Guidelines for Making Your Own Wedding Shower Invitations
August 6th, 2009 by adminSome girlfriends and I had the privilege of throwing a good friend a wedding shower last month. We thought it would be fun and different to create the wedding shower invitations from scratch. We always prided ourselves on past artistic endeavors. We got lots of practice sewing and bedazzling things on the cheap, since we were in a sorority. So, off we went to make our own smashingly dazzling wedding shower invitations. To help all those who follow our footsteps, we decided to write up a summary of our lessons learned.
Make sure the bride is okay with giving you full creative license with the wedding shower invitations and the shower. I do not mean that you have to spill the beans on your idea and ruin the surprise. But some brides have very definite ideas of what their showers and weddings will be like. It is my belief that women like that would probably never agree to hand over the planning reins to someone else other than themselves in the first place. You can move onto the design phase if you already know the bride is cool with you doing whatever you want.
I am not going to go into detail about what kind of wedding shower invitations you can create, because the possibilities are limitless. If you have a special theme for the shower, your invitations will probably tie into that. If a more traditional shower is planned, then just make wedding shower invitations that are fun, groovy, gorgeous or memorable (or all four).
Now, listen closely, because this next paragraph is what is most important. The meat of your wedding shower invitations, the information inside that tells people what to do and where to go, should be proofread many times. I like to have a person who has not been knee deep in the invitation making factory take a look at it. Many of the old school guidelines advise you to use proper English (as in, British English with their “favours”) on your invitation. Unless Sir Elton John is on the guest list, I think this is superfluous. Quality check everything, so that there are no grammatical errors or misspellings. Assure that you have the correct date, time and year on your invitations. Check that the name of the location is spelled correctly and that the address is accurate. If the address is confusing, include directions. Be clear on the invitation that guests should RSVP with a yes or no. There are always guests who will attend without replying, and those will not attend but never tell you. This makes planning difficult. Now, there will always be a couple people who show up unexpectedly or cannot make it at the last minute. But, by making it explicit on the wedding shower invitations, you increase your odds of a good headcount tremendously. Having a clear RSVP statement, however, will give you a better chance with planning. Most people assume “shower” means only women, so if men are invited, be sure to be clear about that on the invitation somewhere too. The last thing is to provide some guidelines for the attendees on dress and gifts, if the shower has a theme. “Come dressed as your favorite rock star from the 80s and bring a bottle of wine to stock the cellar.”





