Regular readers of my blog know that I enjoy papercrafts and card making – and that I’m getting married next year.
One well meaning (future) family member took me aside soon after I got engaged and asked whether I was thinking of making all the invitations by hand, and kindly recommended that for my own sanity that I didn’t…. I have a few friends who have done this, and the resulting invitations look beautiful with an extra meaning knowing the effort that was taken in making them. But I’ve also heard stories of sitting up through the night cutting and gluing, and a production line mentality taking over as the wedding date nears…
With a full time job, long commute (about an hour and a half each way), blog to write, cat and future husband to take care of, oh and having a social life occasionally, I really didn’t think I would have time to do that. Much as I love the idea of making my own invitations, I think I would make half a dozen, then the novelty would wear off, I would get frustrated at the repetition and start to take less care over each one…. And I didn’t want to risk that.
On the other hand, I really did want to make some parts of my wedding myself. I’d love to make my own wedding cake but don’t think it’s a good idea (apparently it’s bad luck too) – there would be so much to do at the last minute, and I expect I will have other things to do the day before my wedding rather than be up to my elbows in icing. Also, as I will plan every inch of the day, it would be nice to have a surprise – where I don’t know exactly what something will look like until I see it. I have decided what I want to do about the cake, but haven’t started putting the wheels in motion yet as there have been more pressing things to do.
We decided not to spend money on printing and posting save the date cards –by the time we were ready to do this, we’d told all our family and several of our friends when and where we were getting married, so it seemed like a waste of cash. Instead, we designed a card on the computer which we sent by email as a PDF.
I knew I would get at least one raised eyebrow at not doing it ‘properly’ so to circumvent that, and to indulge myself a little bit with doing some crafts, I made a few save the date cards by hand.
I’m proud to say that my last name when I’m married will be Cowe – I think with my first name it sounds quite fun. There was never any doubt that we would have a subtle cow theme for the wedding – I did say subtle! – as the day will be mainly outdoors, with a relaxed, almost summer fete vibe. The venue is somewhere that is known for two annual music festivals (though I’ve never been) so we took to calling our wedding “cowefest” and it kind of stuck!
While I do want proper, more formal invitations printed on thick card, I thought I could have a bit of fun with the save the dates and make them more informal. So I started with a card blank which I cut in half to make a postcard rather than a greetings card you can open, and covered one side with cow print paper – which I’d bought a small pack of a long time ago!
I bought a ‘save the date’ stamp on ebay for a few pounds (which I plan to sell again now I’m done with it) and stamped that onto a piece of yellow card. I think pale yellow is about the only colour that really works with cow print!
I also bought a date stamp that looks like the ones from my school library, but as well as the date it has an option to choose a sentiment from the wheel. There wasn’t a ‘save the date’ so I went with ‘best day ever’, as I hope it will be! I also selected the date we are getting married and stamped that onto another piece of yellow card.
The only information we wanted to include at this stage was the date and location of our wedding (as a lot of our friends and my in-laws are based around London, we wanted to give them a heads up that it would be a Wiltshire wedding, and if people wanted to book accommodation this far in advance, they could). I did the wording on the computer and cut out the text to stick on the card along with a section saying ‘invitation to follow’ so people would know this wasn’t the proper invite.
Finally I wanted to add something else cow related. I had a bag of little resin cow heads I’d bought on Ebay some time ago; they were designed to be card toppers I guess. I stuck two onto a square of yellow card with a pink satin heart above their heads to represent me and my future husband, the Cowes.
It looks a bit silly and very homemade but that was the idea!
It looks a bit silly and very homemade but that was the idea!
