You are invited...

Well to be honest, you may not be invited.  It's not that I don't think you're a nice person, we get on great, but we just don't know each other that well.  Anyway we've got off on the wrong foot, I should have said 'Some people are invited.... to my wedding!'

Yep there it is in print for all the world to see, I am getting married.  Stuart and I have been together for about 8 and half years.  One day, a few months back, we decided what the hell we might as well make it official in the eyes of the government and get hitched.  So what prompted this sudden decision after 8 years of happily scooting along?  To tell the truth I'm not too sure!  I have nothing against marriage but it's never been on my to do list (or my I do list - ha ha ha did you see what I did there!).  I guess the only answer is we got to that age where we thought we might as well do it.  It means we get a party after all.  

We have decided to get married on the Isle of Wight, where I grew up, rather than in London, where we currently live.  Because this means some people have a way to travel I decided I should send out STDs, or Save the Dates as they are commonly called, personally I prefer the acronym.  When my friend Anna got married last year she sent her STDs out as magnets.  I found this really useful.  I don't have a diary so the magnet on the fridge meant that I could double check the date easily enough whenever I needed to.  As I loved Anna's magnet idea so much I did what any smart person would do, I stole it.  Our STDs went out with Christmas cards and looked just like this;

I took a picture from my favourite film The Princess Bride added my text over the top of it and let the people at Vista Print do their magic.  The magnets were pretty cheap and good quality so I hope the recipients liked them.  So now my guest had the date the next thing on my list was invitations.

Stuart and I don't really want to spend too much for the wedding, so I decided in the name of budgeting I should DIY the invitations.  My friend (and Maid of Honour) George gave me a book for Christmas called The Vintage Tea Party.  Inside the book it had some invitation templates, my favourite was the seaside scene (quite fitting for our IOW Wedding).  We took the book to Stuart's parents house, scanned in the image, reduced the size to A3 and printed out lots of copies.  The next step was adding colour!  

This was the fun bit.  Instead of using paint I used this water colour crayons.  I've never used them before but they were great; you colour in with the crayons and then use a paint brush with a little water to blend.  It's really simple to do and it look really good!

The pictures half coloured in.

Fully coloured in with text added in the blank space on the front.

Cut out ready to stick on the background

The finished invite, coloured, cut out and stuck onto card.  

To finish the invites off I printed out an insert with details of time & location etc, stuck them in the middle and that was it.  For RSVP's I put in a postcard for guests to reply with.  Originally I wanted some of the cheeky old vintage beach postcards to go with our IOW theme but unfortunately I couldn't find a place I could buy these in bulk.  What I did find was a set of 1950s semi naked pin up girls postcards, and vintage comic book cover postcards.  As Stuart likes geeky comic books and I wish I looked like a 1950s pin up I decided to use them instead.  With these added to the envelope they were ready to go!  My guests should receive their invite in the next couple of days, and then it's just a waiting game to see who wants to attend!