DIY With Avery - Wedding Invitation Pack

On the blog today I'm sharing my craftiness and how I DIYed my wedding invitations and decided on the theme and colours to use.

Picking a theme

With so many wedding blogs and pinterest for inspiration it was hard to narrow down the design because I loved everything!

But in the end I picked a vintage rustic theme as it suits my wedding reception venue and it was easy to find natural materials like twine and brown craft paper to use.

All I then needed was a colour to compliment this theme and I decided to base the wedding's entire colour scheme around the colour of the bridesmaid's outfits .... I just had to find their outfits! 

It turned out shopping for bridesmaid's dresses was harder than my wedding dress! At no fault of my beautiful bridal party the problem was I couldn't decide on a colour or find what I wanted in the shops ..... I changed my mind from emerald green to plum to teal to aqua to turquoise and then finally to forrest green which is pretty much the colour I wanted from the very beginning!

The wedding invitation packs

I had such success using the Avery celebrations and events range for our engagement party stationary that Avery kindly sent me some products to use for the wedding stationary.

From the Avery celebrations range I have made invitations, RSVP postcards, address and return address labels, gift tags and round labels.

Now I'm going to show you how I DIYed our wedding invitation packs at home with my laptop and printer and how they all came together.

Avery - Online and Print

Once I had the Avery products I was going to use I went to the Design and Print online section of the Avery website, entered the product code for the item and it brings up a heap of templates to use.

You can either use what's there or edit them - I used the basic template and changed the colours and font and saved the designs to my online Avery account. I went back to each design to edit or delete and start again, until I was happy with what I had.

When I was ready to finalise and print, before printing on the products I did a few test prints on plain paper to make sure they would all line up and print out perfectly. You can adjust the print margins and try again until you are sure they will print ok - then you can put the Avery products into the printer.

I used my Canon colour printer at home which printed them out really nicely, some of the products you need to feed through one at a time or they tend to stick together and the printer will jam. But overall they printed out beautifully and I had so many compliments from people who thought they had been professionally made, not printed at home.

Creating a monogram - for free!

One thing I recommend to anyone designing your own wedding stationary is to create a monogram of you and your partner's initials and then use this across all your stationary.

There are lots of websites which show you how to make your own monogram and some have templates already set up you can download for free. I found mine on Wedding Chicks and all I had to do was change the initials and colours to suit and save it.

I used the monogram image throughout all the stationary by inserting the image into each design, it really helped to tie everything together and is a great way to personalise the wedding stationary.

Wedding Invitations - DL Invitation Pack

I started with the invitations as I found once I had the wedding invitation sorted, I based all the other elements around that - matching the same font style, size and colour combination.

Once we had worked out the layout, wording and style for the invitations I was ready to print them out. With the final guest list I copied everyone's names as I wanted them to print out on the invites from the guest list into an Excel spreadsheet and uploaded this as a mail merge which inserted all the guests names into the invitations.

I went through and checked each invite fit the names on neatly, resized some of the longer names to fit, and then they were all ready to print out in one go. The invitations print 3 to a page and they pulled apart really easily.

I used a block green colour from the bottom of the invite that faded up towards the middle and it didn't print to the edged in colour unfortunately which left a white frame around them so Mr P got busy on the guillotine and trimmed them.

I invested in a $40 guillotine from OfficeWorks that I know I'll use a lot for my craft projects ...... Please don't ever ever ever ever use scissors to cut your wedding invites! Use a paper trimmer or guillotine for a neat professional finish.

Reply Information - Postcards

I had a lot of fun making the reply cards - they look like an actual postcard which I love. I did the design double sided.

The front was like a postcard with our names and the wedding date and in the centre I stuck on a Avery brown kraft round label printed with our monogram initials.

On the back of the postcard is the RSVP information to be completed by guests and our address details for them to post it back to us. I also included our email and telephone numbers as an alternative in case anyone doesn't want to post them back, which is fine with me as postage is expensive!

