...which for me is not a lot. It certainly is more personal and hopefully means they are exactly how you want them. I liked them for all being slightly different.

Save The Dates

Wine corks! You can find these on the internet fairly cheap, or you can get used ones from wine bars/ vineyards. I got some that were unused - you are already limited as to what you can put on these as they're so small. I used a sharpie fine tip to write on them, you'll need a few of these as they dry up writing on the cork.

The annoying thing about them is postage - they're not ideal for envelopes. We managed to hand deliver most of them.

The less information on here the better I think, otherwise it ruins your invitations. The date and who's wedding it is should suffice (and where, if its abroad).

Ive heard anything between 9 months and a year being an appropriate time to send these out.

Invitations

I tried to keep to the French rustic theme going (they even match the bridesmaid boxes - see blog Wedding Crafts 2.0). They took AAAGES. But they did become a little extravagant and they didn't need to be. Especially since all they did was direct you to a website!

I got some already cut little brown bits of card and enlisted Alex to stamp his thumb next to mine to make a heart. You waste loads of these (mainly because Alex was involved) that didn't look right.

Must include: Date, who's wedding, who is inviting (we invited our own guests but sometimes the brides parents invite the guests), location, how to RSVP, and ALL OTHER DETAILS (timings, directions etc). We failed at the all other details bit and put these on a website where you could RSVP. Again, multiple pens needed.

I then found these really pretty but absolutely unnecessary (and expensive) grandma's doily type wrap around things.

Because I had a hessian rustic look in mind, I found a huge roll of hessian and cut it into pockets. It frays a lot and its very frustrating but I think it says 'I made this' - so roll with it. It needs ironing or it will never ever stay in place.

Whilst walking in Melbourne we passed a super cute haberdashery shop which had lavender colour wax and seals - we got a K and an A to stick our hessian pockets shut.

If you want to do the wax seal on hessian, put some plastic where the invitation is going, otherwise it just melts through to the back - pocket ruined.

The final touches were a bit of string, some lavender (use dried and it smells good, or you can pull apart an artificial bunch like we did) and we put a name tag on with a teeny little peg.

These need to be sent 3-9 months in advance.

et voila!