Anne Bowman

Once Wed had an awesome D.I.Y. spotlight last week with Julie’s amazing invitations. Done with a laserjet printer and sheer design talent, this girl busted out some seriously affordable invites, coming under $50 total! And to top it off added custom designed buttons! I love it!

For more pics and the how-to click here.

For my invitations I created my own design and ordered 100 free postcards from Vista Print. At first I was worried about how glossy they would turn out, I was expecting something high gloss and funky. I recieved them last week and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they weren’t glossy at all. They were a almost matte with a slight glossy finish. We’ve decided to change everything about my wedding including the venue, so they were irrelevent by the time I recieved them, however, I’m going to go through the same process again, because I liked the way they turned out. Yay.

I have a feeling everyone’s going to think I’m super cheap. But, I would rather spend more money on making my wedding fun, than on little things. Invitations especially annoy me.  Don’t get me wrong, I would kill for some beautiful letter press invitations, however, they are expensive. And I have a really hard time spending a lot of money on them, because in reality, have you ever kept another persons wedding invitation as a keepsake? You probably just kept it for a couple months as courtesy and then tossed it.

So, I came up with my own cheapskate scheme and hopefully it all works out.

Look at invitations you like. I used Wedding Paper Divas “Floral Flurry” as inspiration for mine.

I searched for flower illustrations and found my favorite through google images. I brought it into Adobe Illustrator and traced it and placed it similar to the style above. I chose two colors and voila! Done.

Now here is the important part….

I went to Vistaprint.com and ordered 100 free postacrds. You pay $3.99 to upload your image and then around $6 for shipping and handling. Beware, if you go to the Vistaprint website you might not be able to find the offer for the postcards. I provided the link above. You can also google “Free postcard printing” and it will come up as the first listing.

The only downside is that they are glossy. I’m not sure how glossy, because I have not received them yet….but if it doesn’t work out I’m only $10 poorer.

I also found a couple of other DIY invitationers

Kristen

Maritess

I don’t know about you but I’m so over these ridiculously priced bridal bouquets. Maybe it’s just that I don’t get it. They’re really only used for the ceremony and pictures and in the large scope of things I do, in fact, want one but I want it to be next to free. A lot of the D.I.Y. do’s and don’t lists advise against making your own floral arrangements but I suspect they are in cahoots with the floral industry and it’s all a conspiracy to get us to spend hundreds on flowers. One of my bridemaids has experience with floral arrangements so I figure what the hell.

Real Simple has a cute little slideshow on how to turn supermarket flowers into pretty sassy bouquets.