Invitations, Maps, and RSVP Cards

I knew early on that I didn’t want boring regular invitations. I looked at some of the fairy tale themed ones, and they were pretty but didn’t work for me. I’ve seen some really lovely ones, don’t get me wrong, but it just wasn’t me. I’ve never understood all the tissue paper inserts, stacked envelopes, multiple sheets, cards, and other stuff that seems strictly made for the printers to strip more money from brides and grooms.

For a medieval theme, scrolls seemed appropriate, but how do you make and send scrolls?

I printed ours myself. I started with a ream of parchment-like paper from the PaperZone. I did up the text for the invitations in Olde English font on my computer and printed it on white paper. I then took clip art from a book of Spenser’s Faerie Queene illustrations and used the time-honored cut-and-paste-using-real-glue-not-a-mouse technique to lay out the page. I did the same with the map to the church, and added appropriately worded text to make it seem more in theme. (We didn’t get married on November 22nd, 2003, we got married this twenty-second day of the month of November in the year 2003…things like that.)

I took these pasted-up pages and simply photocopied them onto the parchment paper. Not hard at all. Once they were printed, I used a pair of deckle shears to cut each edge and create a sort of torn or rough edge look. I then colored in a small spot of color on each of the invitations just to add interest.

For the RSVP cards, I bought a ream of the matching cover stock from the Paper Zone. I again used the computer to create the wording and took clip art from the Faerie Queene. On one side of the cards, I put my name and address, and a black and white drawing of the church in which the wedding would be (the church was kind enough to supply the clip art.) On the other side, it had a line for the recipients’ name, and a check box for indicating whether the parties would attend or not. Below that was a note letting everyone know that the wedding was in theme, and that everyone was invited to dress accordingly if they wished to do so.

I printed the RSVP cards four to a page, post card sized, and cut them apart with regular scissors. I colored the clip art on these, which in retrospect was a bit silly since most of them came back to me! If I had it to do over, I’d have colored more of the invitation and less of the RSVP cards, and I’d have marked a place for a stamp on the “front” of the card, as many of them came back in envelopes.

To put the invitations together, I took a map, put an invitation on top of it, then laid an RSVP card on top, and rolled all three up together. I toyed with the idea of using a wax seal to seal them, but rejected it as messy and easily broken in transit. Instead I simply tied them all with burgundy ribbon.

How to send them? I looked around online and found gold and silver mailing tubes, amazingly enough. They were approximately $.50 each when ordered in quantity, and we went through 50 each of gold and silver. I put the invitation in the tube, capped both ends with the included plastic caps, then put a printed mailing label and return address label on the outside. I realize that wedding ettiquette says the bride should label the envelopes by hand, but most of mine went out with laser printed labels in Olde English, and I think they looked nice. They were $.83 each to mail, which is a standard enough amount that there are stamps printed, so I just stuck a stamp on each and away they went.

Altogether, the scrolls cost me approximately $2.00 each including postage. Anyone who’s priced wedding invitations knows that’s pretty darn cheap, and these were unique and handmade, which was more the point than the cost. I already owned the colored pencils and deckle shears I used, so that would up the costs a bit, but not a lot. We’ve gotten a lot of positive comments about the scrolls, which is kind of fun to hear.