BYOB With A DIY Wedding Invitations Gala

Your bridesmaids love you; they have to, it's in the contract. We're not saying you have to treat them like soldiers under your command, but if you ask them to help out with wedding preparations, they're not going to say no. This doesn't mean you should take advantage of their goodwill in hopes that they'll stay in it for the prospect of great bridesmaid gifts, but if your Do It Yourself wedding has turned into a stress-fest of overworking with an inevitable destination of fainting from exhaustion on the way to the altar, stop! Call for assistance. And while you're at it, make it a party.

One of the most popular things to DIY for a wedding is to go with a printable wedding invitations kit. You'll save a mint on printing or engraving costs, and if you have a quality computer printer, why not use what you already have? Once you've printed out your stack of invites, though, you'll still be down for the time-consuming task of stuffing and addressing envelopes. This leaves one solution: bribery. Call up your bridesmaids and announce that you're throwing an impromptu party. Offer chips, salsa, and a fruity delicious malt beverage or two, and then mention that you'd love a little help with your wedding invitations while you have them there. Just consider your bridesmaid gifts budget to be a rolling one.

In order to keep the process as simple as possible, go with no-frills but still pretty wedding invitations like these in the Platinum Hearts Invitation Kit. Topped with cute entwined hearts, these invites are so well-designed that all you need to do is print the wording on there, no extra work required! That'll make it easier to parcel out tasks to your bridesmaids in between bites of crudités: simply form an assembly line of envelope stuffers, addressers, and stickers, i.e. the ones in charge of affixing return address labels and stamps to each finished envelope. And we know hostessing is a rough job, but making yourself a part of said assembly line will go a long way toward engendering your bridesmaids' kindness when you need their help again in the future.

Got a crafty bunch of bridesmaids on your hands? Lucky you. Such fine ladies can likely be called upon to go a little more in-depth with the invitation-assembling. If you're buying simple invitations like the ones in the Platinum Border Invitation Kit, consider adding a little something extra to the overall look. This can be as simple as choosing a monogram to print onto the invites along with the wording, or as complicated as having that monogram hand-embossed, ribbons added on, or tiny flowers glued on to each invite. Taking into account the size of your wedding and the quality of your bridesmaid gifts (hint: if you're expecting hand-embossing on 200 invitations, generosity would befit your request), you can figure out what you're the most comfortable asking for. The more you ask, though, the more booze you should provide - not that we encourage drunken glittering of every available invitation surface, but the promise of a few cosmos as light at the end of a long invitation-beribboning tunnel would certainly be appreciated by your dearest girls.