Handmade wedding invitations

One of the biggest projects I undertook for our wedding was making the invitations. I had a crazy idea that this would somehow be simple, despite a multi-step binding process, even though I’d never actually bound a book before. I just knew I could do it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

lots of cardboard cuttingEvery book started as a sheet of board precisely measured and cut.

making the booksThen each piece was placed and glued to an assortment of colored papers.

enlisted invitation elvesAt this point I got some help from my friend’s Jannatha and Kyle.

sewing paperFor the inside pages, Shawn and I bought a few vintage book plates with images of animals, which we scanned and laid out in our book. We chose a lot of owls and birds. I wrote small stories about us and wove it into the information about the actual wedding.

bindingWe had them printed at a local print shop and then I sewed the insides into the books.

fluffy helperMochi also helped.

stamping reply cardsShawn helped me stamp return envelopes for our reply cards. We were able to use the same envelopes from our save the dates.

a few completed booksI made about 90 of these books. All told it was probably 60 hours of work, but then again I wasn’t exactly keeping track.

Are you ready to see inside?

wedding invitation

invitation inside

owls wedding invitationWhile it was quite a long and arduous process, the responses that we received from guests made it all worth it. That being said, I would never do anything like it on that scale again. I wouldn’t have been able to complete them all in time without help from my friends, Shawn and my mom who helped me stamp and seal all the envelopes.

p.s. Of course I left out a few pages, so you all don’t show up at the wedding, since it hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll be sure to show them off in the end.