For my friends’ wedding I was asked to create their wedding invitations. One friend is from the US and the other from the UK. They sent out a ‘save the date’ email that had red, white and blue as the colors and an image of a British and American flag joined together. This was the theme they wanted for their wedding invitations.

They were having two separate ceremonies, one in the US and one in the UK. The vision I was given was that the front of the invitation opened up like a pair of French doors and the invitation would be visible with the first ceremony on top and the second underneath.

After playing around with some ideas on different ways of creating the cover or folder for the invitation, I headed for the Internet. I found several companies selling different types of stock for wedding invitations and ordered samples of folders, envelopes, card stock and paper in red, white, blue and silver. When the samples came in I was pretty sure what we would be using.

While waiting for the paper samples I looked for images of British and American flags joined together. After reviewing hundreds of images the right one popped up on the screen. My vision was using the flags image as the border of the invitation itself. Using PageMaker I set the type and layout of the invitation and RSVP card. The flag was the border around the invitation and RSVP card.

The company I ordered the samples from had pictures of completed wedding invitations on their website. The first presentation of my ideas to my clients included the sample papers and screen shots of the sample wedding invitations, seals and the different styles of envelopes available to show them samples of other invitations made with the same folders.

With folders and paper chosen, still needed was a way to keep the folder closed. I thought of ribbon but was concerned how the ribbon would hold up through the mail. None of us liked the seals that the paper company was offering. Then I found someone’s blog who was using the same folder I was for their wedding invitations. And they were using Velcro to hold the folder closed. Yes, that was my answer! Now I just needed a little decoration on the front. The invite I was looking at had die-cut paper flowers, but that wouldn’t work for the invites I was making, I was thinking flags.

What I found to use, was red, white and blue star brads: one of each color on the outside of the folder, using the Velcro closure to hide the underside of the brads when the invitation was opened. It was also decided that the flag image was too nice to hide behind the invitation so we attached the full image to the backside of the invite folder as well as the RSVP card. A red border replaced the flag border and the corners of the invitation, RSVP cards and the flags on the backside would have rounded corners.

The folder of the invitation was a dark metallic blue stock, the invitation and RSPV cards were a white metallic paper printed with a red border, and red, white and blue star brads on the front of the folders.

The envelopes were white metallic stock. The layout for both the mailing and smaller RSVP envelope was a little trickier to do. The names and addresses of the invitees were merged into my PageMaker document. It was getting my printer to print correctly on the envelopes, especially the small ones that became a little more challenging, but after some adjustments, they all printed out beautifully. When completed, the invitations were quite elegant without being overstated and my friends were thrilled!