Invitations and Stationery If you aren't confident enough to make your own, read on, I'll help, or skip to ALTERNATIVES. This is the easiest part to do yourself. Make your own. You’re viewing this web site on a computer right? Somewhere on that computer there should be
a word processing program – even if you never specifically installed it – Windows 3.1© came with Write, Windows 95 came with Wordpad© and many new computers come with freebies like MS Works© and Lotus Smartsuite©. The latter are very good as they give you spell checking and perhaps even page borders or ready-made templates for invitations that you can adapt to your liking. If you’ve got a desktop publishing program, you’re home and hosed (as we say in Australia)! Locate and start your software. Type in the text of your invitation. Don’t know what to write? Look around the Internet for ideas, or go to the real paper magazine Vogue©, which produces its excellent "wedding guide" every six months or so. You’re a modern woman, so adapt and change your invitation until it has the wording you feel comfortable with. Don’t get a stomach-ache about traditional wording or formality. Spell check it, print it, and save it to a floppy disk. Show your text to your own and your groom’s parents (and your groom of course!). Make any changes and then it’s time to decide what size the invitation will be, what typeface to use, and whether to include any borders and/or pictures/designs. You do not have to use (sometimes) tacky computer clip art, no no no. Find a craft shop, or a specialist rubber stamp art shop. Or clip out something you like from a magazine. There are many angels, cherubs, rings, hearts, floral arrangements etc that you can rubber stamp onto a printed copy for the printers to reproduce. If you have access to a scanner (beg, borrow, ask for favours!) you can scan in a magazine clipping and even change it, and then include it in your invitation. A rubber stamp can also be applied to the envelope, cake bags etc to produce your own matching range of wedding stationery. The best and easiest way to set out an invitation is centred on an A4 sheet of paper - easy to do with a word processor. Small envelopes for response slips and thank you's can be colour matched later. Small offset printers, or colour copy centres usually have a large range of paper that they will copy your work onto, including parchment style or marbelised paper. They will probably also have an ink colour chart so you can compare how the ink will look with your chosen paper. If you are really nice when obtaining a quote, they may give you some sample paper sheets to try out. I must thank the people at Terrace Print in Perth, who did my
printing. I took my parchment paper to them and they printed my invitations on it with a coloured ink. Rubber Stamp Emporiums in Perth: Starfish (North Perth) Stamp It (Victoria Park) Stamp Deco (Willetton) Some printers will accept your work on floppy disks or let you e-mail your data to them. I don't think a laser printed copy is necessary to take to the
printers, I have a near new inkjet printer and the result on proper plain paper was crisp and clean enough to produce excellent copies from. Response cards (or slips) are small cards or slips of paper pre-printed with I/We accept/decline the invitation (or something to that effect) tucked under the flap of a small envelope (pre-printed with the bride or her Mother's address) these are enclosed with the invitation. Guests only
have to put a line through the inappropriate response, write the names and numbers of guests attending, and pop the response in its envelope and into the mail. It's an excellent way of ensuring a 99% response to your wedding invitation - and less stressful and awkward follow up calls to those people
who haven't had the manners to let you know if they even received the invitation, six weeks before the wedding! Tracking - when sending out response cards and invitations, keep your master list of guests handy - and on the back of the response card, in the top right or left corner, in tiny writing, pencil in the number of the
invitation according to your master list. If you receive any unsigned or unnamed response cards you can check the number on the back of the cards against the master list of guests, to find out who sent them. Of course nothing will stop people sending you back un-filled-in response cards, neither indicating accept nor decline! At least you will be able to tell who sent them and straighten the matter out! Yet again, you can create a master copy of your thank you card at home with your computer and rubber stamps. PICTURE OF EXAMPLE OF THANK YOU CARD Being less ink than a whole invitation, you could even print all the thank you's yourself if you have a printer. Do you really need an Order of Service? Personally, I think they were invented by a specialist printer with an idea for generating $$$. An order of service can be simply typed and centred in a word processing
program, and photocopied onto both sides of sheets of paper, and the front cover embossed with your motif on your invitation paper, then the whole booklet fastened together by two holes threaded with coloured ribbon. Plain cards can be purchased at any news agency, stationery shop or large department store. You may find them with a suitable design already printed. They look superb with the guests name written in gold/silver pen or ink colour to match the bridesmaids and theme, like Navy or Burgundy. You can also make your own place cards with decorative paper shears, use paper left from the invitations and other printing. If you have a printer you can print your screed on them. EXAMPLE PIC OF PLACE CARD Or simply rubber stamp your design on them. If you can access a paint program on a computer you may be able to scan in and copy your design, then flip it left or right and incorporate it with your wording in your word processing or desk top publishing program. Fold the paper until you get the correct size for your place card. Don't forget you will need a fold over flap so your place card stands up. The cheat's way out is to get your caterer/venue to do the place cards for you. But you may end up with machine printed names which is a bit impersonal.
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An A4 (metric business letter sized) sheet can be folded twice horizontally to fit beautifully into a DL sized (business) envelope. A4 is
the best paper size to keep costs down - you can fit 2 A5's (use for response cards, thank you cards, order of service booklet pages) on 1 A4 sheet. Beautiful paper and envelopes can be purchased from Department Stores or even specialist business stationery chains.
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