DIY was one of my favorite parts of planning this wedding! I hope I can help some of you out with instructions and photos. For some of these, I've already written write-ups on my blog, so I've just referenced that instead of retyping it here.

 

To contact me with any questions, please email me at geekchicwedding@gmail.com.

 

Magnets are really trendy (and an old trend at that!), but we had been through a lot of "STD drama" (!) at that point, and we really just wanted to get things over with! We had seen a number of photobooth strip magnets, so we took a few photos of ourselves (and our dog!) using the self-timer function on my husband's camera. I turned them black and white and made the lettering on the "Save" "The" "Date" signs orange (to make them stand out) in Photoshop. Using the instructions on Fresh Impression's website, we made the magnet design in Photoshop. (They seem to have changed the website and I can't find the directions now.)

 

 

I designed the card in Adobe lllustrator and sent it to our letterpress shop, Vertallee Letterpress. We noticed after the fact that our names weren't on there, but our website was (and it has our names in it) so we didn't think it was that big of a deal. Plus, if they didn't know who we were from the picture, they probably shouldn't be coming to the wedding. We then attached the magnet to the card with removable glue dots (I found them at Michael's). The card was #10-sized, and we found matching #10 Chocolate envelopes at Paper Source. I addressed the envelopes myself with a silver gel pen.

 

 

For the envelope, I heat embossed a dino stamp on the bottom edge. We bought the dino stamp from Paper Source and used an Exacto knife to cut off the birthday hat. You can see more photos and complete instructions on heat embossing on my blog here.

 

 

We used custom postage stamps from Zazzle. We purchased a dinosaur skeleton image from istockphoto.com and added our wedding date with Zazzle's software. (Sorry the picture is so dark!). Because of the heavy weight of the cardstock combined with the magnet, we had to use 58-cent stamps.

 

 

We knew we wanted a custom invitation, but didn't want to pay custom prices, so we designed the invitations ourselves using Adobe Illustrator. I used Futura in lowercase consistently throughout the invitation set. Vertallee letterpress printed the invitation, RSVP card, brunch card, and directions card. Citywrites did the calligraphy (beautiful, but I wouldn't work with her again!). Sorry for all of the blackouts -- pesky privacy!

 

 

 

We lined the envelopes with 2 different types of paper. I found velvet-backed paper from the Paper Presentation store in NYC, but it was really expensive, so we only lined about 40 envelopes with this paper. For the rest, we used the brown pre-cut envelope liners from Paper Presentation. These pre-cut liners were a huge timesaver! You can see photos and complete instructions on how to line an envelope are on my blog here.

 

 

We also made belly bands out of bronze stardream cardstock. I had this idea before I knew exactly how stardream cardstock acted when it's folded. Basically, if it's not scored, you can't fold it. Even when it is scored, the edge is somewhat messy. To alleviate this problem, we scored it with an Exacto knife (rather than a bone folder). I had ordered a custom stamp with our names and the wedding date from Official Initial on Etsy (who it seems no longer has an active account), and we stamped the belly bands with this (and then heat embossed it for a nice texture). We then wrapped it around the invitation set and adhered it with the removable glue dots we used on the STDs. Because we got really frustrated with these, we ended up not having enough for everyone's invitation, which was really fine by me.

 

 

For the actual invite, my husband came up with the concept and I tweaked it. Teamwork at its finest! I struggled for a while with how to make it seem formal and mature enough for a wedding; I ended up buying an image of a dinosaur from istockphoto.com and manipulating it in Illustrator to make it more abstract (I had to make it a little disproportionate to make it look good on the invite -- notice how long that brontosaurus's neck is compared with his body!). We only used the neck and back of a brontosaurus, so it's much classier than you would think an invitation with a dinosaur would be. =) It's definitely not a "traditional" wedding invitation though!

 

 

We used icons for the menu choices on the RSVP postcard, so I scanned in the image on top of the menu stamp that I bought from Paper Source. Using Illustrator's Live Trace option, I was able to vectorize the scanned images so that I could manipulate them and so that they printed at the highest possible resolution. It sounds tedious (and it was!), but we needed to use these exact images because I was also using them on the place cards. The images on the Paper Source website were at a very low resolution, so when I vectorized them, all detail was lost. Scanning the top of the rubber stamps ended up working out great though.

 

Like with the STDs, we used custom postage stamps from Zazzle for the invitations. The outer envelope had my husband's parents' wedding picture on it, and the RSVP postcard had my parents' wedding picture on it.

 

 

We had a b-list, so we had to make the RSVP date super early.

 

 

For the custom map, I followed Mrs. Peony's instructions (Part 1 and Part 2) for making the map in Illustrator. This ended up being my favorite part of the invitation. We also included the number for dial DIR-ECT-IONS on the directions card (we had listed our wedding in its database), so if someone got lost, they would know where to go.

