Our Beach Wedding Invitations – Inspiration, DIY

Here I come with my first DIY article – our beach wedding invitations. This post might appear a bit hectic but it contains pretty images in case you can’t be bothered to read it.

Our wedding is 2 months away but the invitations were ready in July 2018. The last person got it… about a Month ago. I sent ‘Save the date’, which is an informative website, to everyone at the beginning of July. Enough notice in my opinion.

We have always known we will go for something unique, and DIY seemed like a great idea, especially because my soon to be sister-in-law is an artist who offered to help us.

At first, we had around 50 guests as we wanted to keep the wedding very intimate. We ended up inviting over 80 people, which I still think won’t be considered as a huge party. As a matter of fact, the wedding is half a world away, and we have received an RSVP from 34 people who are coming to Asia to witness our Big Day. Ideally, I did not intend to drag people to Asia for a weekend, and most of the guests stay there for at least a week. I was hoping they would treat it as a holiday hence we get married at the end of May.

I have to admit –  I did not really count on everyone to come. It is far away, we are all living a fast life, and the tickets to Asia could get pricey. I gave those invitations to my loved ones as a ‘thank you‘ for being in our life. And I hope they took the hint.

I was capable of making personalized invitations because of three reasons – I had not so many people invited to the wedding, a full-time artist available to help me, and some spare time in the evenings. DIY does not always mean cheaper. In fact, our DIY invitations could have cost a little more than the regular paper ones, and I am not counting time. Truth is, it consumes a lot of time.

To me, making those invitations was good fun. Me and my future sister-in-law started the preparation in June when it was warm and the evenings were long. We had fun painting the cases, decorating boxes and picking up all the extras.

Our wedding will take place on the beach in a very exotic Asian country, so we wanted the invitations to hint the location, our theme, an exotic mood of the place and … the venue, which is the beach itself. We’ve always wanted the invitations to correspond to the Big Day idea and tell our loved ones who we are, in some way (in case our closest friends have missed that bit…)

You have to keep it eco these days so instead of plastic, we went for the wooden boxes. The wooden box was meant to represent the sort of ‘chest of gold‘. You know Jack Sparrow and the pirates, don’t you? At first, the wooden boxes were meant to be … a vintage suitcase, but a chest with a treasure inside appeared to be a better idea.

Letter. Every single invitation was hand written by my future sister-in-law. Why did we not print them? We wanted the text to look like a ‘message in a bottle’. Ideally, the message comes from the middle of nowhere, and as far as we know there aren’t any printers on an abandoned/undiscovered exotic island. Despite the fact I like elegant invitations, this one was meant to look very messy but also rustic. We used parchment and ink. The letters are ripped, creased, there are the signs of water on them and there are only a few words pointing the locations, our nicknames, their names and the date. I normally don’t take as long to crease the paper and spill the water on it, but this time it took… a while 🙂

Sand. Every case is laid out with sand. I mean the real sand from the Baltic Sea. We also added a tiny shell from our trips all around the world, so the guests could possibly figure out the venue before reading.

We bought the cases at 1,5EUR each at KIK, which is a good price for a wooden box. At first, we had to shave it with sandpaper so it looks like an old case. Choosing the right colour was a challenge. We bought the acrylic paints at the art store (5/6 EUR per tube), and Ola decided to mix the colours in order to get the unique shade. Apart from the boxes, sandpaper and paints, we also had to buy some extras, such as:

• the raffia ‘band’,
• golden paint,
• papyrus
• stamps (letters)
• felt-tip pen/ ink

Making of around 35ish boxes took around a week to 10 days. As I mentioned before, such DIY invitations aren’t exactly what I would call affordable, and it is a time-consuming process. Nevertheless, I would recommend it for everyone who wants to stand out of the crowd and gift their loved ones with a personalized treat.

I call the style of our invitations ‘rustic/exotic‘. Despite the fact I love elegant stationery, I am in love with the idea of our wedding. I kept all the remaining extras in order to use them as table decor, such as thank you cards or vignettes. Not only I have my artist to help me but I am also working with one of the most romantic resorts in Asia, and their wedding planner is very creative. I am sure we will figure out something truly extraordinary.

Now, time to get my fiance’s wedding attire which is, in our case, the most difficult part…

Speaking of a beach wedding – check out my latest article from Sicily here.

I also plan to publish on how my wedding dress was designed and made but let me do it after the Big Day. In case you are looking for a perfect beach wedding dress at the moment, I tried on some Grace Loves Lace gowns, and wrote about it here.