My Bridesmaid Invites

This was my first crafty project as a soon-to-be engaged woman. Yes, yes, I began making bridesmaid invites before I was even engaged. I knew the proposal was coming in the next couple of months, and I wanted to send them to my girls as soon as possible since the engagement wasn’t going to be super long – less than 8 months.
So I got to work on these one Friday night around 7 p.m. and worked straight through til 4 a.m. They were so cute, I couldn’t put them down.
I took my inspiration from these Once Wed invites but put my own spin on them.

I used the same instructions and process as outlined here, so I won’t go through those in detail. First I cut out a line of stick people holding hands by folding paper back and forth, creating as many layers of paper as I had bridesmaids – 7. Then I cut out their dresses and sashes of fancy paper I found at Paper Source – this is the exact color my actual bridesmaid dresses will be! I cut hair-dos for each girl, mimicking their real hair style. I drew little eyes and mouths, wrote their names in cursive and voila! The chain.

I then I added the invite that I printed at home on an adorbale translucent polka-dotted printed paper from Michael’s. I kept it simple with “Will you be my bridesmaid?” and the date of the wedding, Friday, June 10, 2011.

After getting them all dressed and dec’d out with mini pink sticky-backed jewels in their hair and a small strand of pearls I folded them up and tied them with white ribbon. The pearls come in strips with sticky backs, so they can be easily cut to any length.

I bought A7 envelopes from Paper Source that matched their yellow dresses and wrote the names and addresses on them in my fanciest script.

Just for a little added surprise, I taped a fluffy white feather to the back of the very last girl in the chain. I wanted them to say “Oooh!” when they opened the envelope and feel like it was a delicate, special, custom-made invitation — because it was!

Finally I wrote each girl a very nice, personal letter, explaining why I wanted her to be with me as I said ‘forever’ to the man of my dreams, printed it, then stamped each letter with a cute damask rubber stamp I got at Michael’s for about $1.

I used the same stamp to stamp the outside of the envelope at the closure. That’s it!

I had SO much fun making these little invites. They were very time consuming and painstaking, but the girls loved them and they were worth every second!