 

 

The brunch card was really straightforward, so to jazz it up a bit, we cut a bite mark out of the bottom left corner of the card. We made a cardboard template and traced it in pencil onto the back of the card, then cut it out with scissors. The cardstock was really heavy, so it was a PAIN to cut these out. My hands were killing me by the time I finished. But I think it really added something, and the older people especially got a kick out of it.

 

 

I found a free clip art image of a dinosaur that I wanted to use, so I ran it through the Vector Magic website to convert the jpeg to a vectorized image. When I used this service, it was free, but I think they're charging for it now. After I had the vectorized image, I was able to design the thank you note in Illustrator. I then sent the design to Vertallee Letterpress, who printed it for us.

 

These were sent in A2-sized Chocolate envelopes from Paper Source. I had bought beautiful wrapping paper from The Container Store to line the envelopes, but it never got done. Oh well! Not a big loss.

 

We had a ton of stamps left over from the STDs (we had a bit of miscommunication with Zazzle and they ended up sending us 3 batches of stamps instead of 1), so we used the same stamps on the thank yous.

 

 

My future mother-in-law wanted something a bit more traditional for the rehearsal dinner invitations. I found an image of a sailor's knot online and turned it brown in Photoshop. I then downloaded Chopin Script from dafont.com (a wonderful free font website) and used that for our names (I used Garamond for the rest of the text). I printed it out on white linen paper and backed it on Chocolate A7-sized cards from Paper Source. It was mailed in a matching Chocolate A7-sized envelope, which was addressed with a silver gel pen.

 

 

 

For the menus, I used the same fonts and sailor knot image, printed it on the same white linen paper and backed it on Chocolate #10-sized cards from Paper Source. We ended up not using these, because I had used an out-of-date menu so the dishes were no longer available, but it was so easy that I didn't mind.

 

The readers were actually writing their own readings, so I wanted them to read from something pretty, rather than a crumpled up wad of paper. You can see photos and complete instructions on how I made these binders on my blog here.

 

 

I had opal stardream A6-sized cards from Paper Source on hand (I originally was going to use them for rehearsal dinner invites), so I cut a piece of bronze stardream cardstock to be 1/4" bigger on all sides (so at the end, the bronze card was 5"x6.75"). I mounted the opal card to the bronze card and sent it to my calligrapher to be written on. We planned on gluing the card to a piece of ribbon and tying the ribbon around each chair, but I wasn't sure how long the ribbon needed to be, so I gave my wedding planner a spool of brown ribbon. Before the ceremony, she cut the ribbon to the right length, mounted the card to the ribbon with glue dots, and tied the ribbon to the ceremony chair.

 

The programs were truly a labor of love. I knew that we needed them, as there were a fair number of guests who were unaware of Jewish marriage traditions, but they ended up being so much more work than I thought they would be!

 

I had purchased bronze stardream cardstock from Paper Presentation for the cover and took it to Kinko's to get it scored. Fortunately for me, they perforated it instead of scoring it, so it was much easier to bend in half (and it was free because they "messed up" the paper!). After I figured out that I wanted a page of vellum and a page of linen paper each folded in half (so we had a total of 6 useable pages), I laid out the program in InDesign. This was the easy part. =) I hand-fed each page of vellum through my poor inkjet printer (I swear that after a while the printer noises sounded much like "I think I can, I think I can..."), but I used the laser printer at work to print the linen sheets. I then folded each piece in half and was ready to bind with white ribbon.

 

Here's where the problems started. I purchased 2" wide white ribbon from BB Crafts. It was beautiful, but way too wide. I needed to get thinner ribbon, so I ordered it from the Ribbon Factory, who will cut and heat-seal your ribbon for you. Big help! Then I realized that the ribbon didn't actually hold the papers in the way I wanted them to, and when they did, it blocked the words on the program. So I had to tack the ribbon to the cover of the program with mini glue dots, and then knot it at the bottom.

 

 

All told, I'm happy with the way they turned out and I think they were useful to our guests, but argh!

 

I bought the book from Enjibeck on Etsy and pasted 4bar-sized bronze stardream envelopes inside. We provided Luxe White 4-bar sized cards and brown pens for people to write messages on. I had intended to write prompts on each page ("What will our kids look like? Who wears the pants in our relationship? How should we resolve our first married fight?"), but I never got the chance to before the wedding. It was okay -- people still knew what to do!

 

 

My mom covered a piece of foam board in the same brown satin that the reading binders were covered in. The florist attached the brown ribbon and pins to each orchid and then put them on the board. I planned for it to be a little less messy than this, but oh well.

 

 

It was placed right by the guest book. The sign directed people to take a boutonniere and sign our guest book.

