This weekend we celebrated my daughter’s fifth birthday. We decided on a tea party theme with 4 of her friends. I had so much fun making the invitations and decorating for the party! It was a great birthday party theme but it would also work really well for bridal or baby showers.

The Invitation

Here is the tea cup invitation I created – the original template I used is from www.melstampz.blogspot.com.

The Table

For the decorations, I made tissue paper flowers in lime green & pink and hung them from the ceiling using fishing line. The idea and instructions for how to make the flowers came from www.weddingbycolor.com. The tissue paper flowers were so simple to make and turned out beautifully so now that the party is over I’m going to hang them in a corner of my daughters room. I dressed the table with a simple white linen table cloth paired with a hot pink runner. A teapot from the dollar store served as a vase for the arrangement of mums and tulips. For snacks we cut fruit and cheese, using cookie cutters, into flowers and stars and placed them on pretty platters. The tea (a.k.a. apple juice) was served in little green espresso cups that I found at IKEA.

Teapot with mums and tulips

Sampling the "Tea"

As an activity at the party we made these adorable bouquets of felt flowers and arranged them in a little lime green flower pot. They turned out even better than I had hoped. The original idea for the flowers came from www.americancrafts.typepad.com. You can find detailed instructions on their website. Once the girls finished their flowers we had them stick them into floral foam inside the pots and covered the top with spanish moss.

Felt Flower Craft

Felt Flower Bouquet

There are many etiquette rules when it comes to addressing your wedding invitations and they can be quite overwhelming when you finally sit down to tackle this project. We have summarized some of the the most commonly asked questions regarding addressing that we get and included a couple of resources that can answer the rest of your questions.

Do I need double envelopes for my invitations?

Although still used, they are much less common these days. The Uncommon Bride does not offer double envelopes as an option for our invitations because to us it seems like a waste of paper and we doubt that your guests will mind!

Do I have to address my invitations by hand?

If you or a friend has really nice handwriting then addressing the envelopes by hand looks lovely. However, using your computer and some clear address labels works well too and will likely save you lots of time! You can use a font that coordinates with your invitations – just make sure it is still readable so your invitations will get delivered.

Where can I use abbreviations on my envelopes?

Abbreviations are used for titles, like Mr. or Dr., but otherwise you should write out words like “and”, “Street”, “Avenue” and the province or state.

How do I decide how to write my guests names on the envelopes?

Titles are still traditionally used for invitations. However, for a less formal feel, you may omit these in favour of the guests full names. I personally like skipping the titles because I prefer seeing my own name rather than “Mr. & Mrs. Richard Nott” on the envelope. Rather than go through all the combinations here, I will point you to a few resources that go through the guest combinations in detail!
www.frugalbride.com
www.marthastewartweddings.com

How soon should I send out my invitations?

Traditional etiquette is 6-8 weeks but these days people have very busy schedules so anywhere 2-4 months before the wedding is completely acceptable. Save-the-dates can be sent out between 6 months to a year before the wedding date and, once sent, allow you to send the formal invitation much later.

Although weddings are often the first time people buy personalized invitations and cards, there are many other great events in life that deserve fun stationery.

The next holiday coming up is Valentine’s Day, so we are going to show you how to take our Thank You DIY Kit and turn it into a Valentine. Here is a simple design that we did up for my daughter to hand out to her classmates. She personalized the inside with her name using a gel pen. The do-it-yourself kits could also be used for birthday party or shower invitations, baby announcements and other holidays.

A Thank You DIY Kit made into a Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day!

So, you’ve got your DIY invitation kit…now what?

Well, you can choose to use the templates as they come and simply replace the text in the template with your own wording, choose your font(s) and text colours and print. With a little imagination and some clipart or images, you can go even further by personalizing the templates and customizing your invites.

Below you will see how we customized the Ava DIY Invitation template by changing some of the text to red and adding a simple scroll image to the corners.

Ava DIY Invitation Template (out of the kit)

This is what the template will look like when you first open it on your computer.

Ava DIY Invitation Template (changing text in template to red)

Highlighting the “&”, date and location lines in red really make the invitation pop!

Ava DIY Invitation Template (with inserted clipart)

Finally, we added a scroll design in two corners of the invite and now we have a completely customized diy invitation.

Below is a photo of a completed Ava DIY Invitation using this customized design. We also incorporated the design into the table numbers, menus, seating chart, place cards and thank yous.

DIY Wedding Stationery Kits personalized with clipart