As I showed you yesterday, here are our invitations – complete with instructions on how to make them! If it doesn’t make any sense, let me know and I will do my best to clarify!

To make two invitations, you will need:

• 1 sheet of black paper
• 1 sheet of red paper
• invitation wording printed on paper like this (try to use a laser printer – it turns out that much nicer):
• double sided tape or another mechanism of adhesion. (Do NOT use glue. It’s too messy. I learned the hard way!)

1. Cut the black piece of paper in half width-wise. (I used a paper cutter, but I guess an exacto knife and a ruler would work just as well.)
2. Cut 1/2″ of length and width of red paper (so it is 8″ x 10.5″) and cut it in half width-wise.
3. Cut 1″ margins off of invitation paper and cut it in half width-wise. (I suggest printing light grey lines as guidelines, unless you’re a champion.)
4. Adhere red paper onto black and invitation paper onto red. Make sure they are centred – pencil marks help with that process – so that there is 1/4″ exposed of both the red and black papers.
5. You’re done! Repeat for how many invitations you need.

Note: you can use whatever colours of paper your heart desires – the simple design makes it really attractive! (at least in my opinion.)

If you cannot read the text, here’s what it says:

Mama and Papa Bean
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter,
Bean with Mr. Bean
<Our Wedding Date>
Two Thousand and Eight
at One Forty One in the afternoon*
<Name and Location of Church>

Reception to follow at Five Thirty
<Name and Location of Reception Venue>

If I could have changed anything, I would have put MIL and FIL Bean’s names on them. But I was being too sticky to etiquette as my parents were footing a large part of our wedding bill.

RSVP cards are similar – you print 4 cards on 1 piece of printer paper and cut so that they are 5″ x 3.75″. Then adhere the printed RSVP onto the 5.5″ x 4.25″ black piece of paper.

Again, if you cannot read the text, here is what it says:

A favour of a reply is requested by <Date to RSVP by>
M_______________________________(names)
__ of __ guest(s) will attend

One can also RSVP at <our wedding website>
The password is “password”

Please contact us with any special allergies or special needs.

I would suggest not putting the “M” because it confuses people.

The out of town map package was pretty easy to make. It consisted of three 3.75″ x 5″ pieces of paper with a map, accommodation information and information of activities to do in the area layered on a 4.25″ x 5.5″ piece of paper tied with a ribbon. If you want to make the sheets more secure, I suggest using two holes and a bow or another fastening method.

Did you make your own invitations? How did you do it?

Next up, making ceremony programs, place cards and reception schedules.

*Does anyone know why we picked this time?

Yes, we made our own invitations. Perhaps it was a bit silly and I really wish that I had thought about double sided tape earlier. Oh well, you live and learn. The thing I liked about our invitations is the simplicity and the fact that most of the cuts were either 1/2 a page or a 1/4 of a piece of 8.5″ x 11″ paper.

Here is a run down on what we stuffed into our invitations:

• Invitation (5.5″ x 8.5″- half a sheet of paper)
• RSVP card in envelope with return address and stamp (5.5″ x 4.25″ – quarter of a sheet of paper)
• Map (as shown here)
• Out of Town information (a map, accomodation information and suggested activities)
• Registry card (I know some people think it’s tacky, but there would have been lots of confusion and angst if we hadn’t.)

I printed the addresses directly on all the envelopes, using the wonderful program called “Mail Merge” in Word. You should try it!

Coming up, a run down on how to make the invitations!

As I mentioned previously, Mr. Bean and I are etiquette rebels when it comes to our guest list and invitation sending. First off, we did not send save the dates.

We didn’t do any STDs to save money and neither of us had heard of/received them before. We also thought logistically only sending out one round of “invitations” made sense. Does anyone know where this “tradition” originated?

Our reception venue, which is the limiting factor in terms of size, holds 200 people with tables on the dance floor and 180 without tables on the dance floor. We wanted the dance floor to be clear, so that it isn’t a huge production halfway through the evening. The website of the hotel gives this lovely floor plan:

…which is 168 people. To me, even with 3 more tables to fit the 180 people, it would seem really crowded. (And we don’t want our guests to feel like cattle herded into the hall!)  We also re-looked at our budget and there were other expenses that we didn’t originally allot any resources to: rings, day after brunch, how expensive beauty appointments are, etc. and we decided that we would like 168 people to attend our reception. However, our first guest list consisted of 220 people – somehow it seemed unlikely that 52 people would RSVP no. So what were we going to do?

Answer: We decided to do two rounds of invitations. First round would be family, out of town guests and people who had to be there (ie. Bridal party). Then, depending on how many people replied yes, we could invite the second round accordingly. We wanted to send out invitations to 100 people at first, but given that Mr. Bean has a HUGE family, it required a lot of trimming. I feel badly for being so harsh, but I think in the end the important, “I’ve met you more than once!” people will be there.

Now that the first set of RSVPs are all back and accounted for (and exams over!) it’s time to look at the second list of people. I have to admit that I may have been a bit too harsh in the trimming process (and given that we had a >20% negative RSVP rate, which was higher than expected) as now we’re down to 165 people. I’m perfectly happy having less people (the budget will rejoice at any rate!) but there is still a weird feeling inside of me of “what if most people say no?” I guess there is the word of mouth invitation process after the second round of RSVPs comes back.

How is your guest list shaping up? Are you over? Under? and what did you do about it?

I do have some advice for when making a guest list: sort guests into “must be there”, “should be there” and “it would be nice to be there” categories so that the most important people are invited first!  

I admit, I am one of those ambitious brides who is making all of her invitations by hand. I actually enjoyed doing it, too! They’re really nothing spectacular, but I think that they look nice and clean. (Pictures to come at a later time!)

Before I even started making the invitations, I decided that every good invitation needs a good map. Mr. Bean and I had received an invitation where the map was a photo copy from map quest and it was very difficult to read. Given that I like things to look nice, clean and not cluttered I knew that our maps had to be a step up from map quest, yet I wasn’t willing to pay someone else to make one. I reckoned with some basic tracing skills, anyone can make a pretty map!

Step 1: From google maps or your favourite map provider, print of a copy of your map.

This is what my map looked like. Darken any roads or landmarks that are important.

Step 2: Take a blank piece of paper and trace the important roads and land marks.  Label each road until you have a drawn version of your map like this:

Scan this drawing and open it in a program like corel, powerpoint or publisher. I used publisher. (Yes! for low-key editing programs!)

Step 3: Using the curve and freeform tool, trace the lines on your map. (Play around with it to get the hang of it – it’s okay if it isn’t perfect the first time.)

Once all the lines are traced in, type in the road and landmark names. Make sure to include the addresses of the venues!

Step 4: Make lines desired thickness. Adjust all text to fit with slopes of roads. Group all the objects together. Scale to the correct size.

Step 5: Print and you’r ready to go!

The final product:

I printed this map with four to a page and it fit nicely in our envelope.

That wasn’t too bad, was it?