Gift and Social Media Information - Gift Tags

I was unsure how to include information about gifts and social media. In the end I decided to print the information onto gift tags which I tied together with twine. The gift tags worked perfectly for this and the monogram of our initials I inserted was a sweet detail.

We are using the WedPics App which guests download for free and they can then upload photos from the day which everyone can view and I can print them out at a later date. It also has options to add in accommodation information, gift registers, etc which is really handy it's a great App.

I also created an Instagram hashtag for guests to use at our wedding, everything has a hashtag nowadays! There are a few websites which generate hashtags for you, I got mine from Wedding Hashtag Wall and it also created a little Instagram sign with our Instagram hashtag which I'll print out on some of the leftover postcards and display at the wedding reception.

Address and Return Address Labels

The address labels kits are a must if you want a professional looking invitation set.

Once the guest list was finalised, I copied the names and addresses into an Excel spreadsheet, then inserted a mail merge into the labels. I still checked each one to make sure they fit onto the labels and edited any that needed to be.

For the small return address I added the monogram initial image as well as our name and address. 

I printed both sheets of labels out and they print really well so it's a quick and easy print job this one and it sure beats handwriting all those names and addresses!

Monogram Initials
Gloss Round Labels and Brown Kraft Round Labels

As mentioned, I created a monogram of our initials for free on Wedding Chicks and then saved the image and used it throughout all the stationary.

I used Avery's white gloss labels and brown craft labels and they both looked great and contrasted nicely against the different materials I used.

This was the easiest one to do, I simply inserted the monogram image into the labels and then printed them out.

The white gloss labels were used on the belly band and the brown labels were used on the back of the RSVP postcard.

Envelopes and Envelope Seals

I found the brown envelopes at Target for half price (bargain queen strikes again!) and they match the rustic theme perfectly.

For the envelope seals I made these from the Avery clear return address labels, I inserted our heart monogram into the smaller label sheet (meant for the return address) and printed it off.

They came out as sweet little envelope seals and looked great on the clear labels.

Belly Band and Monogram Gloss Labels

I found some A4 brown craft paper from Target that matched the envelopes and cut it into strips with the guillotine.

The monogram initials I printed on the gloss white labels were used to secure the belly band in place.

I folded the band around the invitation pack to secure all the elements together and then stuck the label on to secure the band.

Putting them together

The invitation, reply postcard, gift and social media tags, were all packaged together with the belly band wrapped around them.

I placed these packs inside the envelope with the address and return address labels attached and sealed the envelopes with the clear envelope seal to finish them off.

I absolutely love how the wedding stationary turned out and I had so much fun designing and creating everything myself.

Professional invitations start at around $6 each and these cost less than half of that, they were certainly cheaper to DIY and design and print at home - for the invitation, reply postcard, gift tags, return and address labels, belly bands, envelopes and envelope seals it came to a grand total of $2.71 each to make.

Here's the cost breakdown for each wedding invitation pack:
.56c  Invitation
.30c  Gift tag - Gift information
.30c  Gift tag - Social media information
.42c  Postcard - Reply cards
.25c  Round brown label - Used on reply card
.10c  Envelope
.11c  Envelope seal - Made from clear address label
.11c  Address label - For envelope
.11c  Return address label - Our address for envelope
.20c Brown paper - Cut into strips to make belly bands
.25c Round gloss white label - Used for belly band
       Twine - Already had
$2.71 total each pack

All you need is a computer and printer at home and you can make your own invitations like these using the different Avery products available from their celebrations and events range to create the look you want.

What do you think of my DIY wedding invitation packs?

You can check out my engagement invitations here 

Sharing with link parties:
Curly Crafty Mom - Motivational Monday
The Dedicated House - Make It Pretty Monday
Savvy Southern Style - Wow Us Wednesdays


Disclosure: Thanks very much to Avery Australia (Celebrations With Avery) for providing the Avery products for review. I have not received any payment or compensation. As always, all opinions are my own.

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[All images my own]


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