We recently added a flower girl and ring bearer to our bridal party after I belatedly realized that one of my friends has kids who are exactly the right age. I was super excited about this until my friend asked me, “What about the dress?”

Oh right! Flower girl dress…

Did you know that flower girl dresses often run upwards of $100? And even $150? I sure didn’t! It seemed sort of insane to buy a tiny little dress that cost as much as my Maid of Honor’s dress (and unlike the flower girl, my Maid of Honor will not be outgrowing her dress in a year).

Our flower girl had a dress from a previous flower girl experience, but the colors weren’t quite right. I was debating between trying to alter the dress or trying to squash my obsessive matchy-matchiness*, when I saw this dress.

It’s a lot less than $100 and it’s also perfect.

It’s ivory with an embroidered taffeta overlay, just like my dress, while the color and the ruched sash echo our wedding colors and my Maid of Honor’s dress nicely without being too clone-y or disturbingly child bride-y.

In fact, the sash on that dress is exactly the color of the ribbon I used on our invitations. What are the odds of that?

After the jump: Hair combs! On sale!

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Groom is from Japan and most of his family does not speak English. And apparently it’s weird to be decorating with cherry/plum blossoms in late spring. So as much as I love the cherry blossom invitations, I needed to cook up another batch for the groom’s family.

Ta-da!

Apparently traditional Japanese wedding invitations are written like a letter (not to mention the potential pitfalls in returning reply cards from overseas), so we nixed all the enclosures and made it into a folder.

This chiyogami paper is also from Paper Source, the Yuzen Oriental Fans Wine and Persimmon. The ribbon is the same 1/4″ satin ribbon, but in Moss. Paper and ribbon colors are closer to what’s pictured above than on the Paper Source web site. The backing materials and envelopes are the same as the other invitation.

Almost all of our invitations have gone out now and I’m actually kind of sad. I really like making pretty paper things!

Ready to assemble these DIY wedding invitations?

First, some tools:

I used a 12″ Fiskars rotary paper trimmer, though a self-healing mat, craft knife, and metal straightedge will work just as well. You’ll also need a corner rounder (mine has a 1/4″ radius), some scissors, and adhesive. I used Zots, which are basically some flattened sticky rubber blobs that let you do mess-free sticking. To replicate what I did exactly, you’ll need two 300-count boxes of the medium-sized ultra-thin Zots. All of these things should be available at your local craft supply store.

Step 0

If your Kinko’s also refused to cut your cards apart for you, then the first thing to do is to cut the cards apart with the paper trimmer or knife and self-healing mat.

Step 1

Take the corner rounder and round off the corners on all of the above invitation components, the pearlized paper pieces, and the 100lb A7 Oxford card stock.

Step 2

To make the invitation backing, stick the pearlized paper to the A7 Oxford card stock (these pieces should be the same size). Because I liked being able to flip apart the layers and to save Zots, I only used two: one in each upper corner.

Take the printed 4 3/4″ x 6 5/8″ invitation card, center it over the backing, and stick it down. Again, I only used two Zots in the upper corners.

Step 3

Cut a 3″ x 12″ strip of the chiyogami paper. Wrap it around the panel invitation so that the seam is centered across the back. Stick the ends of the sash together.

Step 4

Cut an 18″ length of ribbon. Tie a bow in the middle of the sash. Trim the ends of the bow so they’re even.

Step 5

Tuck the reception and guest information card under the sash, on top of the panel invitation. Stamp the reply envelope, tuck the reply card under the flap, and insert both under the sash, on top of the response card.

Done! Now you just have to address and send.

A Note on Postage

I’ve been mailing my invitations in batches and taking each batch to the post office to be weighed. Depending on the postal worker, the scale calibration, and the phase of the moon, I have been told that each invitation will cost me $0.41 (regular first-class postage), $0.58 (typical wedding postage) and even $0.75 to mail.

When I weigh it at home on my kitchen scale, the assembled invitation is just over an ounce, so I expect postage to be $0.58 (at least until the rate change). However, it seems that the pink bow around the sash can result in extra postage because it means there’s a bump in the middle of the envelope. A majority of the postal workers I talked to ruled that this makes the invitation non-machinable, and so they tack on an extra $0.17.

If you want to prevent that particular complication, nix the ribbon.