Wedding Wednesday: DIY Invitations

Of all aspects of wedding planning, wedding invitations is one of my favorites. I LOVE looking at pretty paper. That being said, I'm afraid that I won't be able to afford the kind of invitations that I want. My current solutions is do-it-yourself wedding invitations. I've spent a lot of time looking at wedding blogs, scouring for how to do your own invites. One problem with is is that a lot of sites will list invitations as DIY when the bride or groom is a graphic designer and does their own invitations. Okay, that doesn't count! I want to know how you did them, not just know that you designed them for yourself!

However, I recently stumbled across this helpful post from a graphic designer, who describes her process in more detail than most. Also, pretty much everything from Oh So Beautiful Paper is gorgeous. I love reading their site.

While I think I can do my own invitations, I'm also really scared of doing them. I don't want to spend a lot of time on something and then not love the result. I'm probably better than average at the whole graphic design thing (as in, I'm proficient in the Adobe creative suite) but I have no delusions of being as good as a professional. It's hard to know if I could get something I like for less money, or if I should just go ahead with making them myself (which every source I've ever read says is a huge undertaking.)

Although I can be kind of picky as far as stationary goes, my tastes are often on the simple side. Some nice paper and some beautiful fonts, and I'm set! I don't need a ton of artwork or anything too crazy. And as I pick my colors and maybe a "theme" or whatever, maybe it will be easier to solidify what I want.

For now, I was messing around on Photoshop over winter break, and I came up with these designs:Excuse how rough these images are. These were inspired by some invitations I saw where there were initials covering the entire invite in a color, with the info written on top. I thought they were nice and simple, and possibly something I could achieve on Photoshop. I think they still need A LOT of work, but it's a step, right?

I also found this post on creating your own invites, which doesn't really speak to the design process, but does have a lot of helpful tips!

I have so many questions about the design process, I wish I could just bug a designer for an hour about how they create their designs. I'm assuming that they don't draw all of the perfect little borders on their stuff; where do they find them? These are the things I want to know. For now, I'll just keep looking. I'm not in a rush : )

P.S. I will post about the weddings from movies and TV again. I'm thinking it might just be a recurring thing that I do whenever I have some that I would like to discuss. I already have some movies lined up!