The Ultimate Guide to Designing Your Own Wedding Invitation on a Budget

I thought I'd hire Sheri, and 1, 2, 3 — I'd have beautiful invites done. No. Your designer is not a mind-reader and while he or she will do the artistic side, you need to be clear about what you want. It took about three tries to get it right.

We went with a floral watercolor theme, inspired by our Spring country wedding at The Garrison in New York's Hudson River Valley. The colors for my tablescapes were green, white, and blush pink, so we chose these shades for the invites, as well. While we went with a botanical theme, you can do anything from a color story to a unique monogram style.

The first two mockups Sheri sent me were not my taste — one was too busy, and the other was too "leafy." My fiancé told me to give her really specific instructions. I did some soul and style searching on Etsy and the internet before deciding on my vision: watercolor floral-lined envelope and slanted-script rose gold foil invite. Placing the pattern on the envelopes instead of the invites gave it some pizzazz while keeping the main page simple.

I also made sure to explain exactly how I wanted the watercolor to look: such as the ratio of flowers to leaves, and how delicate I wanted the brushstrokes to appear. All of this helped her to create something I loved! We tweaked the color from peach to blush, and it was a done deal.

Had I not taken the custom-design route, I probably would have made an invite and called it a day. But Sheri offered me all of these unique card ideas, and I ended up going with them. Here are all of the pieces we added to the set:

Custom stamps: We created two stamps with the watercolor botanical design.

Map card: This ended up being my favorite one! The front featured a statement my fiancé and I wrote about why we picked The Garrison (spoiler: it reminded us of where we got engaged in Vermont) and a hand-drawn image of the famous mountain views from the venue. The back showed a map of where the country club is.

RSVP card: I found an Etsy RVSP card I loved, and we used inspiration from it to create ours. The back featured a striped pattern, since I'm into the idea of mixing prints.

Accommodations card: Our watercolor pattern outfitted both sides, offering information on the hotel room blocks we set up for our guests.

Monogram vellum: Truthfully, I had never thought of doing this, but Sheri pointed out that adding semisheer layer on top of our foil invite would preserve it while in transit. A dainty monogram with our initials made it personalized.

Rehearsal dinner card: This was another card showcasing an interpretation of our watercolor floral design.

Skinny-wrap return address sticker: Instead of handwriting our address, we had these cool wrap stickers made. Through Minted, we created a saved address book for our guests, which was used for all outgoing mail (invites, save the dates, and thank-you cards). And then these stickers took care of the return labels.

Given my budget, I thought there was no way I'd be able to afford custom invites. I was happily proved wrong. The customized invites plus all of the aforementioned extras and matching thank-you cards came out to a little over $2,355 (including shipping and tax) for about 200 people.

To give you some context: another engaged friend of mine said she was planning to do just save the dates for $1,000 via an Etsy vendor. (Our save the dates cost about $200, for the record.) While I am all about supporting local vendors on Etsy, when it came down to my own wedding, I preferred to spend the extra cash on a talented makeup artist (which can also cost in the thousands, FYI!).

If you are on a stricter budget, I still recommend creating your own personal invites but cutting back on the extra cards or doing an electronic rehearsal dinner invite. This will definitely save cash, and you can always direct people to your website for further details.

Once the invites and extra pieces were created, my fiancé and I were put to work! It was on us to assemble all of the cards, stamp the envelopes, wrap them up with our return-address stickers, and make sure the right people got rehearsal dinner invites.

We did it one Friday night while drinking wine and eating pizza. It turned out to be fun, but it was a bit of work! Having an Excel doc with everyone's names, plus ones, and if they were invited to the rehearsal dinner helped us stay organized during the process.

Every time I looked around the room during my actual wedding, I felt enveloped in my theme. The table flowers went perfectly with the watercolor design, we had rose gold stripes painted around the candles to match the table cards, and the entire decor felt pretty enchanting. I also felt rewarded that I created each of these pieces to reflect our taste as a couple, which we describe as "classic with a twist."

Currently my invite is framed and showcased in our apartment. I love looking at it knowing that no one else out there has the exact same one. Keep reading to see more images of my bespoke wedding paper goods!