Ever since Mr. Mary Jane and I decided to get married at the courthouse, I’ve waffled repeatedly on whether to create some type of invitation for our very small amount of guests.

There were a few reasons I didn’t want to create these invitations:

1. Lack of time. I have tons of other things going on.
2. Possible tag-alongs. If FMIL were to put it on her fridge (for example), a few extra relatives might pencil us in to their calendars. Our event is very small and intimate, so we’d rather not have this.
3. There are only 7 guests! We can just tell them when and where!

Last week, I changed my mind after having been asked by each of the guests when, where, and what time the wedding was being held. A few of the guests have asked me multiple times. I decided perhaps they needed a specifics-card of some sort.

I also thought the moms might want to have something as a keepsake, perhaps to scrapbook. And I won’t lie: I wanted something to scrapbook, too. All of our paper products have our picnic information on them, and I really wanted to have something that recognizes our actual wedding date!

Our wedding is fast-approaching, but that’s not a bad thing!

In fact, it allows me to easily overcome problem number 2, above. All of the guests already know they’re coming to our wedding, so we don’t need them to reserve the date at this point (they’ve already done so). I can give the cards out within days of the wedding, and just ask the recipients to keep them hush-hush.

On Friday afternoon I sat down at my computer and started playing in Photoshop. I decided I’d do something nice and simple so that I could print them and be done with it. (Like I said, I have plenty to do without this added DIY project.)

Here’s what I came up with.

As you can see, I decided to veer away from the style of our picnic paper products [Save the Dates; Invitation suites]. This is because the ceremony is an entirely separate thing. The picnic celebrates our marriage; the ceremony is our marriage. The dates and guest lists are different, so I took the opportunity to change it up a little. I haven’t begun designing our announcements yet, but I have a feeling that their design will somehow tie in to these ceremony cards.

After I’d finished the mock-up, I was a little worried that they were perhaps a little “out there” with all of the splatters. Mr. Mary Jane loved it though, and told me not to change a thing! Sweet.

The fonts I chose are Inked God and SouciSans, both from dafont.com. I played around with Inked God’s capital and lowercase letters to get the desired embellishments (some of the caps have cool swishes)! I also used two different brushes to create the heart splatter: Damned Hearts and Vector Style Hearts (both downloaded from Brusheezy.com).

I went to Michaels and brought two sheets of double-printed cardstock and two rolls of ribbon.

Then on Saturday morning (after I finished the sash), I got down to business.

My paper was 12″x12″, but I wanted to print the cards on my home printer so I chopped them down to 8.5″x11″.

I think that the best decision I made was to change the print’s color from black (shown in the original design above) to brown (shown on the print-outs below). The brown looks completely awesome with the textured tan paper (if I do say so myself). Mr. Mary Jane said it almost looks like the ink was always part of the paper. I think it looks stamped, stained, or painted on (instead than the reality: fed through a computer peripheral). I printed two cards on each sheet, cut them out and rounded two opposite corners of each one.

Then it was time for ribbon and labels! I made some little labels from the cardstock scraps. I hand-wrote the invitees’ names on the colored-side of each label, rounded two opposing corners, and punched a heart-shaped hole in one corner of each.

I then tied a big, happy bow around each card using 2.5″-wide wired brown ribbon. Finally, I used skinny brown ribbon I’d bought to tie a label to each bow.

The tags kind of hang upside-down due to where I punched the heart-hole. In retrospect, I should have either written them differently or punched a different corner. I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle to change them, though.

Here they are, all done! I’m not going to put these in envelopes: I’ll hand-deliver them. I feel that the fat ribbon is enough to give it a package-like quality.

I made a total of 4 cards: three for invitees and one to keep myself.

It breaks down to…

• 2 pieces of 12″x12″ cardstock @ $.079 each, on sale for $30% off: $1.10
• Spool of the fattest brown ribbon I could find: $5.99
• Spool of the skinniest brown ribbon I could find: $0.50

I already owned…

• The paper cutter
• The corner-rounder
• The heart punch
• The scissors
• The Crayola marker
• The printer and its ink

Total Cost: $7.59
Cost per Invite: $1.90 (I made 4.)

The wired ribbon is what made it so spendy. If I were making a large volume of these, I’d have done a couple of things differently:

1. Bought cheaper ribbon (or bought this ribbon on sale/with a coupon).
2. Used a printer capable of printing 12×12 paper (allowing me to fit four of the 4×6 cards on one sheet instead of just two).

Since I only needed a few, I’m quite satisfied with the money spent as well as the overall result. I hope our guests like them as much as we do!

Throughout the planning process, have you had any decision-180s that caused you to spend more time and energy working on some aspect of your wedding? Was it worth it?

Source: WeddingBee.com