Making your own wedding stationery needn’t be difficult and you’ll have the satisfaction of doing it yourself – as well as the admiration of your guests.

Often, the first time some customers begin card making it is for their own wedding stationery. Sometimes it is because of constraints of budget – there’s so many expenses associated with a wedding that it’s easy for costs to run away – but most often it’s because the bride has a firm idea of what she wants and the ready made sector just doesn’t meet her needs.

There are certain things you need to bear in mind when making your own wedding stationery whether you’re a beginner or not.

1. Keep it simple. The more complicated the design the longer it will take and there’s a host of other tasks from the dress to the food for the reception that need to be dealt with. An average wedding will have about 50 wedding invitation plus a further 50 evening invitations. Then there’s the orders of service for a church wedding or the order of ceremony for a civil wedding, plus the thank you cards and you may want to do rsvp cards as well. And don’t forget the place card – one for each guest. It all adds up and all of a sudden you’ve over 400 cards to make so I repeat – keep it simple.

2.Buy enough to finish the job. Our suppliers do run out, especially on the more popular colours and we do get runs on certain items at certain times of the year. Even something as basic as Stardream card. We do try to keep very high stocks of Stardream but I will never forget the year when the Stardream mill ran out of Stardream bronze and we had to wait weeks for fresh supplies. Not much good if you’ve run out and you’ve still got invitations to make and the wedding looms imminent.

3.If you can do it with a friend or even two. Don’t force your exacting standards on your friends though, or you’ll find they disappear quite quickly. Have a few evening sessions together with a bottle of wine at the end – not during – each session.

4.Take a look at the Craftsite gallery http://www.craftsite.co.uk/gallery/ There’s loads to inspire you. There are several wedding invitations with step by step instructions where you can change the colours to match your theme or modify a design to your liking with a couple of tweaks.