Wedding Menu Cards – Rhode Island Invitations

That moment when you first walk into your reception is a truly magical and mesmerzing experience. For a few moments you may lose your breath at the sight of just purely decadent, jaw-dropping beauty all around you – as you take in every last indulgent detail that you worked so hard on putting together for your special day. Sparkling intricacy and blissful elegance encompass the very essence of Emily’s Enchantments’ stationery. Whether you have chosen a simple, sophisticated menu card with a touch of glitz or an ornate, luxury wedding menu bound-book with personalized names of each guest – you will find pure enchantment for every taste.

  

 

Bride & Groom chairs – custom designed for the perfect sweetheart setting at an elegant wedding reception.

Gold chivari chairs with shimmery wedding menu cards at each setting create unmatched sophistication for any special event.

 

 

Personalized wedding menu cards provide a unique greeting to each guest as he or she takes a seat at a breathtakingly beautiful reception table.

 

 

If you love lace as much as we do, you would know why we enjoy wedding menus, wedding programs and rehearsal dinner invitations such as these with touches of matching lace on each!

 

 

Signature cocktails should always be featured on shimmery card stock bar signs with a touch of glimmer.

 

While each guest may have his or her own bound personalized wedding menu, the bride & groom have their own reception menu that pays tribute to their first dinner as “Mr. & Mrs.”

 

Bridal Shower Invitation Wrapped With Lace – Rhode Island Invitations

The mothers are hosting a bridal shower for me this weekend and inviting a bunch of ladies over for a Marie Antoinette/French style luncheon. Since I am the designated card-maker for the family, I stepped up to make the invitations for my own shower – unconventional, yes, but practical. I cringed at the thought of either my mother or my FMIL purchasing expensive invitations from a paper craft boutique (one of my competitors!). So even though brides ordinarily do not have any involvement in their own shower, crafty brides sometimes get involved for the sake of saving costs (and in this case, card-making pride). 😉

Since the mothers have chosen a French style for the shower with lots of blush pinks, off-whites, and pale blues, I decided to make a lacey, sultry looking invitation with feminine “ooh la la” touches. Using some chipboard, shimmery blush pink card stock, ribbon,  and about 12″ of flat black lace I assembled these little cuties for the bridal shower invitations. Hope you like them!

Wedding Ceremony Programs That Shimmer and Sparkle – RI Invitations

After the invitations get sent out, the ceremony programs will be the first piece of stationery that your guests see when they arrive to the wedding. Aside from any flowers or ceremony decor, these will be the very first element of your wedding day that make an impression on your guests. What better way to do it than with your own handmade shimmery card stock programs with little ribbons and rhinestones? (Can you see a theme here with my wedding? 😉 )

Ceremony programs are the least complicated and least time-consuming to create. You can print on both sides and simply score in the middle to save paper. It’s always good to do a practice run on a few regular sheets of paper so that you don’t waste any of your pretty card stock. Tie a little ribbon bow and add a few jewels and voila – you now have an amazing piece to introduce your guests to your wedding ceremony. You can add special thanks to your readers, wedding party, and any other important family members who have helped bring it all together. It is also common to mention loved ones who have passed away on the back of your ceremony card so that their memory can be honored.

My theory is – keep it simple. While everyone is excited to see you walk down the aisle and all, let’s face it – everyone is more pumped for the reception. So while these wedding ceremony programs need to make a good impression, I wouldn’t spend too much time on them. Notice how these are much simpler than the wedding menus I made? Also, don’t feel like you need to make programs for every single person. After hearing some first hand advice from other DIY brides lately, it appears that the new trend is for all guests to show up to the reception but not all guests show up to the ceremony. Therefore, while you may be expecting 130 for a seated dinner, you may only have 100 or so that come for the ceremony (especially if your wedding ceremony is at a different location or a couple hours before your reception). You also don’t need to make programs for your wedding party unless someone really wants an extra one (but I mean…let’s be serious, who actually is going to want to keep one? You and your MOB will probably be the only people who will want to treasure a left over program once the wedding is over, so let’s not get carried away). For our wedding, we are having 130 guests roughly, and we have 10 people in our wedding party. Thus, I plan to make about 90 ceremony programs and even at that, I estimate that I might have some extras. Couples can share and plus, do people really stand and follow everything to a T? I think guests are more interested in watching what is going on – especially if you have a “wow” wedding dress.