 

 

We all went to 4th Street in Philadelphia to pick out the fabric for the chuppah, and my mom finished the edges and embroidered the chuppah with our names, the date, and a line from our vows ("I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.") herself.  She used her embroidery sewing machine to create a design and then embroider it in white thread in the center of the chuppah.

 

 

I created the design in InDesign. I made 3 different menus, each customized according to the entree that the guest ordered. I bought precut 6" square-sized copper cardstock from cutcardstock.com and ran it through the laser printer.

 

 

The escort cards were made in 3 parts -- bronze stardream cardstock that I cut into business cards, #1 baby-sized opal stardream envelopes from Paper Source, and Moo cards. After we got an accurate guest list, I sent the envelopes to my calligrapher to write the guests' names on. In the meantime, I embossed the table numbers (1 through 11) onto the bronze stardream cards using white ink, clear embossing powder, and number rubber stamps that I ordered from alittlegoodness on Etsy. I also ordered Moo cards that explained how to use our Smugmug account (see my blog here and here for more info) and put pictures of our pup, Gordon, on the back.

 

After the calligrapher sent us back the calligraphed envelopes, I stuffed each one with a table number card and a Moo card. I then sealed it with brown pearlescent sealing wax and a dinosaur wax seal that I bought from Nostalgic Impressions. Sealing 100 envelopes took about 20 minutes -- not to mention it was a ton of fun and a great stress-reliever in the week before the wedding! This was a big impact/small time kind of DIY detail.

 

These were A2-sized opal stardream cards from Paper Source. I embossed their entree choice onto the bottom of the card and sent it to the calligrapher. My wedding planner mounted the cards on brown ribbon and tied it to the chairs.

 

 

These were really simple to make with materials I recycled from the escort cards, bronze stardream cardstock and number rubber stamps. I cut the cardstock into 3x3" tags, punched a hole in the upper left corner, and embossed the size in the lower right corner. Easy peasy!

 

 

 

This was a last minute project that my mom really thought we needed, and I'm really glad we did it (I used one of those band-aids!). My mom used two of the baskets left over from the OOT gift baskets, filled it with men's and women's toiletries that she purchased from the dollar store, and put one in each bathroom. I kept hearing how useful they were!

 

Check out the wild animal band-aids to match the museum!

 

 

I hate table numbers. I knew I didn't want the normal table numbers, but I wasn't really feeling the new ideas for table numbers either. I have no idea how I came up with this idea, but I thought it would be cool to make the table numbers out of wine glass charms. I knew it would be subtle (exactly the appeal!), but I was worried that it might be too subtle. Fortunately, with the place cards and my wedding planner directing people where to sit, they worked out great.

 

To make these, I ordered hanging number charms from charmparfait on Etsy and my mom got matching hoop earring wires. She hung a charm on each wire (2 charms for tables 10 and 11!) and hooked them closed, all while watching TV one night. My wedding planner hooked these onto the wine glass at each place setting while she was setting up the reception room.

 

This was a really easy project that I think was a big help to my wedding planner. You can see photos and complete instructions on how I made these nametags on my blog here.

 

 

Totally stole this idea from Mrs. Lovebug off Weddingbee. You can see photos and complete instructions on how I made these All Access Passes on my blog here.

 

 

You can see photos and complete instructions on how I blinged out my Old Navy flip flops on my blog here.

 

 

This was my mom's pet project. She went to Costco and went nuts over these! But I have to say, we got so many compliments. They were really, really well-received. She ordered baskets, cellophane, brown bows, and brown crinkle paper online. She put a bunch of sweet and salty snacks in them, as well as 2 water bottles. We customized the water bottles with our names and the date with water-resistant water bottle labels from Creative Label Concepts. For complete instructions and photos, you can go to my blog here. To make transporting them to the Sheraton easier, she put them in large brown kraft bags with handles, put brown tissue paper to hide the contents (just in case any of the hotel employees had sticky fingers!), tied the handles shut with brown and white raffia, and tied this hang tag to the handle. We were worried that the Sheraton might accidentally give the gift basket to someone who wasn't our wedding guest, so the hang tag really helped with that. We custom-ordered the hang tags from whitefluffdesigns on Etsy. We also included a welcome packet (with directions, area restaurants, and the weekend schedule) and some brochures for area attractions.

 

 

We came up with a bunch of clues and the answers and I entered them into a free crossword-generator online. I forget the one I used, but you can find one by just Googling "custom crossword." This was a really easy project and people really enjoyed doing it during the Sunday post-wedding brunch.

 

I ordered 100 scoops of biodegradable confetti and 75 glassine envelopes from Ecoparti. I bought stickers from the Martha Stewart Crafts line at Michaels, and we sealed the stuffed envelopes with those. Our guests tossed them at us while we were leaving to go to the airport, and my mom said that the confetti washed/blew away really quickly.