If there are lessons to be learned from the long road of my invitation making, I would love pass them along.I made my invitations, from scratch (except the pocketfolders which I bought).
Lessons learned:
1) Search the internets, magazines, stationary stores, and blogs for invitation inspiration. I got started on the invitations early because we didn't have a budget to have them made, and I knew I would have fun working on them.
2) Start early. Play with them while you watch TV, in between turns on scrabble, and during your breaks at work (if you really want to bring your wedding planning to work :). When I would work on them and be able to put them away for awhile, I would figure out the problems I was having and come back refreshed and ready to work again.
3) Don't use black ink for cutting lines if you are printing more than one "insert" or item per page. Use the lightest grey possible. This was a VERY painful lesson to learn. I spent a lot of time re-cutting the lines to get rid of the black thin line along the edge.
4) Sometimes its worth it to just buy something pre-made. I knew I wanted to make the invitations myself (The wedding just wouldn't seem like our wedding if someone else made everything), but after over $20 worth of supplies and many frustrating attempts to make the pocket folders, I found them on sale for about $20 total. Buying them was well worth it.
5) USE ETSY! The tree graphic we had was "borrowed" from a painting we found online. After many failed attempts to make the tree brown (and we're talking over 5 hours of work) and also white (you'll see another earlier version of the invite later), I put an alchemy request on etsy to have someone turn the painting graphic into a high resolution image. 15 minutes later and $10 out of my paypal account, I had two graphics that were PERFECT.
6) The $4 corner rounder is well worth the effect. My poor husband gave his thumbs to me over many evenings and rounded the corners on all 6 inserts of our invitations and they were SO worth it. When people found out we made the invitations they all wondered how we got the corners round.
7) Making a pretty map is easy - and fun. I used these DIY instructions and got a lot of great comments on our map: http://www.weddingbee.com/2007/05/04/diy-invitation-map/
8) We used this motto again and again in our wedding planning, and it really helped with the invitations: If someone is going to be offended by us __________, do we really want them there? In the case of the invitations, the "blank" was that we typed the names and addresses on the front of the envelope. We went down the list of guests and decided that not one person would object - or at least say anything. Our wedding was going to be different from any they had ever attended - and this was the perfect way to introduce them to that.
9) Send yourself a sample in the mail and also to someone who hasn't seen it yet for a fresh set of editing eyes.
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