Here are a couple photos of our wedding ceremony programs that maybe will give you some inspiration. They are really simple and printed at home on shimmery cardstock. Happy crafting!

Elegant Wedding Menus – Rhinestones, Ribbons, and Sparkle – Rhode Island Invitations

In the words of my mother, “Bridal brain is now in full throttle.”

And she isn’t kidding. It’s crunch time. Fire up that glue gun and sharpen up that trimmer blade. It’s time to get down and dirty with wedding crafting.

Even though there are 8 full weeks left until our big day, there is so much to do! It’s a bit overwhelming how much is left to do. Being a DIY crafty bride certainly has its work cut out for me. But making this wedding as elegant and glamorous as possible – yet all handmade has been making the challenge well worth it.

The next task I’ve been tackling for this wedding is the wedding menu design. I have played around with different ideas and finally came up with a pretty, unique way to set the tables with these menu cards and give guests that “wow” feeling when they first sit down. Each wedding menu card is going to be personalized to include each guest’s first name on an outside cover, with a message welcoming them to our wedding reception. Then the inside will contain all of the meal details from start to finish as well as our “G” initial at the top with a couple rhinestones around it 😉

This seems like a daunting task  – making a menu for each and every guest, but it’s really not too bad! These are a heck of a lot easier to throw together than the boxed invites and so at this point, since I’ve already survived the invitation-making extravaganza, these menus will be a breeze in comparison.

What do you need to make them?

• Book-binding cloth
• Chipboard
• Shimmery card stock
• Ribbon
• Rhinestones
• A good printer
• A good trimmer

So gluing papers together and adding jewels are pretty easy, but I highly recommend that if you haven’t already, you invest in a serious trimmer to get this job done. You are going to hate your life if you attempt to do these menus by hand using a single sheet trimmer – especially when it comes to the chipboard.

If you are really serious about crafting and card-making, I recommend that you try this bad boy:

It retails for around $500.00 but it is SO awesome. It cuts 40 sheets at once, and several chipboard pages at once. It will make your life a million times easier when doing a large number of invitations, menu cards, programs, etc.

And now….here’s a full look at the menu cards for our wedding!

Couture Boxed Wedding Invitation – Handmade

Who says DIY can’t be glamorous? 😉

After many trials and errors…I have finally made my first wedding invitation in a box! I fell in love with couture invitations online, but was not in love with the idea of paying someone to produce an invitation that I felt I could make myself. With my home printer, Microsoft Word fonts, shimmery card stock on sale at the local craft store, and decorative details from wholesalers online, I figured out my own boxed invitation formula.

My fellow crafters, it IS possible to do it yourself. You just have to be willing to hunt around and have some patience. This is NOT something you want to do if your wedding is right around the corner. I expect that this will take me a good 2 months to put 75 of these invitations together (since I work at SeraCare Life Sciences full time, and am currently getting my M.B.A.). Once you get the first one done, make sure you have all the dimensions written down – even the exact length of the ribbon you used. That way you can  cut 75+ card stock squares, all at once, in the length and width you want, and get them done so much faster.

I will post a tutorial soon! I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in almost 2 months. It’s true that once you become a bride, things get very busy! Most of my past 6 weeks have been spent trying to get into beach shape and trying to devise the blueprint for an invitation that looked decent enough to share with you! Let me know what you think! I hope this inspires some of you crafty brides to take a crack at making boxed wedding invitations of your own!!

I’m hoping to seal them with a burgundy wax rose. But, I have to purchase a lighter and do a couple practice ones first before I try it on one….That will be a project for another day!