jojo194

Congrats and welcome to the forum! You will find all kinds of helpful information here. Good luck with all of your planning!

Congrats and welcome! I am also a cruise bride, but we are getting married on one of the islands. You will find all kinds of information here. Good luck with your planning!

Congrats and welcome! Good luck with all of your planning!

It looks great! Good job!

Thanks for all the responses! For the band, I just glued the two pieces of the ribbon together in the back with a glue stick and it worked pretty well. I haven't had any come apart and they just slide up or down the invitation. For the pocketfold I think I got some ideas from a weddingbee blog (I think) I can't remember exactly where. Basically I took a 8.5x11 sheet of cardstock and cut it down to 9 7/8"x6". I then scored (with the butter knife) at 2.25" and 6 1/8" and folded these pieces over. I cut out the triangle by measuring out 1.25 from the smallest flap (the 2.25" one) on both sides and then drawing a line to the midpoint of the flap. I then cut these triangles off. For the pocket I used the 2.5" scrap I had left and cut out a box that was 4 5/8"x2.5". I then scored 0.5" and 4 1/8" on the sides and 0.5" at the bottom and folded these. I cut the overlapping corners on the bottom. I then cut out the triangle on the pocket in a similar way as I did the original triangle. I just drew my measured triangle on the pocket and cut it out. I then used permanent double stick tape to hold it and it worked. This size also fit into envelopes that are advertised to hold 4x6 pictures. I think most people do it bigger (requiring a bigger piece of paper or more paper), but I was trying to save money, haha. Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks again for all of your responses.

Yep with a couple of rulers, a butter knife, and my hands, haha. I did end up using a couple of links to help me and then just kept trying folding a sample until I got the sizing down where I wanted it (I only wanted to use 1 sheet of 8.5x11/pocketfold and for it to fit into cheaper envelopes). The passport ideas I got from all the different ideas on this website. It just says: This is your passport to Jody and Joanne's wedding. The inside has contact information, one of those picture pages (I posted a thread that has the inside pic under my diy projects (so far)), one page for the charter bus information, another page for the at home party invitation, welcome party invitation, cruise information, and finally wedding ceremony information. We had way too many things to RSVP to so we are just having people RSVP online. Plus we are either in contact with many of those booked or our parents are. At least with the passport book we could give lots of information in the book. Thanks!

So in saving money for our wedding and with some free time we decided it would be best to do some stuff on our own. We started out with our save the dates. For this project we sent everyone a welcome letter on beach paper (sorry no pictures) and bought magnet paper from staples. We printed our design to the magnet paper (after pricing it at other places and realizing we didn't want to spend as much money as they quoted us). My fiance wanted to design the magnet so I let him. Here is the final product: We sent those out just over a year from our wedding to give people plenty of notice. When the second deposit date was due I sent out a newsletter that I designed on publisher (it took hours and hours to do this) to keep everyone updated about our wedding. Here is the final product: The fourth page of the newsletter contained information about the passport. Another benefit of doing it in this format was that we didn't need an envelope. We just sealed it with a sticker, left room for the address, and put our return address in the top left corner. We sent these around early/mid-October 2009. In January I began the invitations. I had gotten several ideas on here (thanks everyone for all the help) and really wanted to do the passport. However, my fiance was not a fan. I also liked the pocketfold so I did a mock pocketfold and my fiance decided he did like that. However, they were a TON of work (completely DIY...cardstock paper from Michaels in cape cod colors). One of my bridesmaids suggested I just put the passport in the pocket instead of inserts. That was an awesome idea because the passports weren't really as hard as formatting inserts may have been. I used several different ideas from this website for the passport template and eventually put it together to get all the information across (destination weddings require so much information to be given to the guests). Then I created a pocketfold template that would fit into cheap envelopes that you can get at walmart or target (I lined the envelopes with wrapping paper). The template also only required 8.5x11 paper for 1 pocketfold which again saved money. I also decided I would just use all the different blues in the cape cod pack because it would save money (as that paper only cost 2.50 on sale for 50 pages). I also weighed the invites and they were regular postage! However then the post office rep told me it may be safer to go up to .64 stamp because of the thickness, but it may be ok. I sent most with the .64 stamp and some with just the .44 stamp and all made it to their destination. The pocketfolds took about 10 minutes each for me to complete. I ended up doing about 40. We did a simple invitation without a mat (hoping to save some weight which didn't matter in the end). We used a small ribbon with a piece of cardstock with our logo on it to act as the "belly band". For those not coming or those coming that we didn't really know we just sent the passport to those guests since that contained the bulk of the information. I then just added a small post it note so they didn't feel pressured to come if I knew they weren't coming. Finally here are the pictures: I also just wanted to thank everyone for posting all their ideas and samples on here. It really has been so helpful. Next projects are OOT bags and stuff for the at home party.

Sorry it has taken me so long to post some pictures. This is my first time posting pictures on this website so please bear with me if it doesn't work. I hope that works. I was happy how they turned out, but they were definitely a LOT of work. Let me know if you have any questions. Instead of inserts we did a passport. Originally I only wanted to do a passport, but my fiance liked the pocketfold better so it was our little compromise.

I just finished doing my pocketfolds...although I haven't downloaded the pictures of them yet. I will do that shortly. After making about 35 pocketfolds I was sick and tired of them. However, I also did not have a good paper trimmer and had to cut most of my paper with scissors which added extra time. I think towards the end it took me somewhere under 10 minutes/pocketfold. I have a lot of extra time right now so figured I had the time to do them. Would I do it again? I'm not sure. If I had over 40 to do I would definitely order them. Under 40? I would probably do it again if I had as much free time as I have now. If not, I would order them unless you have an awesome assembly line and tools. My fiance and I have tried to save money throughout this entire process and knew we didn't want to spend much on invites. As a result I bought some cheap cardstock from Michaels (a paper pack that cost $2.50 and had 50 8.5x 11 sheets of a mixture of blues). I also had to figure out the dimensions to fit into a cheap envelope (the ones you can buy anywhere that fit 4x6 pics). I am hoping to post pics this weekend. After all of the work I spent on them, I kind of didn't want to give them away especially to those that could really care less about the work, haha.

Many people do end up using cards and pockets. I am determined to try to do my own as well (just because I don't really want to spend $1.00 or more per invitation. I have found some instruction on how to do it and hope to do it myself this week. I have found through practice the easiest way (for me at least) is to use a ruler and a butter knife. The butter knife creates the line you will fold at (I usually go up and down the ruler with the butter knife a few times). I think there are also some other tools you can use, but I read about the butter knife somewhere and was really impressed at how easy (and cheap) it was to do that. However, it will still be somewhat time consuming, but once you get the process down it does get easier and quicker. I am hoping to have at least the pocketfolds done this weekend. I am also hoping to post some pictures of my invitations soon. Good luck with whatever you decide!

Congrats and welcome! Good luck with all of your planning!

Congrats and welcome! You will find all kinds of helpful information here. Good luck with all of your planning!

I am using mywedding.com and haven't had any problems with it either. It has been a really helpful resource.

Congrats and welcome! Good luck with all of your planning!

Welcome and Congrats! You will definitely find so much helpful info here. Good luck with all of your planning!