Handmade Weddings....thoughts?

I love receiving cards with a gold foil twiddly lettering; it's always come from either an elderly relative ('bought it at a craft stall at the day centre') or a small child (my YD makes all her own cards and loves these! - she's eight).

I can't imagine why someone would choose that for an wedding invitation. Maybe a generational thing?

Can someone flash me this gold/silver foil lettering you refer to??

Like this...

I made my invitations and will be making the table plan and table names. I am very impressed with the way the invites turned out considering I am not crafty. Being a perfectionist everything was measured to the exact mm and anything that looked awful was thrown out and done again.

I think they were once seen as the easiest option - and are often pushed with other 'make your own' items for new crafters - mainly those who's first venture into cardmaking is their wedding invitations. Stickers are easier to store and less messy than other methods of adding a greeting - hence being easiest for older card makers or kids!

Agreed. I'd hope my styling and home made items will be co-ordinated and professional looking, but I also need to keep in mind my venue. It's a village hall and I need to work with that 'theme' rather than dress it up to be something it's not. If I go too all out and posh (I'd Love massive candleabras with flowers in the middle of them) it will look stupid, like I'm trying to make the old village hall look like a posh wedding venue. Hence why it will look much better with bunting, flowers and lace. I'm not going too rustic so hoping it can all go together leaning towards the elegant, rather than too 'I made this myself to save money'.

The same goes with beautiful posh hotel venues which are then styled with hessian ect. It just doesn't go. Just because rustic/shabby is in fashion at the moment, you need to work with your venue to compliment and thus get the best overall look.

I'm a crafty sort and support small professional craft businesses where possible and will be doing so with my wedding.

For example my flowergirl wands are from Folksy the UK Handcrafted website and they are perfect.

I actually have a jewellery business, so will be making all my jewellery and the gifts for BMs and such.

I'm also making the wedding invites but I've got a custom made stamp from this lovely lady http://www.thisisjusttosay.co/collections/custom-stamps/products/handmade-wedding-stamp, this will be on my invites, save the dates and other stationery.

The other thing I'm making is the favours but these are relatively simple and don't require much. It's nothing to do with cost, just the favours I'd like to give happen to be these!

I'm making the button bouquets, mine is almost finished now, but this is very similar to making jewellery so really isn't an issue.

I'm also making my cake topper because I love experimenting with polymer clay ? and heck I'm pretty good at it too.

All other decorations as I say will mainly be from the likes of Folksy and Etsy.

My cake is being made by my SiLTB since she's an awesome cake maker..so makes sense! Plus it needs to be vegan.

I see nothing wrong with a handmade wedding...just make sure it's done properly, and not rushed.

Nothing was hand-made at ours. A) I'm not crafty/creative with materials so would have looked cr*p, and b) I'm just lazy.

Fortunately I am quite crafty so things like invitations, table plan, centre pieces, bunting etc look really good. Saying that, I did make myself a brooch bouquet and when I finished it my response was "meh". I wasn't very good at all, so I am now having fresh flowers by a florist.

The thing is as well, people don't want to offend so if you show ppl your handmade invitations that look a bit naff, they probably won't say anything!

Unless you have a real talent for it then it shoul be kept to a minimum IMO. My favourite is people making their own bouquets. 9 out 10 look shocking, fake flowers and bits of feather. Yak.

I have just made a comment along those lines - I may be flamed for it.

I just don't get the whole DIY/crafty/vintage thing.

Yes there are a few very crafty people among us who can pull it off many can't. I blame all this on Kirsty Allsop she should have just stuck with Location, Location, Location!

Also why do middle class people feel the need jump on the band wagon? Why anyone would want to pretend to be poor and raid charity shops for second hand tat is beyond me.

I love the idea of a handmade wedding but in reality I am useless at it. I have a very crafty friend who is covering my jam jars for me, I am making my place cards because there is not a huge amount I can do wrong on them.... but my friend will write them for me. So I can have my "handmade wedding" I am buying items from crafters, stationary will be handmade, bouquets will be handmade, venue decor will be handmade..... just not by me! Etsy is my best friend.

I would. Not to their face, obviously, but I would. In fact, I have!

They really were SHOCKING invitations though. They looked like they should have contained feminine hygiene products. I expected to open it and a pantyliner to fall out.

Tru dat. The key word here is 'pretend' to be poor. I AM poor! And even I wouldn't dream of firking around in charity shops. I'll happily donate to their cause; I don't want a tatty old jumper or dog-eared book in return.

I have a friend who is better off than me, and she and her sister are always trekking to the 'posher' bits of the county to rummage around in second hand shops. Why? If you have the money, just buy new clothes!

(Although, I AM thinking hen do outfit right now...a charity shop might be the perfect place if I can get over my fear of potentially buying a dead person's clothes)

FF I actually really like your invitations!

FWIW my H was insistent our invitations looked good as they set the tone for the day...so ner haha!

Haha suppose it's the same as all aspects of wedding planning, differing priorities! I want my invites to be the best anyone has every received (they may say it was a sh*t party!) but I'm not so hung up on flowers. My cousin on the other hand wants to spend a huge amount on flowers so will just go for plan simple/cheap stationery.

My friend's dad recently made her invitations and they were nice, so I told her so. Her bouquet on the other hand was hideous - I told her this also. My mum was horrified but I was confident in my opinion as I could tell by the way my friend was holding it that she thought it was hidieous too (she'd had no say in it).

I made a lot of stuff for our wedding. In hindsight, I really don't like our invitations - think I could have done a better job - but everyone else seemed to like them.

Having said that, my invites cost me about 30 quid to make, for 150 invites. I just don't see the point in spending hundreds of pounds on invites which are, more than likely, just going to get thrown away after the event - I'd rather spend that money on wine.

I'm not keen on things that are clearly home made that could just have been bouight and look much better. The only things I am doing myself if stamping peoples names on place cards, putting some lace around jars and making the table plan. I definately wouldnt do my own invires or flowers, they would look shocking.

Okay - which one of my colleagues are you???!

I've bodged a stack of handmade stuff. It does NOT look like something you'd drool over on Pinterest. Some of it is fine, some defintiely is not. I made it with the best of intentions, because I wanted to put as much effort and love in to the whole thing. I am not interested in impressing my guests, but want them to know I care about them. I don't have a huge budget and the day reflects that. Everyone will have fun, though, and if people really don't like it the good news is they'll never have to come to another wedding of mine

Pinterest has a lot to answer for!

A woman after my own heart, hahaha!! I'm the exact same, I made our invites and wasn't terribly 100% happy with them but our guests loved them. I *did* use the silver foil that lots of people on here don't like and I did that purely to make them cheap & quick. I do make cards as a hobby but, I had to make almost 200 for the wedding! Yes, I do know I could have got them made professionally but that was expensive and, as a card maker, I did want to do them myself but producing 200 invites with lots of painstaking detail is not what I like about making cards. I'm pretty sure, actually, that the money we saved on the invites definitely went on wine..... lots of it & I used the bottles as part of the guestbook idea!!! ?